Undream the Echoes

Elle
10.30.2001

Today is the day Liam goes off to war.

The sunrise begins my sorrow. The sky is a garden of pinks and ambers and oranges, all happy colors, and just looking at it makes me even more depressed. I close the blinds on all the windows as I’m making breakfast because of this.

When he enters the kitchen, I’m staring at him for so long that the bacon almost burns. He looks so good in uniform. But it breaks my heart because I know that the handsome man that I am married to might have to kill people in that uniform.

I lose myself. I drop the pan on the floor, and not even the startling clatter is loud enough to bring me back to my senses. The grease is splattered all over the kitchen tiles and the bacon is ruined. I just stare at the mess but I don’t bother picking it up. “Sorry,” I finally murmur while still staring at the ground. “I fucked up breakfast.” I let out a hollow laugh. “Look at me, I can’t even make bacon right anymore.”

And as I switch my gaze from the mess on the floor and Liam standing in his Air Force uniform, I start to cry, right there in the middle of the kitchen. I’m embarrassed because I hardly ever cry, ever, but I can’t stop. The tears are silent, feeling hot and furious as they roll down my cheeks. Liam hurries to my side and encases me in his arms and buries his face in my hair, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” But that makes the tears come faster because I know it’s a lie because how the fuck can things be okay right now?

My tears cease within a few minutes, my breakdown disappearing as swiftly as it had come. I keep pretending to sniffle a little though because I want Liam to think I’m still crying. I just want him to hold me for just a minute longer.

Which is worse? Is it going off to war, knowing you’ll have to fight, knowing you might have to kill people and knowing that you may be killed as well; or is it being left behind, pretending to live a normal life, being forced to sit back and wait until your husband returns to you, not knowing what he’s doing right now or if he is even still breathing?

“We need to go soon,” he mumbles into my hair. I look at the clock. Liam’s flight leaves in an hour and a half.

“Yeah,” I reply and break out of his arms. I wipe the tears from my eyes, determinedly not making eye contact with Liam in the fear that I’ll fall apart again. “I’ll clean up the bacon I guess.”

I’m completely dry-eyed once we get to the airport. I look around and see other soldiers ready to board the plane. They’re all surrounded by their wives, their sisters, their brothers, their kids. I watch as a Marine hugs his daughter and son goodbye and tells them that he won’t be home for Christmas. I watch a Navy Seal kiss the one year old baby and it’s like I can hear him thinking, I hope I come back. I want to watch you grow up. I want you to be able to remember me. I turn around and see yet another couple; the wife is crying and I can see that she is pregnant. She’s going to have to give birth to her child without the father being there and there’s a possibility that the baby’s first breath might be after the father’s last.

I watch all of these situations and I feel that I could be in any one of these families and it would be no different. I see the army wives and I think, I am you. We are the same. Most of these families are larger than ours, since they’re fully equipped with kids and siblings and parents and all Liam and I have are each other, but we are all going through the same hardships right now, we are all coping with the fact that we might be losing a loved one and this might be the last time we see our soldiers. These men are travelling overseas; they will be given guns and bombs and they will be expected to fight and protect.

But they are not the only ones fighting. The ones who are left behind have their own battles to win, except we won’t have bullets or explosions to help us. It won’t be as simple as that.

I know when Liam leaves I will endure my own war. Only there won’t be any bad guys to target. I will be fighting against myself, my loneliness, my heart. The worst part is, no matter how much I struggle, no matter how long I strive to win, this fight will not be over until Liam comes home. I can’t be happy until he is back by my side.

But what if he never comes back?

I shouldn’t think like this but I do anyway. I want to have faith in Liam, I want to believe that in six months he will come home, but I can’t deny the possibility of him being killed out there. I know it’s silly. I know that death is a threat that we face everyday – we can die at any second – but we choose to ignore it. We live as if we’re going to live forever. And now that it’s been brought to my attention that this possibility is very real, especially more so for Liam now, I’m freaking out. This could be our final goodbye.

“Elle.” His voice brings me back to him. I tear my gaze away from the other sorrowful families and turn to look at him. His hair is falling into his eyes and out of reflex I bring my hand up and brush a few curls away. I know that in a few hours they will have buzzed all of his hair off. I wonder what he looks like with his hair that short. I wonder if he’ll look like a different person.

I want him to come back the same. I want him to look the same and I want him to laugh the same and I want him to love me the same. But I know that’s impossible. There will be a point when Liam has seen too much. It is likely he will watch several of his friends die around him. He will see innocent children and mothers be killed and he will see corpses lining the streets. And he won’t just watch these things – he will have to kill as well. It is his job. After enduring all of that there is no way a person comes home the same. So in a way I am losing Liam. I am losing the man I know now, the man I am in love with, the man I have married. The thought is just as frightening as it is sad.

I cup his cheek and he clasps a strong hand over mine. Then he brings his lips to my palm, kissing my skin softly. He lets his mouth linger over the spot for a few seconds before lifting his face to look at me. “You’re going to be okay,” he tells me in a firm voice.

“But are you?” I’m suddenly aware that I need to get over this self pity bullshit because Liam is about to fly overseas to a foreign country where people will spit at him on the streets or shoot at him or try to blow him up. I am surprised to see in his eyes that he isn’t afraid. At least not as much as he should be.

“I’m a fighter, remember?” he says softly. “I’m going to be all right. I’ll be back in six months.”

“Do you promise?”

He doesn’t answer but instead kisses me. We get lost in each other for a minute, and we just enjoy the sensation of just being able to feel each other. Right now, in these few seconds, I have him and he has me and that’s all that exists in the world. But then the kiss ends and those seconds are over. It’s time for Liam to board the plane. He kisses me again, twice, three times, and then he grabs his bags and walks away, looking back just once before disappearing into the tunnel that leads to the plane.

And then he’s gone. I am alone.