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The harsh thought bounced off the walls of my head and seemed to echo across the empty cemetery. The angry thought remained private though.
My mom and I were visiting his grave.
We stood in front of his headstone, staring down at the slab of rock that was supposed to represent his life. Instead, it only represented his absence.
A small American flag whipped back and forth in the wind, creating a steady rhythm to which we could mark our grief.
November third arrived too soon every year.
It would always be the worst day of the year.
Five years had passed since my father died and it still felt like yesterday. This year, my mom didn’t cry. We visited the grave and said our obligatory prayers. I took a short walk so my mom could speak to him alone. I did this with her every year, but I never understood why. Part of me knew it was just a way to make her feel better, that it helped her feel close to him. A bigger part of me thought it was a giant waste of time. What was the point of talking to a rock?
He wasn’t there.
Still, it was a nice change to visit the cemetery and not have to support my sobbing mom back to the car. She didn’t shed a single tear. She was just quiet through the whole thing.
Something had clicked inside of her a few months ago. I could tell the difference immediately. She still felt his loss in her soul, but it no longer crippled her daily life. She finally found a sense of peace.
I was happy for her, I really was. I just would have been happier if we could stop our yearly visits all together. For me, it never got easier to look at his name on that headstone.
Anderson Wyatt Murphy
It was bold and large. Because he was one of the newer residents in the Bradberry cemetery, his headstone stood out among the rest. While others were beginning to fade, his name could be read from fifty yards away.
Every time I laid eyes on it, I was forced to remember him in ways I didn’t want to. I could still see the coffin they unloaded off that plane. There was an American flag laid across it. My mom still had that flag, folded tightly in a memory box in her bedroom.
He died in combat, thousands of miles away from home. Mom and I didn’t get to say goodbye. He was just gone. It almost killed us both, but while my mom retreated into herself for years after, I did the opposite.
At the time of my father’s death, I was pre-med. I had almost finished my Bachelor’s degree and I was getting ready to take the MCAT. Medical school was right around the corner, but all of that changed when my dad died. My entire life plan was thrown out the window and I knew there was only one thing I could do.
Enlist.
I joined the Army as a medic and spent four years serving my country. It was the best and worst four years of my life.
I flew around the world.
I helped people.
I saved lives.
But I was also reminded every day that no one was around to save my dad. If I had been a medic back then, would I have been able to keep him alive? If I had been there, if I had gotten to him fast enough, would he still be here?
Four years in the Army didn’t do anything to squash those thoughts.
When my time was up, I moved back home and tried to reemerge myself in the Bradberry way of life, but it was no use. I was no longer the same person who left Bradberry four years earlier. I was now the guy who came home twice a year to see my mom through the difficult days: the anniversary of my father’s death and Christmas. Other than that, I managed to stay far away from the small town I used to call home.
By the time November third rolled around again, I had been home for six months. I took my mom to the cemetery to honor my father’s five years in the ground and then we went home.
She barely spoke two words to me on the way home. When we walked through the front door, she went straight to the kitchen and sat down at the table.
I followed her, sure that she wanted me to. I sat beside her and looked at her gently. Despite my lack of patience with our annual visits, I knew my mom was fragile and that it was my job to take care of her. With my dad gone, I was the only person she had left.
“This came in the mail for you,” my mom said with a faint smile. She pushed a thin envelope across the table toward me. “I didn’t know you applied again.”
I looked down at the envelope and saw the UConn School of Medicine symbol on the top left-hand corner. My heart skipped a beat as I looked back at my mom. She was right, I hadn’t told her I applied to medical school for the second time. I wasn’t sure how she would take the news of me leaving again, but when I saw her face, she was smiling at me.
“I was going to tell you,” I said. “I just…”
