Never a Hero

It was a lovely day in April when my sister Jamie went to glory for her country, not in some strange and distant land, but less than three miles from Aunt Hen’s house, in a dusty alley.

Life is funny that way.

After all she made it through, to have such an end didn’t seem fair to anybody.  It wasn’t an heroic way to go.  I should know better than to think things like that.  Jamie, one of the things she said to me before she went off to war was that I should remember that we are not all heroes, even in our own stories.   I told Gran that at the funeral, and she spit in the dust and said no granddaughter of hers woulda died thinking like that. Jamie just wanted me being a little more thoughtful and a little less actful. Didn’t I remember the story she used to tell us when we were babies? Since Gran is a woman who believes in finishing what she starts and since her way of looking at a conversation can include very long, if interesting, periods of her talking and you not even peeping, I did a mental sit-back and waited for the story because even if I had said, “Oh, you mean the one about the little old Thus-and-such and how she won the day with a word, a stich, and a bowl of turnip soup” or whatever, she would have given me the look and told the tale and happy to do it.

I loved her for it. Jamie loved her for it. And now it doesn’t matter. My sister’s down there in her fine uniform and I’m up here in mine and all the other grandbabies are boys unless Aunt Hen suprises everybody and gives Gran another hero for the war.