Moving Forward. Oneshot.

 Moving Forward

I was back. In so many ways, this could have been different. But looking out on the across the train station, I couldn’t think of it another way. Here I was, home at last with the horrors behind me – horrors I had brought upon myself, but never regretted.

I saw families greeting, the cry of mothers meeting sons and parted sisters reuniting; the sound of people, once children and now young adults finding their way home.

My home was different now. I couldn’t deny that. When I had gone, fighting through not only warfare but also a personal, family crisis that had taken place in my leave, things had changed.

Some change is not for the better. Our world is fragile, and it only needs the slightest problem to turn it upside down. That is war. Thousands of people die, willingly and unwillingly, knowing and unknowingly, they are dead. Then the war ends, and life may return to normal.

It will never, ever be the same after that.

Family troubles may seem smaller – which they are – but they are just as effective in the chaos that ensues. They touch fewer people, but hurt the same. I may never forget what I have seen the war, and I may never recover from the wounds that brought me home, but I will have to live with the injury and those memories for the rest of my life. I will do the same with my father.

Memories of my father will never pass, never fade, and never leave my mind. They are with me and will be for the rest of my life, like many other experiences I have. I will never forget the last letter he sent, joking about our favourite team loosing because I wasn’t there to see the games and ending on the sincere and caring note that I should come home safely and soon.

I am here soon, Dad, but not soon enough.

He died the day I was in battle, evacuating the helpless from bombed buildings and saving lives. There were many live I couldn’t save, and just as many lives I wished I could have. Helplessly stuck in Iraq, I couldn’t hear my father’s last goodbye as it struggled across the world to reach me.

Goodbye.

Like words could cover the miles between us. As my father died, I was caught in a shower of falling building, twisting my leg past repair. The crutches are with me now, helping me get used to my new leg, all plastic and metal.

I fought for freedom that day, and to many I succeeded. For my father, fighting the control of lukiemia, he lost. We all lost; my family, me, and my friends.

The man coming towards me is followed by my family, crying a mixture of delight and sadness as one member returns, but the other will remain forever gone. Sunshine finds a way to light up their faces, enhancing the small smiles that threaten to change how our lives have been lately. The foreign looks are small and hopeless, waiting for a reason to make them real. I give them that reason, coming back with a strong and happy smile, remembering not only my father, but the way things used to be.

I don’t regret anything. My father died knowing I was doing good, and I return knowing that he is in a better place and that I have helped the world become something more like that as well. Peaceful.

* * *

World peace may never happen, and my dad will never come back.

But all you can do is move forward.