For Your Tomorrow

by Melanie Murray

  It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly … who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring so greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.

  It says it all, especially to all those anti-Afghanistan armchair cynics who lack knowledge of what this mission is struggling to accomplish, and have no appreciation of the soldiers’ dedication to the mission and to each other.

  Marion and Russ find scant Canadian military services in place to support the families of fallen soldiers—no groups or networking with other grieving military families. Sylvie is entitled to a few sessions with a bereavement counsellor. “You’re doing fine,” she tells Sylvie after their third meeting. “No need to come any longer.” Sylvie doesn’t know how to respond. Had she answered all the questions properly? She doesn’t feel fine. The life she thought she was living has disappeared; she’s lost in a netherworld, groping about in the dark for a way out. So she contacts the Military Family Resource Centre at CFB Downsview. After a couple of sessions, the counsellor tells her she’s doing very well. Again, Sylvie wonders why it doesn’t feel that way. When she moves to Ottawa, she attends a civilian spousal support group, Grieving Families of Ottawa, for eight weeks. But the spouses are older, with adult children; they can’t relate to her situation any more than she can identify with theirs.

  No support services are available for Mica. The sibling is the person that’s overlooked, she comes to realize; the concern is mainly for the parents and the spouse. Mica also derives solace through reading, but few books focus specifically on sibling loss. As executor of Jeff’s will, she encounters resistance from the National Student Loan Service Centre in forgiving a small balance remaining on Jeff’s student loan. After months of trying to talk with someone besides a call centre operator, a bureaucrat informs her that no one in the federal government has the authority to forgive this loan; there is no legislation in place for this situation. “This isn’t about the amount of money,” she tells him. “It’s the principle. My brother gave his life in service to our country.” Firm in her conviction, she contacts the MLA of her riding, Peter Mackay—then Minister of Foreign Affairs—and the loan is soon repealed.

  On the first and third Tuesday of every month, Marion and Russ drive to the St. Vincent de Paul Church in Cole Harbour. In a carpeted meeting room, they sit in leather chairs around a table with several other people, all parents who have lost a child. The bereavement counsellor, Vince MacDonald, initiates discussion by reading a poem or a story, or asking someone about their week. But he allows the parents to direct the conversation or to just be silent. On the table in front of each mother and father is a photo of their child, a ceramic heart and a lighted candle. When new people join the group, the members introduce themselves by telling the story of their child’s death. Some are newly grieving parents—one young couple has recently lost their ten-month-old baby. Some have been dealing with their loss for many years, such as the father whose thirty-two-year-old daughter committed suicide ten years ago.

  They tell their stories openly and honestly. They each inhabit their own territory of grief, but they speak a common language. For Russ, it’s a safe place to talk—to remove his armour and expose the wounds just below the surface. Marion mainly listens, and cries. Talking with people who are travelling the same road makes their burden more endurable. They are not alone. And they learn from the long-term travellers that there’s no timetable for the journey.

  One evening when Marion and Russ are the only parents present, Vince asks her, “So how’s it going?”

  “It’s hell,” she says. “Our life is hell. The emptiness is unbearable most of the time.”

  “Are you getting out much? Seeing other people?”

  “No. I have no desire or energy,” she says. “Just getting through the day is exhausting.”

  “It’s the emptiness that’s so heavy,” he says, rising from his chair. “I’ll be right back.”

  In a few minutes he returns, holding a large grey rock in his hands. “Your grief is like this stone,” he says, “weighing you down as you carry it around all day. When you go out, you can make a decision to set it aside; leave it by the door, then pick it up again when you get home.”

  The group teaches them such strategies for making their sorrow livable. And as they focus on ways of continuing their relationship with their lost child, Marion begins to envision. What does she envision? Jeff’s garden—a Zen garden on his granny’s land by the sea.

  Marion digs in the red earth, plants hostas, ferns and ornamental grasses. She and Russ lug flat sandstones up from the beach for pathways, and shovel pea gravel into beds. They rake the pearl-grey pebbles into a pattern of waves, outlined with sea glass—translucent shards of blue, white and green. In the circular plot, they erect granite standing stones; arrange Japanese solar lanterns and pagodas. Marion is most at peace when she’s working in the garden. She feels connected to her son, as if she’s caring for him, nurturing his spirit, keeping him alive in this ever-growing, ever-changing entity. Near the entrance, they place a stone meditation bench and a bronzed statue of the Buddha. In a nook formed by three spruce trees, they set a chiselled stone marker: Jeff’s Way.

  EPILOGUE

  What we call the beginning is often the end

  And to make an end is to make a beginning

  The end is where we start from.

  T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

  THE HIGHWAY LEADING to CFB Shilo in southern Manitoba is like none other in Canada. Yellow ribbons as tall as a man festoon the weathered grey fence posts and telephone poles that line the road, mile after mile. They usher us—Marion, Russ, Mica, Aaron, Sylvie, Ry and me—to the Home Station of the First Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. We are driving to the base for the ceremonial dedication of a trig point in Jeff’s name. A fixed survey marker positioned on a hill in the military training area, a trig point helps soldiers to orient themselves during field exercises.

