For Your Tomorrow (25 page)

J
ULY
17. The mid-morning sun illumines a slate-blue sea, and waves sough along the granite-banked shore. Six cars, with Canadian flags fluttering from their aerials, set out from Eastern Passage. Marion and Russ lead the procession, Jeff’s urn nestled between their seats. Following close behind are Captain Scott Lang and Captain Jason Chetwick, Sylvie’s assisting officer—her liaison with the military, and all-around support provider. Trailing their green sedan are four cars, members of Jeff’s Murray-Francis-Secours family making this final 170-kilometre journey with him.

Driving north on the hectic four-lane freeway, we pass a large blue sign, a poppy in its upper right corner, and white lettering:

At Truro, we turn onto single-lane Highway 311, edged with red dirt and ditches luxuriant with Queen Anne’s lace,
purple vetch and red clover. We wind through the forested Cobequid Mountains, the land our Murray ancestors settled, and memory-inducing place names appear: Sutherland Road, Rogart Mountain, Earltown. Just east of the highway in the Scotsburn cemetery, the graves of Jeff’s great-great-great-great-great-grandparents lie beneath the spreading branches of a massive sinewy oak. The chiselled letters on their granite slab tombstone, imported from Scotland, are still discernible beneath the crusty lichen:

We pass the sign for New Annan where our grandmother Ada’s family home remains, a white farmhouse surrounded by apple trees and meadows blooming with golden glow. At the junction leading to The Falls, a boarded-up church with peeling white paint adjoins the cemetery where Ada and Clain lie beside Clain’s parents, Angus and Joanna—“Perpetual Care” engraved on their tall sandstone monument. If we were to take the road to The Falls, we’d soon arrive at the Murray farmhouse where our cousin now lives, the site of our annual family reunion.

By noon we reach Wallace, a sleepy seaside village that’s changed little since the fifties. Our aunt Pearl lives here—aged eighty-five, the sole survivor of the eight children Ada birthed. Pearl and our ninety-one-year-old uncle Millard live on Wallace Bay, a few steps from the wharf stacked with lobster traps and ringed with fishing boats. We stop at the community hall to set up for the reception. In the twenty-five-degree heat of this windless day, the odour of dried fish and seaweed are pungent in the low tide.

My black sleeveless dress has no pockets, so I toss my car keys into the compartment between the seats, and close the door. I carry photos, collages and flowers into the hall, then return to the car to retrieve my purse. The door is locked. My stomach sinks. All the doors are locked, all the windows rolled up. I spy the only key inside, shining silver in the sun. Two leather handbags lie beside it; mine with my tribute tucked inside, and Marilyn’s with the verse she’s going to read. In the locked trunk are six baskets of red and white carnations to adorn the gravesite. The service begins in an hour.

Aaron sprints down the street, around the corner to the RCMP station. The local expert in car break-ins arrives in ten minutes, a white-haired man who inspires confidence with his greasy bag of specialized tools. He works for fifteen minutes, then scowls, stymied by the latest anti-theft technology on my rental Chevy. We have half an hour to get to the cemetery for the 2:00 service. Captain Jason Chetwick, looking cool and in-charge in his green dress uniform, whips out his cellphone and makes two quick calls. Within minutes, a tow truck is on the way.

Meanwhile, I am frantically scribbling on a piece of paper laid against the hot metal of the car roof, trying to stifle the panic, focus my thoughts, jot down the main points of my Hero’s Journey tribute. Everyone mills around the car, waiting and watching down Wallace’s main drag for a tow truck. “I’m so sorry for creating all this stress,” I say to Marion, “as if you didn’t have enough to worry about.”

“It’s okay,” she replies, with unexpected calmness. “We can just break the window if we need to.” The men dart glances at each other, aghast at this suggestion. But she’s right; she knows what’s important now. Within fifteen minutes, the tow truck arrives, and five minutes later the door is unlocked. We pile into our cars, buoyed by the synchronicity of the timing. “Jeff never liked all the attention to be on him,” Marion says, with a small smile.

At exactly 2:00, we drive up the hill to the Wallace Cemetery. It’s hot and humid, but a salty zephyr blows up from the Strait, rustling the leaves of the birches, wafting the scent of buttercups, daisies and wild roses from the grassy border. Next to the black granite headstone of Jeff’s granny and his grandfather-namesake, a hushed crowd awaits our arrival: Grandfather Francis, aunts and great-aunts, uncles and great-uncles; Murray, McGrath and Francis cousins; friends from near and far, comrades from CFB Shilo. The gravesite blooms with red geraniums, purple pansies, wreaths of white lilies and red roses, red and white carnations—all enclosed by Canadian flags.

The bagpipes call from higher up the hill, their heartrending cry keening over two centuries of tombstones:

We form a semicircle behind the podium, our arms interlocked, clammy hands clutching our papers. Out beyond the congregation, snow-white gulls wing above the pale blue expanse of Lazy Bay. “We have come together to honour Jeff’s life and his spiritual path,” Reverend Jane begins. “He was a deep reader, a thinker, a seeker, someone who sought to live an authentic, meaningful life, and to love and serve this world in the best way he could.”

A yellow Support Our Troops ribbon pinned to the lapel of his jacket, Russ walks up to the podium. With his grey handlebar moustache and erect bearing, Major Francis is just below the surface. But his military medals are not on display today. He is a father who’s lost his only son in an occupation that he, himself, survived. “Jeff felt a strong connection with animals and nature,” Russ says. “Several years ago when we lived on Williams Street in Halifax, birds often flew into our dining room window. One day, a baby crow crashed against the glass and fell to the ground, unmoving. Jeff rushed out and found that its heart was still beating. He placed it in a makeshift nest, and sheltered it high in a tree in the backyard. He brought it bits of mashed food every day until it gradually recovered its strength. And after four days, it flew away.”

