The Knock at the Door

by Ryan Manion

  I was glad to hear that my in-laws were with friends and that they were receiving the support they needed in that moment. I immediately thought of Rob’s siblings and wondered if they had been told.

  I want to see Johnny, I thought. Rob’s brother, John, was also a Marine and was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, which was less than three hours away from me. Once I heard the news, the only thing I wanted to do was talk to him. He was the closest member of the Kelly family geographically, and we’d always had a good relationship. He wasn’t Rob, but he was the closest to him that I could get.

  His parents must have spoken with him already, because I never even had to pick up the phone. Johnny had jumped right into his car and driven to my house, where he sprang into action as soon as he arrived. He talked with the Marines in the house and then with his family back east, trying to learn as much as he could. He slowly brought me out of my state of shock and sat with me that entire day. I can’t remember what we talked about as we sat in the living room, but his mere presence was comforting and a real lifesaver.

  He helped me prepare to head to the East Coast by calling a pet-sitter who would care for my two cats for a few weeks while I was gone. He took care of all the random details that I couldn’t bear to deal with at the time and freed me up so I could pack. I remember not having the slightest idea of what to take with me.

  On some level, I knew I was packing for my husband’s funeral, but actually selecting something to wear and putting it in my suitcase made the news so real and undeniable. Packing a funeral dress felt like accepting that Rob was gone forever. I settled on a black dress that I loved. I’d only had the chance to wear it once before, when Rob was at The Basic School, a Marine officer training school. I couldn’t believe I’d be burying my husband in that same dress.

  That afternoon, I flew home to New Jersey with my casualty assistance calls officer, or CACO. Major Chris Gibson had been assigned to help me navigate my husband’s funeral affairs. He came neatly dressed in his Alphas, the dark-green Marine uniforms that hark back to World War II–era dress. I’m not sure if it was because of the medals that adorned his uniform or what, but he got held up at airport security, where the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents made a big scene about needing to pat him down. To distract myself from cursing the TSA, I gave myself a little pep talk to prepare for the flight ahead.

  Okay, Heather, you are not going to cry in front of these strangers, I told myself. It’s a long flight from Orange County to Newark, and you’re going to keep it together. If the flight attendant asks you if you want a soda, you’re going to smile politely and tell her you’d love a Coke. Just act like everything is normal.

  Despite my gloom, I found that it wasn’t all that difficult for me to hold it together. Nothing makes me feel more uncomfortable than getting emotional in front of strangers. There were plenty of times when I broke down those first few days, but I was dead set on no one being around to see it. Not even my mom, if I could avoid it. Even when I called my mom that morning from California to tell her Rob was dead, I found myself getting frustrated when she reacted by wailing over the phone. I can’t explain it, but I felt that it was no time for such displays of emotion. It felt cheap and pitiful. It was time to set my jaw and power through. And that’s what I intended to do.

  We touched down in Newark at around 10 p.m. Chris stayed at a nearby hotel and I returned to my childhood home, where my parents were still living. I have no siblings and my house was rarely filled with activity anyway, but in those first few days, it felt especially quiet. It was almost eerie to go back and sleep in my childhood bedroom and see photos and other reminders of life from what seemed long ago. I saw keepsakes that I had collected from grade school and high school and felt disconnected from that life. I was a new person now. I had shifted from being a dependent child to being a capable grown-up to being a wife. And now, at twenty-six years of age, I was a widow. I couldn’t make sense of it.

  I was relieved when it was time for my parents and me to leave New Jersey and travel to Washington to be with Rob’s family. I just wanted to be around people who knew and loved Rob and who could make me feel a little closer to him. At the time, my in-laws were living at the Navy Yard. Just down the road from them, at the end of a tiny street of Colonial houses, was a small hotel, which contained several small apartments. My parents, aunt, and friend Melissa stayed there with me until November 22, the day of the funeral.

  Rob had told his father that, should anything happen to him, he wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Rob and I had talked about the subject, but it never got far. As I said, no one really believes they’ll be forced to make these decisions one day, particularly not for their twenty-nine-year-old husband. So I never pushed the issue.

  I do remember that on one occasion, however, shortly after we were married, I had watched a moving documentary about the cemetery. I vividly remember seeing footage of brokenhearted families seated cross-legged on the grass, gently touching the headstones of their loved ones.

  “You have to be cremated, Rob,” I remember telling him later that night. I couldn’t get the images of those families out of my head.

  “I don’t think the Catholic Church permits that,” he responded. “No, I’m not going to be cremated.” And that was the end of it. It was hardly a discussion then; not because we didn’t want to hash things out, or because either of us was trying to be difficult. It was just so far from our minds at the time, as a newlywed couple. There was no reason to push to resolve a moot disagreement. I mean, what were the chances anyway?

  “Okay, fine,” I told him. But I was still so affected by what I’d seen. My heart broke for those families, who would go on to spend birthdays and anniversaries on a picnic blanket talking quietly to a tombstone that would never talk back.

  “I mean, I understand. It’s just that I don’t think I could leave you somewhere, Rob. I know I sound like a crazy person, but I need you with me.”

