For Your Tomorrow (3 page)

I’m amazed at the clarity of mind that can surface in the turmoil of crisis, surely a survival mechanism. In my shaking and distress, I can find the phone book, locate the right
section at the back—Government of Canada—and the Parks Department number; punch the digits into the phone, explain the urgency of contacting my niece, and finally reach the West Coast Trail Hiker Registration office at the Gordon River Trailhead. “Let’s see … yeah, Mica Francis is registered to begin hiking today,” says a pleasant voice. “In fact, she just had her orientation. She left about ten minutes ago to take the ferry to the trail.”

“There’s a family emergency. Mica has to call home as soon as possible.” My tone is sufficiently panicked that a park warden is immediately dispatched to catch the boat before it leaves. “Please call me back to let me know if Mica gets this message,” I say before hanging up. I imagine Mica, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her hazel eyes shining with excitement, sitting with her backpack in a boat on the edge of the Pacific, about to embark on an adventure.

T
HE MOTOR OF THE RED
Zodiac idles loudly and waves plash against the gunwales. Mica can hardly hear Aaron talking to her from his seat on the other side of the boat. He glances up at someone approaching from behind her on the dock side, someone who says, “Is there a Mica Francis here?”

She turns around to see a woman in a brown Parks uniform. “That’s me,” Mica says, knowing even before the woman tells her, “There’s been a phone call for you.” She grips her heavy pack. “Oh no,” she says to Aaron, “it’s Jeff.” They climb out of the boat onto the dock, get into
the warden’s car, and travel the kilometre back to the Parks office. Mica sits in the back so she won’t have to talk. She wills herself to hold it together, attempts to hang on to a thread of hope—
maybe he’s only injured
.

M
Y
S
IAMESE CROSS BATHES
in a pool of sunlight on the birch floor. He licks his white paws, swabs his ears, licks and swabs, over and over—as if nothing has changed. I glare at the black phone, and visualize Mica making the call home. The dam of emotion bursts, releases a flood of tears and pent-up anger: “Jesus fucking Christ!” I scream into the indifferent air. “Why are they driving around in the desert when any second they could be blown up? It’s a fucking game of Russian roulette!”

I respect my nephew’s dedication to helping a suffering people, but I’m not a supporter of our military’s mission in Afghanistan. Considering the country’s thirty-year history of war, the corruption inherent in Afghan tribal politics, its police force and the government itself, I doubt that long-term progress is achievable. And with each Canadian soldier who’s killed, I become more vehemently opposed to our military presence there. Most of the deaths are from roadside bombs. Why aren’t helicopters being used to transport our troops? Is our military adequately equipped for combat? And now Jeff—my intelligent, brave and gentle nephew—has been struck down in the prime of his life, one more sacrifice to the god of war.

The ringing phone disrupts my crying rage. I seize the receiver, praying it’s the hikers’ registration office to tell me they’ve located my niece. But the lilting voice on the line is Mica’s, higher pitched than usual, a voice that’s trying to stay composed. She’s not been told to call home, but to call me. The shock waves reverberate over the phone lines to an island on the edge of the Pacific. “Mica,” I say, attempting equanimity, “you need to phone home right away.”

“Is something wrong? Is it Jeff?”

“Mica … I don’t want to tell you this.”

“Is he dead?”

My lips move, but the words won’t come out. Long seconds of silence before I can say, “Mica … I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. Yes.”

“Oh god,” she cries. “What happened?”

“A roadside bomb.”

“Jeff,” her voice trembles. “Just like the others.”

“You’d better call home now, Mica. I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay, Melanie,” she says, stifling her sobs, “thank you.”

A
TOP THE
P
EACE
T
OWER
on Parliament Hill, a red-and-white flag flaps crisply against a clear cerulean sky. But in the offices of the Gothic Revival sandstone buildings, chaos reigns. It’s one of the darkest days in the four-year Canadian military mission in Afghanistan, the worst since Easter Sunday. Just down the street on Colonel By Drive, in the concrete block towers of National Defence Headquarters,
military officials issue press releases, determine next of kin, confirm phone numbers and addresses. They assign notification teams to knock on the doors of each of the six soldiers’ families.

From coast to coast, in pods of three—a senior officer from the base, an assisting officer and a padre—they travel: to homes in Iqaluit, Nunavut; Burnaby, British Columbia; Whitecourt, Alberta; Clearwater, Manitoba; Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario; and Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia. They walk up to the doors of the parents who made him, nested and nurtured him until he could fly on his own; up to the doors of wives-in-waiting, each one crossing off the days on the calendar—
just four more weeks!
—until her beloved lies beside her in the long night; up to the doors of children who’ll never again see their father’s eyes beam love into theirs, never again snuggle into the shelter of his strong arms.

