The Walk-Part III

This is the third and final part of The Walk-Part I and The Walk-Part II .

Where we left off in Part II

I called Doug right after Captain Teague and I finished our phone conversation. Then, as I was seated there on the closed lid of the toilet, I gazed up at the white rose wrapped in a layer of waxed paper, its frail color barely faded, its perfume now only imagined. It stands at attention, pressed between two layers of glass. It is a rose separated from the rest of its family. One tiny part of my memories, those blessed memories of mother and son.

This much is all very clear to me.

The Walk – Part III

I don’t remember now what time the arrival of this important flight was to be, but the plane would land in Oklahoma City, several hours from my home. I remember feeling hurried. But mostly I remember Doug’s words to me, “De’on, I just want to walk with him one more time.”

I think my response must have sounded something like “Okay, Doug, I’ll be there. We’ll have to get all our stuff together because we won’t have to come back here. We’ll meet you in Amarillo.”

It must have been something like that because we gathered our stuff, and Greg drove us to Amarillo. I sat and I listened to the chain beat against the flagpole and a bird sing. It was such an odd mixture of tones to me at the time, while we waited for Doug and his middle son to arrive. To meet us there at the funeral home, just off of I-40.

Dad. Mom. Eric. The three of us close together. For Aaron, we made the long drive.

Hours later, in Oklahoma City, it was hard to miss hearing the heavy dragging and pushing of such a burden, from rear to front, of wood over steel, over and over and over, as those Marines, just as strong as their load, escorted and lowered the crate that held the casket. The flag-draped casket of Lance Corporal Aaron Cole Austin, United States Marine Corps, Killed In Action on April 26, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq.

And the three of us walked those few steps with others. Not a long distance at all. In fact, it was only a short walk from the commercial cargo jet door to the door of the hearse. And we all walked together, together and beside this final armor. Our own.

We walked.

The local newspaper in Amarillo reported that over three hundred cars drove behind us in the long and slow drive that day. To lay him to rest, dressed in his Blues, ornamented in brass. I remember people standing out in the fields, fields of plowed dirt. Some of them surely must have been poor souls out there that day, without some temporary home. Perhaps they felt as lost as we did on that third of May. They spoke to us in a symbolic language: beating their chests with their fists, then holding their palms open and up, emulating our pain, touching their hearts as well as our own, saluting my son’s final ride and those who followed.

And we follow.

I remember our families turning into a family. And I think that surely Aaron must have been smiling up there with Jesus, watching Mom and Dad, step-dad and grandmother, brother, uncles, cousins and aunties, all holding and helping and leaning.

Gathering.

Now he is waiting for us in that big, happy house.

Yes, Roy and Doug are friends. As they hugged.

As we hugged.

As we walked.

As we talk even now. And all of us are “to gather.”

As we heal.