  He gave me a warm smile and told me I didn’t have anything to worry about. It was easy for both of us to shrug it off and chalk it up to a difference of opinion. And here I was now, faced with that exact scenario. In a few short days, I would put my husband in the ground, and I’d turn my back and walk away, leaving him there. I’d have given anything to have him back in that moment; to give me a kiss on the forehead and convince me I had nothing to worry about.

  As we worked through all the logistics of the burial, Johnny was once again my saving grace. Gallows humor proved to be my earliest coping mechanism to get through the day, and thankfully, Johnny jumped right on board. I remember sitting with him and my father-in-law at the funeral home making final arrangements for Rob. The funeral director was busy up-selling us some ornate and lavishly decorated guest book that he insisted would only be fitting for so noble an occasion.

  The guest book was large and leather-bound, emblazoned with an imprint of an eagle soaring across an American flag or some such nonsense. I never pictured myself selecting what to wear to my husband’s funeral at the age of twenty-six, much less what kind of decorations should go on his funeral guest book. Plain brown was fine with me, and I’m pretty sure Rob didn’t care one way or the other. Johnny clearly sensed I thought this was as ridiculous as he did.

  “You know what Rob really would have wanted, Heather?” he whispered to me with a playful smile. “He would have wanted you to ride in on an elephant. Let’s take this whole event to the next level, right? Let’s do it right.” Johnny knew how Rob loved to embrace my crazy whims, but of course this proposition was a stretch by anyone’s standards.

  I had to suppress a laugh because the timing would have been terrible. The mental image of me atop a giant elephant amid a somber funeral ceremony was too much. In the days that followed, the elephant joke took on a life of its own between the two of us. I’d feign bratty outrage over the idea that my husband’s wishes weren’t being honored and
that I wasn’t getting the elephant I so justly deserved. Johnny reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Bart finds himself in a similar situation after choosing an elephant as his prize for a radio contest, and then exhibits supreme indignation when no such elephant materializes.

  When I was sure no one else could hear me, I’d gently pound the table with Veruca Salt–like scorn and “shout” (in a hushed tone of course), “Where’s my elephant!?” An outsider looking in probably would have been horrified. But I was grateful Johnny was there to imagine something so absurd in order to lighten an otherwise very heavy time.

  Later on, back at the house, we continued the joke, talking about it in the company of a few Marines. They were eager to fulfill the wishes of a fallen hero’s family, and God bless them, they actually half-seriously discussed getting me to the Washington Zoo. I think they may have even placed a phone call to the zoo to arrange for me to pet an elephant, which they figured would be a close second to leasing one for the day. Ah, Marines. No better friends in the world, no worse enemies. They probably would have stolen us an elephant if we had asked them to.

  I was so grateful to have a chance to smile in that room at the funeral home, if only for a few minutes. The whole affair was so surreal, it bordered on the absurd. Imagining grandiose and preposterous final requests of what “Rob would have wanted” became our morbid joke for the week and helped us get through an otherwise utterly depressing set of circumstances. Rob would have loved getting in on the action. I could just see him sitting at the table with us: a giant grin and eyes sparkling with mischief, adding to the ridiculousness by piling on more and more outlandish requests.

  I thought about Rob’s bright smile and wondered what he looked like right now. Would the casket be open or closed? That sobering question brought me quickly back to earth. I remembered the words of the notification officer who recounted “the loss of his leg” that Rob sustained during the blast, and I shuddered. It was a horrific thought.

  Shortly before Rob deployed, when we went to sleep at night, I remembered taking comfort in knowing that he was only inches away from me in bed. We were never really the cuddly type. He liked his space and I liked mine. But when it came time for him to deploy for several months, I wasn’t so concerned with my personal space anymore. I’d reach for his arm at night and breathe a sigh of relief: He’s here, everything is okay. To think about Rob’s arm or leg or any part of his body detached from the whole shook me in a way I’d never been shaken.

  Dark humor was one way I sought to escape the sickening feelings that stayed with me. Johnny and I went hunting for humor wherever we could find it, but our opportunities were limited. And anything that began lighthearted inevitably ended with a cold, heavy thud when we faced the reality in front of us. We did the best we could, though, and we tried to imagine Rob sitting alongside us at the table doing the same.

  A few days later, we held Rob’s funeral Mass at a church on Fort Myer, adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery. Afterward, in a procession, we walked behind a ceremonial caisson, which was essentially a horse-drawn wagon that looked like it should have held a Civil War–era cannon.

  Instead, it held the flag-draped casket carrying my husband. I walked with my CACO toward the front of the procession, and we continued for a mile or so until we reached Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where Rob would be lowered into his final resting spot.

  At the time of Rob’s death, I didn’t know the stories of Travis Manion and Brendan Looney. But as fate would have it, Rob would be buried just a few rows from them; I would meet their family members; and they would change my life.

  Before Arlington National Cemetery became Rob’s permanent residence, I’d been there just once before. I don’t come from a military family, and I was unaware of all the rich tradition that surrounds the cemetery.

  My first trip to Arlington was unforgettable, though. I was in college at the time, and Rob, who was three years older than me, had already graduated, joined the Marines, and completed a deployment to Iraq.