  The gravel road into the training zone cuts through fields of reddish-yellow grass and birch trees, amber leaves quivering against the bluest widest sky imaginable. We drive in silence, each of us immersed in our separate spheres of thought. On this sun-drenched September morning, it feels like the most peaceful place on earth; this place where soldiers learn to fire weapons and engage in combat, soldiers committing their lives so we can live in this peaceable land. I imagine Jeff directing his LAV along this track, preparing for the mission of his life: leaving his name in a faraway desert, so a young Afghan girl can write hers for the first time. His samurai sword sharpened her pencil, cut the small square of paper that a veiled woman slips into a ballot box in a remote desert polling station; it fanned a quavering flame of democracy—Afghanistan’s only hope for deliverance. Jeff and scores of his comrades relinquishing their today for humanity’s tomorrow.

  I stroke the “Void” tattoo on my forearm—When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away. “Look over there,” Russ says, pointing out his window on the other side of the van. Above the margin of white birches, a hawk is circling, riding the wind ever forward along the road, as if it’s showing us the way.

  We arrive at a hillock, the only rise of land for miles, and clamber over the rough ground, fragrant with juniper and sage. On the other side of the hill, the C Battery troops stand in rows. Folding metal chairs are lined up for us in front of a wooden podium bracketed by the Canadian flag, the blue-red RCHA flag and large speakers.

  “Jeff was a somewhat reserved person who didn’t like a lot of fuss,” says Major Fortin, the battery commander, “but Jeff—I know you’re looking dow
n on this ceremony and blushing—please indulge us for a few moments while we talk about you here.” Minutes later, the PA system cuts out. We are sitting close enough to hear without the microphone being used, but the sound waves are lost in the open prairie, drifting up and over the ears of the helmeted soldiers positioned behind the speaker.

  The base padre, in a flowing black robe, takes the podium. “Holy places can happen whenever an encounter with the divine occurs,” he says. “This trig point will be a place of remembrance, a place of honour in our training field. Let it always remind us of the principles Captain Francis stood for, the expertise and compassion he brought to his work as an artillery officer. May this dedication help us to follow his example of leadership and courage throughout our lives.”

  Our eyes turn to the crown of a grassy hill where two soldiers unveil a two-metre tripod of blue and red steel, a white-lettered sign on top: FRANCIS. “Trig Francis will always remain in this location, serving as a navigational aid,” says Major Chris Henderson, Jeff’s commanding officer in Afghanistan. “Each time we pass it on exercise or during training, we will be reminded of Jeff’s commitment to his comrades and country.”

  “Take post!” shouts Major Fortin. The soldiers sprint en masse down the firing range to four Howitzers, cannon-like guns. Restless in his stroller, Ry thrusts his legs excitedly. “Kick, kick,” he says, thinking these men are surely running out to play soccer. Jeff’s G 1-3 FOO party bellows the call for fire. Four gunshots thunder through the still air. After each round of fire all is starkly silent, but for Ry calling out, “Boom, boom … Da-dee.” A sixteen-gun salute, Jeff’s final round of fire.

  The Lucky 13 crew invites us to drive back to the base with them, so Russ, Mica, Aaron, Sylvie and I put on the heavy helmets and climb inside the gloomy interior of the LAV. Rolling along the dirt road in windowless confinement, I envision travelling in this steel encasement across a desert, knowing it could explode beneath me at any second. I take a turn standing up through the hatch, the sun and wind on my face, breathing in the austere beauty of the prairie. Beside me, signaller David Fradette stares off into the distance, pensive, perhaps assimilating the strangeness of transporting Jeff’s family. Just a short time ago, Jeff sat in the commander’s seat of their Lucky 13 LAV, leading them on.

  At the luncheon reception back at the base, the men in Jeff’s crew—Clay Cochrane, Adam Wierenga, Carlo Lajoie and David Fradette—chuckle about the sound system malfunctioning during the dedication ceremony. “It had Jeff’s signature all over it,” says Clay, grinning with reminiscence.

  “Yeah,” Adam says, “so often Jeff’s headphones wouldn’t work.”

  “And remember the two-way radio?” Carlo says. “How it was always cutting out while he was using it?”

  I ask them how they’ve been doing since returning from Afghanistan, and they become subdued, look down at their dusty boots. “You’re so busy over there that you just carry on,” Clay says. “It’s later that it sinks in. Arriving back home was bittersweet. I think of Jeff every day.” He glances at the Lucky 13 tattoo on his forearm. “I’ve had to go to counsellors … I haven’t been myself. Jeff’s death and Afghanistan have changed me.”

  Russ moves up beside me and takes my arm. “There’s one other person we must talk to before we leave,” he says, steering me towards Major Henderson, Jeff’s commanding officer in the July fourth operation. “I need to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Was Jeff performing his normal role as FOO that day?” Russ asks. “Why was he in that vehicle? I’m asking this because one Halifax newspaper reported that he’d volunteered to help out when a sixth person was needed.”

