The Musings of a Teenage Something

A Death in the Family

A mother shouldn't live to see the death of her child,
At least, that's what I was always told.
"Don't force the burden
Of having to bury one if you onto me,"
My dear mother would tell me,
And like the good child I was, I upheld her wish.
My brother on the other hand... did not.

My brother enlisted in the Navy,
Like our grandfather, and our father,
And went off to war at the young age of eighteen.
He returned three years later
A much much different person than when he left.

Drugs and alcohol soon consumed him,
Much the same as his grief did.
I can't remember the last time I saw him
Without a drink in his worn, tired hands
Even though he had only aged three years,
His face looked as if it had been seven.
My father was no help.
He drank along with my brother, refilling his glass (es).

This lasted a year,
The drinking.
Maybe it was a little longer.
Then after one drink too many,
He broke his promise we had both made to our dear mother.
I watched as
She watched her only son
Get lowered to the ground, an American flag resting on the nicest
Coffin we could afford.

"Promise me," mother says when we get home that night,
"That I'll Never have to watch my children get
Buried."
"Again," I think, but would never date to say it aloud.
"Yes, mother," I say.
And dammit, I kept that promise until the day she died.