Sylvie and her mother drive through the maple-lined streets of suburban Ottawa, en route to see Sylvie’s grandmother in her nursing home. Baby Ry snoozes in his car seat in the back. Sylvie is humming along to a song on the radio when the announcer interrupts:
This just in—six Canadian soldiers killed this morning in Afghanistan
.… Her heart starts thumping; blood rushes to her ears. “I’d know by now,” she says, meeting her mom’s eyes. “Jeff said,
If you hear it on the news, I’m fine.”

But as they’re parking the car, it hits her. She forgot to inform the Downsview Base in Toronto that she’d be away for a few days visiting her parents. A cloud of foreboding envelops her, casts its dark shadow on the sunny veranda
where she sits with her grandmother, mother and baby son—four generations safely breathing together.

“I’m so anxious I feel like vomiting,” Sylvie says as they’re driving home two hours later. “I can’t do this any more.” Two days ago, she talked with Jeff for forty-five minutes, their longest phone conversation since he’s been in Afghanistan. “I don’t have a good feeling,” she told him. “Something doesn’t feel right. I’m nervous … maybe it’s just getting too close to the end.” He tried to reassure her with his mantric words:
I’m coming back. I’ll be home soon
.

At four o’clock, they pull into the cedar-hedged driveway. Flowering shrubs surround a two-storey red-brick house; a sentinel pine in the middle of the yard. The front door opens. Her father doesn’t rush out to get Ry from his car seat as he normally does, happily lifting his grandson into his arms. He stays at the threshold, stares at Sylvie, and beckons with his hand for her to come into the house. She freezes. “What’s Dad doing?” she asks her mother. Someone stands in the shadow behind her father. She unbuckles her seat belt and gets out of the car. She heads down the driveway, away from the house, and steps into the street.

“Sylvie, come back,” her mother shouts. But she walks on, hearing the panic in her mother’s voice: “Sylvie, come back.”

She stops, kneels on the hard pavement. Its heat and grit burn into her bare knees. “Mom, just give me a second,” she calls back. “Just give me one … one … second.” Every day that he’s been gone she’s wondered.
What would I do if a soldier came to my door?
Now, she knows.
Okay, they don’t want to be here either.… Get up.… Get your ass in there … maybe he’s only injured
.

She gazes back at the brick house. The house her parents brought her to when she was born, her childhood home. It could collapse any minute, she realizes. It’s no different, after all, than the ones made of sticks, of straw.

J
ULY
6. In the murk of early morning, I lie in Jeff’s bed, sleepless. Stars glow on the ceiling above me—the constellation of Scorpio—that Jeff put up there a couple of years ago.

One morning during the Christmas holidays, he came into the kitchen to show his mother the glow-in-the-dark stars he’d just bought. He stood on a bar stool and placed one large star over the wooden island where she was chopping vegetables. “This one’s for you, Mom,” he said. Then he went upstairs and positioned the stars on his bedroom ceiling: five stars in the outstretched claws; a string of six stars in the body; and five to form the smooth bend of the stinging tail—a horizontal outline of the letter J. He called down to his mother to come up and see his star chart.
A map, the place to find him
. “In one of the stars I shall be living,” says the Little Prince in one of Jeff’s favourite books—there on his bookshelf, an arm’s length from the bed.

I arrived in Eastern Passage late last night. Marion and Russ were already in bed, exhausted from facing the impossible new reality of their lives, the details of their son’s death springing up through the day like noxious weeds. When I stepped into Jeff’s room, I was engulfed by his presence—but at the same time, confronted with his
irrevocable absence. His khaki cargo pants hung limply on a hook behind the door. His framed photos looked at me from the top of the cherry-wood dresser: Jeff, a teenager, embraces his granny; Sylvie encircled by his arms, he in an orange polo shirt, she in an orange sweater—their first date, carving pumpkins; and the young man, a few months ago—a proud father holding his infant son. In the centre of the images, a brass statue of a seated Buddha; on the wall above, the framed World War II service certificate bearing his grandfather’s picture.

Then my eyes moved to the titles in his overflowing bookcase. I shook my head, awed by the breadth, depth and eclecticism of his learning and intellect: several titles by his philosophical guru, Michel Foucault—
Society Must Be Defended; Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison;
many on military history and strategy—Gwynne Dyer’s
War
and
Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq;
Michael Ignatieff’s
Virtual War;
John Keegan’s
A History of Warfare
and
Intelligence in War;
myriad martial arts titles—
Unleash the Warrior Within; Bushido: The Way of the Warrior; Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters;
numerous books on Buddhism
—Cittaviveka: Teachings from the Silent Mind; The Shambhala Guide to Aikido: the Way of Peace; Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior;
and two books by mythologist Joseph Campbell—
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
and
The Power of Myth
.