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Memorial Day by Ed Bennett My father fell somewhere beneath a jungle canopy, some approximate spot never found, never sought, a spent cinder of a firefight long forgotten. I remember two officers who came to the door with the long faces of priests. My mother accepted the news trying to be strong for us as the cracks eroded the edges of our family. It was at graveside when she broke, the tears marking the end, the loss. She reached for my hand, oldest child of too few years, to give her strength that I could not find. She handed me the cup of her sorrow, a private sacrament between mother and son, of a family transfigured by loss, by carnal grief, by the scourge of tears released by the bugler's dying notes. My mother is gone. My brother returned from his desert misadventure draped in a flag with a medal for consolation. Again and always, this day, I take the cup to my lips in memoriam for the fallen, but especially for the shards of us left behind.
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