“This kind of thing can spread,” he would tell us, “wars don’t recognize borders.” We soon stopped paying attention to his warnings even though some of the worst battles were fought barely fifty miles north of us. It was gradually becoming trench warfare anyway; curling (sport?) seemed more exciting.
It was on a lazy mid-August day when we got the news that a stray cluster bomb had maimed his daughter-in-law and killed Tommy, his only grandchild. We didn’t know how to tell him but soon he found out anyway. He refused to go to the funeral and has not visited his daughter-in-law in the sanatorium.
Today, All Saints’s Day, we’re getting ready to visit the graves of the loved ones. He says he’s not coming. “As long as I see no evidence, I can believe that Tommy is still alive. He’ll grow up to be twice the man I ever was. And he’ll become a poet or a park ranger or a peace activist. A fierce one!”
It was on a lazy mid-August day when we got the news that a stray cluster bomb had maimed his daughter-in-law and killed Tommy, his only grandchild. We didn’t know how to tell him but soon he found out anyway. He refused to go to the funeral and has not visited his daughter-in-law in the sanatorium.
Today, All Saints’s Day, we’re getting ready to visit the graves of the loved ones. He says he’s not coming. “As long as I see no evidence, I can believe that Tommy is still alive. He’ll grow up to be twice the man I ever was. And he’ll become a poet or a park ranger or a peace activist. A fierce one!”