  I was on spring break, and I visited the Washington area to spend time with Rob and his parents, who were living there. I’ll never forget how handsome Rob looked in his green Alpha uniform that day. Rob and I started with a visit to his father in his office at the Pentagon, and then the three of us made the short trip to Arlington. Rob wanted to pay his respects to Lance Corporal Dimitrios Gavriel, a friend with whom he had served on his deployment to Iraq. Rob had always looked up to Gavriel and had told me about him on several occasions when Gavriel was still living.

  “This guy was working on Wall Street, making tons of money,” I remember him telling me when he first met Gavriel. “He was a stud wrestler who went to Brown and had this incredible career. Then 9/11 happens in his home city, and some of his friends are killed. So what does he do? He up and enlists, sheds forty pounds off his wrestling body, and becomes an infantry Marine. He’s starting out as a lance corporal at twenty-eight with guys a decade younger than him. How freaking awesome is that? He’s like straight out of a movie.”

  Rob was in awe of this man. I think he was too modest to acknowledge the fact that he himself had done basically the same thing, enlisting after he graduated from college. He probably would have argued that he had been influenced to join the military by his brother and father, so it wasn’t as impressive when he elected to follow that route. He would have found some way to make the compliment about somebody else, anybody but himself.

  Regardless, Gavriel represented the pinnacle of character to Rob. He had everything that Rob admired: selflessness, courage, toughness, competence, and humility. To Rob, that’s what it meant to be a Marine. Gavriel and Rob had met when they served together in Iraq. It was Rob’s first deployment and he didn’t share a ton of it with me, but I could tell, when he returned, that it had changed him. After Rob’s return, I learned that his company had lost thirteen Marines on that deployment. I was only a junior in college then, but day by day I was learning more about the military and the way that it was shaping Rob before my very eyes.

  I looked at Rob, I suppose, the way he looked at Gavriel. Everything he did was so unselfish, so purely motivated. The idea that I could owe something to a country that afforded me so much—that thought simply never occurred to me. I never once considered joining the service, or even doing any service-oriented work for my career.

  Not that I could have handled the physical challenges or emotional hardship that comes with being a Marine anyway; but even if I had been able to, that type of sacrifice was the furthest thing from my mind. Learning more about Rob’s respect for military service helped me to know him better.

  That day, I was curious to visit the hallowed grounds of Arlington with him and his father and to get another peek behind this mysterious curtain.

  As soon as we set foot on the cemetery grass, I knew that this place was special. We stood solemnly at Gavriel’s grave, and I felt passersby stare at us. Rob and his dad were both dressed in their uniforms, and people began to take notice. I felt so proud to stand beside them. Their dignity and reverence were contagious to those of us who stood nearby.

  I remember glancing around at the endless sea of crisp, white headstones. I felt so humbled by all the men and women who had given their lives in defense of our country. On the way to Gavriel’s grave, I wandered past a grave site and was shocked to see a photo of a handsome young man taped to the headstone. He was smiling at the camera as he showed off a newborn baby.

  The more headstones I looked at, the more I learned about the people buried beneath them. I started noting the death dates engraved on the stones. A lot of them were my age, give or take a couple years, when they died. They were brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.

  In addition to taped photos, mementos had been left that revealed the personalities of their fallen heroes: a colorful drawing torn off a legal pad; a shot glass of whiskey resting precariously on top of a grave marker; a Chicago Bears flag planted in the ground. These
were real people who had lived real lives. This shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. It was easier for me to imagine some long-gone veteran of World War I, with a charming, but comparably ancient, black-and-white photo resting against a rugged tombstone. I was only twenty years old at the time, but that visit to Arlington matured me in a way I still can’t quite describe.

  As I walked slowly behind the caisson, leading a funeral procession I wanted no part of, I thought back to that first visit with Rob and his father. I never dreamed that, five years later, I’d be back to bury my husband.

  At the very least, it was comforting to know that Rob would be in the eternal presence of Marine buddies like Gavriel.

  When it came time to say goodbye after the burial—just as I had anticipated—I didn’t want to leave Rob behind. I wanted so badly to keep him with me in some physical way. It didn’t feel right for him to stay there in this unfamiliar place, and for me to be forced to continue on without him. I thought back to the e e cummings poem we both loved:

  i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

  my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

  i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

  by only me is your doing, my darling)

  I gave Rob that poem on a little card before he deployed, and it brings me peace to know that he had it with him in his final moments of life, or so I believe. When he died, all of his personal effects came back to me in a chest, neatly packed and cataloged in great detail. And I mean, all of his personal effects—right down to a receipt for a bottle of Gatorade he had purchased a few weeks prior. In a small, velvet bag, I received the rank bars that had adorned Rob’s uniform at the shoulders. They were slightly charred from the blast that killed him. I received his freshly washed and folded uniforms. Like the rest of his belongings, they had been preserved with painstaking attention to detail. The one thing I didn’t receive, in fact, was the laminated copy of the e e cummings poem I had given him before he left. I’m certain he had it with him when the IED went off and it disintegrated in the explosion that claimed his life.