Their pictures graced the mantle piece staring back at the living room in silent decorum, colors blazing behind their crisp, evergreen uniforms. He often admired them when the house was quiet and everyone was gone or asleep in their beds. Those dark nights when he couldn’t sleep, he would shuffle into the room, making eye contact in form of a respectful salute. Scanning the medals hanging from the frames, vivid pictures filled his mind with excitement, courage, and honor. He glanced across the room staring back at a face much like his own, bearing a diploma, a year’s worth of age had been added since. Even in the cold air of the night, beads of sweat formed on his brow. In his hand he clutched the crisp white envelope tightly, his knuckles turning white as it crumpled in his fist. It was his turn and he was ready.

            Weeks later found him standing before the open doors of a bus, donning a starched green uniform and a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His mother kissed him one last time, blinking away the image of her nine year old son in an oversized suit boarding the bus that would carry him away from her. Her heart strained as his fingers uncurled from her outstretched hand. He stepped up on the bus, his freshly polished boots gleaming in the sunlight. He glanced over his right shoulder and turned to his mother, clicked his heels, raising his hand to his brow in a formal salute before disappearing into the bus amongst all the other young men who waved from the windows to their loved ones. The air held an awkward sense of joyous departure as family waved from the sidewalk proudly to their own in the bus. It seemed as though the boys were being sent to a summer camp, due to certain return a week later, safely back in the arms of their mothers. The farewells were said half-heartedly in the blind reassurance. His mother strained to memorize every detail of his face as the bus drove off in the distance. He was ripped from her heart in a moment’s breath.

            In the months to come, his letters flooded the mailbox, telling of his adventure to the camp, the friends he’d made, the beauty of his surroundings, the sergeant, and worst of all the food. All were passionately signed “I love you with all my heart and miss you” accompanied by his full name in perfect script. The curves and loops that weaved across the page served as a comfort to his distraught mother, relieving the ever present strain in her heart. She found solace in holding something that he once held in his very hand, the only connection she seemed to have with him across the growing distance. In response to the letters came care packages: food and snacks, toiletries, clothing, socks, books; all neatly dressed and mailed along with letters from the family and love. His fresh picture was placed on the mantle among his successors, colors blazing brighter than those before him.

            As the months went on, the letters grew few and far in between. Each one his mother received was a precious gem, a faint light lingering in the distance, resounding his existence, proof that he lived on, that he had survived the days. The letters gradually became notes, impersonal and hurried, scribbled with vague messages one might expect to find on the back of a postcard from an acquaintance on vacation. He seemed cold and distant. His friends he had made found their way out of his messages, presumably found their way out of his life. He no longer spoke of the beauty of his surroundings. He spoke of regrets, fears, pains. He thanked for his packages, inquired after his dog, and said his goodbye in the few lines he strained to write.

            Later that year his family stood around the glowing TV, watching in silent horror as mushroom clouds burst from the ground, sending rubble flying up into the sky among the blaze and dirt. His mother clutched the crumpled letter that traveled the miles from the distant land on the TV to her very home. She watched the images of lives ended far too soon and their children, once fighting for a cause, now nothing but murderers, killing someone else‘s child, a mother who may be sitting on the other side at this very moment, watching this very picture on TV, praying in vain for her own baby‘s life. It would almost seem the letter she held passed through a horrifying fantasy into her reality. Her chest strained and tears blotted her cheeks, praying that the faceless bodies dotting the ground were not one of her own.

            One day as the sun set on the horizon, she sat on her white porch reading his latest letter. The red, white, and blue banner hung heroically on the corner of their garage, flapping proudly in the gentle breeze. Yellow ribbons dotted the posts and trees around the house in silent tribute, reminding all who passed who was fighting for them. Her eyes scanned the etched writing jerking from one side on the soiled sheet of paper to the other. The penmanship was unfamiliar and the endless string of words were not his own. Scribbled in a nervous haste at the bottom of the page was a quick “I love you”, signed simply and formally with his initials. She tried to picture her son writing the letter, tired but proud, following the family legacy in the footsteps of those that served before him, but try as she may, she could only see the lost little boy scratching his pen furiously across the page, confused, afraid, and missing his home. She shut her eyes as fresh tears dotted the paper she held in her hand, struggling to find the answer to the silent question she knew he was asking: why?

            Horrifying pictures grazed the front pages of local newspapers daily, sharing images of lifeless bodies, riddled with bullets, bleeding from every orifice. Smoke, dust, and balls of fire served as the background for the make-shift graveyard; soon soldiers would make their rounds to identify the faceless boys and send on an dismal announcement ahead of the bodies to their families. His mother always feared the moment when she would look out her window to see the crisp uniforms approaching her walkway. The image plagued her dreams, and though she fought to push the thought aside, she knew at any time her turn would come to receive her news.

            His letters trickled in slowly before ceasing altogether. Cheers roared through the crowds on the TV as red, white, and blue banners shook excitedly in the hands of the grateful. But no one watched the celebration ringing through the streets in the far off country. A dark cloud hung over the home. The flag on the corner of the garage hung solemnly on its perch before a rogue gust of wind blew it from its bearings and let it fall gently to the ground below.

            Years later she shuffled into the living room in the dead of the cold night, beads of sweat forming on her brow. Many nights found her in this room, examining the photos that lined her mantle piece, the generations that came and served. Her grandfather, father, brother, and her son all stared back at her with stern eyes of compassion, bravery, and understanding. Perhaps they knew, they understood what they had been fighting for, what they had died for, but she could find no answer in their lifeless faces. On the freshest picture ringing with the brightest colors, she fingered the gleaming medals that stood in place of her son. Devastated, she collapsed to the floor in tears, and the question continued to burn in her mind: Why?