Marion moves forward, the silver streaks in her dark hair glinting in the sun. With shaking hands, she smooths
her papers, eyes lowered. “A mother cannot possibly put into words the devastation of losing a child,” she says, her voice faltering. “My beautiful son, killed in a far-off country, coming home to me in a flag-draped coffin.…” She grips the sides of the podium, and her speech gains volume and conviction: “Jeff was a gentle and compassionate soldier. He was guided by a line he had highlighted in Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War:
‘In conflict the less needed the better.’ Before he left for Afghanistan, Jeff helped me understand the importance of this mission. He stressed that they were more than a battle group, that it is a humanitarian effort. I was initially opposed to sending our troops there, but I’m proud of my son’s dedication to improving the lives of Afghans and making the world a safer place for us all.” She concludes with a reference to the farewell letter she sent him:
Jeff—for all that you are, and all that you have accomplished—you are my monument
.

I approach the podium and gaze into all the tear-stained faces. Just off to the right, I catch a glimpse of Gabriel in his navy polo shirt, standing alone on the edge of the crowd, six feet tall and robust for his thirteen years. His shoulders heave, tears roll down his cheeks. Up until now, he has guarded his grief. But the dam has finally burst, washing him into a different world.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is
. I take a deep breath, and deliver my words into the listening hearts, into the wind that ferries them over the wave-crested sea. “Like mythical heroes before him,” I say in closing, “Jeff inspires each of us to take the journey inside ourselves—to heed our own
heart’s calling, to face our deepest fears, to give ourselves to some higher end.”

Sylvie steps up next, black-rimmed sunglasses shading her eyes. A car swishes by on the road below. A light breeze riffles the flags. “Jeff … I can’t believe I am standing here today, trying to find the words to describe how I’m feeling,” she says, surveying the empty sky. “I miss you so much already. My heart is broken in a million pieces. But I promise you—I’ll do my best to pick up one piece up at a time, for the rest of my life. I know I need to be strong for our son, and I promise you, I will find that strength.… No words will ever be enough, but I will fill our lives with our stories and memories. Baby, you will always be our Hero … my soulmate. And as we always said, instead of goodbye:
until the next time
.

“Now I’d like to read something for Ry,” she says, glancing over at her son, who has just awakened from a nap in his stroller. Cuddled in the arms of his uncle Aaron, he wears red-and-white shorts, a matching shirt with an All-England crest—the soccer suit his dad bought for him in England just before his deployment. His cheeks flushed from the heat, his dark blue eyes take in all the faces before him. “This is a passage from
The Little Prince,”
Sylvie says, “one of Jeff’s favourite books:
In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night …You—you alone—will have the stars as no one else has them
.”

Reverend Jane invites people to come up to share words of remembrance. Herbie Francis, Jeff’s eighty-two-year-old grandfather, rises unsteadily from his chair in the front row.
With Russ’s guiding arm, he totters up to the podium. In his navy blazer, military medals gleaming on the breast pocket, he struggles to find the words and utter them through his tears: “When I talked to my grandson on the phone before he left, I told him that I didn’t want him to go to Afghanistan. And I asked him, ‘Why do you have to do this?’ Jeff said to me, ‘You did it, Gramps.’ So there was nothing else that I could say.”

The funeral director lowers Jeff’s burnished mahogany urn into the red Northumberland soil, as Reverend Jane reads

Captain Scott Lang stands on guard, still in his tan camouflage uniform and combat boots, saluting his friend and comrade—for the last time. The bagpipes’ shrill cry pulls all the teary eyes up the hillside to the graves of our McGrath grandparents and Miller great-grandparents where the kilted piper summons Jeff’s return.

Our family and friends gradually disperse to gather at the Wallace Community Hall for refreshments—platters of
lobster sandwiches and chocolaty sweets, pitchers of cold lemonade, pots of tea and coffee—prepared by Aunt Pearl’s United Church Women, the Sisters of Mercy in this small town. I linger behind, talking with my cousin Ralph who has lived in this area all his life. “You don’t see those around here very often,” he says, pointing up into the open sky.

With spanning wings and fanning tail, golden-brown in the sunlight, a hawk gyrates directly overhead. It hovers, turns and returns, glides in ever-widening circles; then tilts its wing, and soars off over the shimmering sea.

J
ULY
22. A scorching prairie sun beats down on her shoulders as Sylvie steps up the sidewalk to a white stucco apartment building with a sign,
OFFICERS’ QUARTERS
, over the entrance. She arrived yesterday at CFB Shilo for the regiment’s memorial service. This afternoon she has a couple of hours by herself. She walks slowly down the dimly lit hallway of the first floor, seeking the door with the name-plate
Captain J. C. Francis
. Her hand shakes as she attempts to fit the brass key into the lock. The door creaks open. She crosses the threshold and stands, frozen then closes the door and leans back against it, breathing in the stale
air. Shadowy light filters through the half-closed blinds into the living room—beige carpet, cream-coloured walls; a brown couch, TV, stereo—just as he left it six months ago, awaiting his return.

She moves into the bedroom. On his desk are keys, a couple of watches, still silently keeping time, slips of paper. Her fingertips trace his small perpendicular handwriting. The books on the crowded shelves—Foucault, martial arts, military history—volumes of titles, thousands of pages, millions of words he digested. She opens the bifold closet door: his khaki fatigues, maroon Airborne T-shirt, dark green dress uniform, mint-green dress shirt. She buries her face in his uniform, tries to inhale a scent of him; runs her hands over the soft wool of its hollow arms. Shivering, she removes her sandals, and climbs in between the navy fleece sheets of his double bed. For two hours, she lies, enfolded in his green-and-blue plaid comforter, crying into his pillow.