Melody needs me to be okay.
Our baby needs me to be okay.
I have to figure out how to make all of this happen before I make a mess out of our lives.
It’s all on me.
“Oh, how was your doctor’s appointment today, Dad?” Parker asks, staring at me as if she knows what I’m thinking. She spoons the soupy ice cream into her mouth, waiting for an answer.
“Good. It went well,” I say.
“Can he fix you?” No filter on this kid.
“I have to fix myself, but I will.”
Melody places her hand on my leg and squeezes to tell me everything's okay. “There’s no way for me to respond and tell her how scared I am that everything may never be okay.”
27
The officersand ranks above us said writing letters home would ground us and give us some comfort, as well as peace of mind to our families. Though Melody never responded to any of the letters I wrote, I still took comfort in putting my thoughts and feelings on paper and envisioning her reading them. I felt more comfort in writing to her than my own family. I know Mom and Pops constantly worried, and Brody was probably bottling it all up inside or cracking jokes about me getting blown up because that’s how he dealt with “crap,” but Melody felt like my listener, mostly because she didn’t respond, but it was easier to write to a silent audience, even if it was only one person.
After Melody and I reconnected, I found out my boot camp letter never made it to her. That one remains a mystery. The other four though, should have made it to her but never did due to circumstances out of our control. Maybe Melody would have felt differently about me now, had she read all those letters. She might have been scared off by the damaged person I would likely become after witnessing so much death and destruction. Those thoughts crossed my mind every time I sent another letter to her, butI needed to talk to somebody, even if it was just words on a piece of wrinkled paper. It made me feel like there was still life back home and a light at the end of the tunnel. I knew I might never see or meet up with Melody again, but if she had feelings for me all those years, as I did for her, maybe the letters were enough to let her know I was still out there somewhere, thinking of her.
That’s what I told myself and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, I’m not so sure that I want to open these four envelopes and face my protected, innermost feelings from a time when I didn’t know what the next minute held for me. Melody's head and back are resting against my torso with her legs between mine. My arms are wrapped around hers as I hold the first letter up to read:
Dear Melody,
I know it’s been a long time since that night at the party, and I realize you might not have wanted to receive the letter I sent from bootcamp, but now I’m in Afghanistan and I have a free minute to write home. Selfishly, I think I’m writing this letter partly for myself because I can clearly picture you sitting on a chair somewhere, carefully reading each of my words, taking them all in. That image alone gives me comfort. I know it sounds weird, but I can’t explain it any better. In truth, I don’t know if I should hope for a response and even if you do write back to me, onlyGod knows if the mail will ever reach me here.
Anyway, Eastern Afghanistan is where I’m currently stationed. We’ve been here just over a month now and I think my body is finally starting to acclimate to the heat. The sun is brutal here; it feels like a torch is being pointed at me, almost touching my skin, for twelve hours every day, but oddly enough, there’s so much dust, sand, and smog, it’s hard to actually see the ball of fire. Maybe that’s somewhat of a blessing, though.
We’re outside of a city that has been destroyed by explosives. We’re here to secure the area then continue moving forward to our next location. I can’t give many details, so you’ll have to use your imagination as far as my whereabouts. I’ll just say it’s not pretty. Half of the locals walking around the area we are in seem angry because they don’t want us here while the other half is hoping we can free them from the turmoil of war. We handout food and supplies to families in between the attacks, assuring them things will be okay, but I feel guilty because I’m not sure I believe my own words. So many of the buildings have already been flattened to the ground and we find people hiding under rubble, among the dead bodies. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky so far. I have a good team and we’re on top of everything. Our communications are strong, and we’re good on supplies.
Yesterday was probably the hardest day I’ve experienced here so far. There was an attack on one of the local street markets. A suicide bomber took out the entire outdoor display in less than three seconds. Bodies and body parts were flying everywhere, and I stood there stunned from the explosion and the sight of so much hate and destruction. It was shock—it held me frozen for what seemed like an entire minute when it was only a second. A limb fell from midair and landed at my feet. That’s how close I was—or how massive the explosion was. The limb was an arm, and the hand attached to it still had rings on the fingers. It was hard to digest that this arm belonged to a living, breathing human being just minutes earlier. The blood oozing from the arm spilled onto my boot. I knew I needed to move—to act quickly because there could be other bombers.aIt turned out, there was only one, but we spent the next few hours searching for bodies, trying to help those who were wounded, and clear away the ones who were dead.
It was the first attack we’ve witnessed here. I had never seen a dead body other than at a wake, so it was tough. I saw more yesterday than anyone should ever see in a lifetime. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to erase those images. Some of the people were buried alive beneath falling rubble and I wondered what their last thoughts were or even if they had time to have a last thought. I was supposed to be on a mission to save people, but I don’t feel like I did much saving yesterday.
Anyway, we’re getting our MRE’s (Meal-Ready-to-Eat) so I better go eat before we start moving again.
I hope college is treating you well and that I didn’t cause you distress with all the details in this letter.
I think about you a lot, maybe more than I should, but that smile of yours can get me through anything. So, whatever you’re doing right now, on the other side of the world, keep smiling for me.
—Brett
I drop the letter onto Melody’s lap, and she grabs my arms and ties them tightly around her chest. I never thought I’d be listening to my words while holding this woman in my arms. I didn’t think I was going to make it out of there alive, not after that first attack. “That was a brutal awakening. I didn’t think we would skate by without seeing the effects of combat and attacks, but no matter what I imagined or tried to prepare myself for, it didn’t come close to what I saw that day. It didn’t get easier after that andI didn’t become numb like I thought I would. I walked around in fear, stayed awake at night in fear and wondered if those days that felt like we were in Hell, were my life’s purpose. The training I had—it prepared me for all the physical strength I would need to survive, but there’s no training for luck, and luck is all we had most days.”
“Did you lose any of your men that day?”
I shake my head. “No, none of us were in the market thankfully, but whether it was one of us or another innocent human being, no one deserves to go out that way.”
“What did you do after you finished cleaning up from the attack?” she asks. No one has asked me this question before because no one knows about that attack.
“We marched forward toward our next destination. We received communications on expected threats, but a lot of times, we didn’t know how, or where the damage would be. We didn’t even know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys sometimes. They would try to fool us. I never knew what to think, so I had watched for unusual twitches and eye movements. I learned their behaviors and tried to seek out the danger before they had an opportunity to pounce on us.”
“They don’t report those kinds of updates on the news,” Melody says.
“The public shouldn’t have to bear witness to a lot of what we saw. Your imagination is enough.”