  “I heard about that article,” Major Henderson says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Let me set it straight. Jeff was doing the job he was paid to do.” As he explains about Jeff coming to him the night before, and about the fog, he talks at a rapid-fire pace, like someone fuelled by caffeine—or anxiety. “So that’s why Jeff ended up in Matt Dawe’s vehicle. It was a total fluke—there happened to be an empty seat.”

  “One more question,” Russ says, eyes watery. “When you opened up the hatch … anybody alive?”

  The Major shakes his head. “Jeff was the first to be recovered. He was sitting right by the door.”

  An unassuming mound of earth in the Canadian prairie is sacred ground. Trig Francis shows the way.

  I SIT DOWN WITH a large white box packed with sympathy cards and letters that Marion and Russ have received. As I peruse them, I’m astounded by the web of relationships woven around Jeff, and the impact of his life and death on people I’ve never met. One of longest and most reflective letters is from his friend at Carleton University, Joselyn Morley:

  Jeff helped me learn that people transcend the boxes that others put them in. He could be different things at the same time, and somehow the different parts still complemented each other. People write that he was a soldier’s soldier, but not just a soldier.… or he was really smart, but not a snob. The soldiers had to reconcile that part of Jeff that enjoyed the intellectual pursuits, and the intellectuals had to reconcile the part of Jeff that was a great soldier. I find it easier to reconcile all my own parts when I think of him. I can be a pacifist that understands and appreciates the Armed Forces.

  I needed to understand why Jeff enlisted, so I did a lot of research about the Canadian military. Then I encouraged my partner, Marty, to enlist. He had college diplomas in computer technology and programming, but had been either under-employed or unemployed for a long time. I’m not sure we would have survived as a couple without Marty joining the army. He’s a changed man—confident, challenged, and rewarded for his initiative.

  Jeff’s search for meaning—ultimately leaving Carleton and joining the Army—reminds me what determination is. Looking for integrity. Looking for honesty. Looking inside like he did.

  Another letter is from a woman that neither Jeff nor anyone in our family has ever met—Renee Naimon, regional director for Canadian Blood Services in central Ontario:

  Your son gave his life to the fragile dream of peace and for the security of others. His life had this richness of commitment and a huge, yet unknown, effect on others. I am, myself, a product of those brave souls that fight for freedom as my parents survived the holocaust of World War II by being liberated by soldiers like your son. Because of soldiers like him, they were reborn when they settled in Canada. My brother and I owe our own lives to soldiers who assist those in need of protection. Your son’s life was large and very important. Without people like him and parents like yourself, who must soldier the pain of loss, our way of life and freedom would not exist.

  Jeff kept a reading journal while he was a soldier, a black hardcover notebook in which he recorded quotations from books he was reading. Titles such as Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts, Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference, The End of History and the Last Man, Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict. The last entry in the notebook comes from the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind:

  And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained … the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance. The individual who has not staked his life may, no doubt, be recognized as a person; but he has not obtained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.

  He circled this final passage with fluorescent orange marker. Many blank pages follow, pages never to be written on—half of a notebook, half of a life. But the part that was writ, was writ large—in his small, floating script: the examined life, “not bare existence.” Amor fati.

  My shore property will belong to all my grandchildren. Wouldn’t it be great if you could build a cottage down there? Dreams do come true, Jeffy.

  Letter from Granny, February 1998

  JULY 4, 2008. When I arrive at the cemetery at noon, everyone is already there—Marilyn, Mica, Aaron, Marion, Russ
and Sylvie. Ry—twenty months old now—peeks out from behind his father’s black granite headstone. He toddles forth to see the familiar stranger walking up the hill with an armful of pink and purple lupins. I squat to greet him, and a spark of recognition flickers in his blue eyes. Dressed in his red-and-white soccer suit, he now has the soccer ball to go with it. He practises his kicks and throws as we gather around Jeff’s stone. Placed three days ago, on Canada Day, it’s etched with laser photos of Jeff—some in Afghanistan; one with his newborn son, adjacent to the epitaph

  FOR YOUR TOMORROW

  His feathery brown hair damp with sweat, Ry can sit only long enough for quick sips of cold lemonade. “Tu as très chaud,” I say, holding the plastic cup up to his lips. “Veux-tu nager? On va à Malagash pour nager dans la mer?

  “Oui,” he nods, smiling, then runs over to his Gramps who is holding a bunch of red and white helium balloons tied with red and white ribbons.

  Russ hands each of us one red and one white balloon. “At this time—two o’clock in the afternoon—one year ago,” he says with tear-filled eyes, “we learned about Jeff’s death. I miss him more than I can say … my heart aches for him every day. These balloons are for Jeff and his five comrades. Let’s release them into the air.”

  As the balloons drift up, Ry cries out and clutches his ribbons. “It’s okay,” his gran says, kneeling beside him, “they’re going up to Daddy.” He glances over to his father’s stone, then looks back up into the sky. He opens his hand, and watches his balloons float up, higher and higher—red and white specks receding into pale blue space.

  “Look at the sun,” Russ says. A rainbow encircles it. Not a sundog, the white ring that signals inclement weather, but a halo of pastel hues. We stand mesmerized, gazing at the rainbow-circled sun.