Friday, January 18, 2008

THE LEGEND OF THAT OLD GOLD STAR MOTHER

That old home back in the woods was there for years and I took it for granted that it would be there forever so I never missed it, really, just looked at it in every season and felt good because I knew it belonged to a widow lady up in age who no longer gardened but sat beside the big west window and watched the world change the way it has, the wars won, the war lost in 1972, the others tied, the thousands who died for no reasons like a Pearl Harbor kind of war. There was the two gold stars in the west window; they finally dimmed, even in the sunsets they stop reflecting. There was the gold someone said she had since her husband died and where she kept it nobody knew and there were other things said about the woman who sat beside that west window keeping her own notes on neighborhood payments to keep lights on,and those writing letters to old friends before they died, before the internet made ballpoint pens obsolete. Somebody said her sons were killed by snipers, the eldest while reading a letter from his girlfriend beneath a palm tree somewhere in some south seas islands called the Solomons, Tulagi was its name.The other son,the second son,the younger of the two, died from a single sniper bullet that struck him right between his eyes. Killed in the Philippines where he was arming Hucks with 45s,though they far preferred their machetes for close-up and hand-to-hand and just killing, killing, killing. Yes,alive until a single bullet hit him right between his eyes. The body never came back. Purple Hearts were delivered by two tall Marines, so they say. That old home was not always in the woods I've heard. There was a street with lanes and the water mains were in with plans for a suburban project planned, then she backed out time and again,so many times the city finally left her alone considering her grief and everything. That house is gone now; it's been gone for nearly ten years. I know she must have died back then, nearly one hundred years old I'm told and I know that's right because I've done the math on things and times like life and death so many times before.

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