OK, so this took far longer than it should have to write but it’s finally here. I’m not quite sure what to say, other than it’s not happy and centred around a funeral. It was inspired by Bright Eyes - Poison Oak, a song I adore and thought oddly fit. The lyrics are at the end. The poem used is by Sara Pufahl, I found it on the OPERATION POEM blogspot. The slips in tense during the speech are intentional. Without further ado...

“This is the hardest thing I think I’ll ever have to do, something I’d always hoped would happen far far later than right now, as I know everyone else does.

My brother was a brave man. He was my idol, he honestly couldn’t do much wrong in my eyes. Um, I remember when we were kids, about nine or ten and we’d made one of those tin can telephones? It was when Pop was away still and we were talking in bed, using our little telephone system and we were talking about Pop and the Army, as little boys do, y’know, about how being in the army was great, what an honour it was to serve like Grampa and Pop. And then Seeley said the strangest thing “I’m not afraid to die”. And he meant it, I saw that much later on, even now I can see that he still believes, believed, tat dying for your country was an honourable way to go, and he was never afraid of it. And to that nine year old me, it was the bravest thing anyone had ever said. It still is.

There are so many things that you guys never got to see, like those polaroids Tim took at my bachelor party. Now he doesn’t look it, but Seeley makes a damn fine woman! Not that he remembered that little incident until I framed ‘em and gave them to him for his 30th. He’s probably locked them away in a draw somewhere, but I do have copies for those who want them.

“There were so many things my brother was proud of, Parker for one; his country, his family, his work. There is only one thing that I can think of that he wasn’t ever proud of, was something that happened around his 21st birthday. For those of you who don’t know the story behind it, I’ll try and summarise for you. He was about 20, he’d been at college for a year or so on an literature scholarship, when he decided he’d sign up. Mom and Pop were so mad, he hadn’t talked with them about it at all until he’d been selected to enter Ranger School. It meant dropping out of college, something that really disappointed our parents. They’d hoped he wouldn’t follow family tradition but Seeley, being the mule head he is, went ahead with it all anyway. As expected, Seeley completed all the training with great success and immediately received an assignment. But anyway, he’d just come back from Camp Rudder in Florida after his graduation and been informed of his assignment. Mom tried to get him to refuse it, and it all culminated in him and Pop having a huge fight. And then came the moment that Seeley always regretted. He just turned away and ran out the house, slamming the door in Pop’s face, took Mom’s car and just started driving. He ended up in Mexico, living the cliché of drinking in the seediest bar he could find - I think it was called Shakey’s. You see, it wasn’t that he didn’t realise that Mom was right, or that he was ashamed. It was that he knew what he was going to do and he knew he couldn’t back out. He knew he had to do the honourable thing and he couldn’t handle being told that he wasn’t.

Now, he always considered that to be his lowest point: writing bad checks to drown himself in alcohol on the Mexican border, but I, I don’t think I ever loved him more than I did that night, seeing him determined to stand by his word. But I guess I was young enough, I still believed in war. ’Cause now, right now, I’m not so sure I still believe. But none of that matters. My personal beliefs on our military system don’t matter. All that matters…all that matters is that Seeley believed. In love, in life, in God. As I said, my brother was a brave, brave man, I just wish I’d told him that more often…”

The tears fill his eyes and he steps down and toward where she stands with his mother. They embrace both awkwardly and tightly; and Temperance’s eyes follow Jared as he steps back and allows his mother to come forward and read (with shaking voice), a poem that a friend discovered:

“They needed volunteers to hold the enemy back.
On a quiet, American morning you stepped into
The Gap.

And stood.

You stood when the night stretched
on too long.
You stood when the sun came
up too strong.
You stood when the sand
blew like hot coals right into your eyes.
You stood like a water wall,
holding back the fire.

And millions of fathers and mothers back home, get down on their knees
and give thanks to our Lord...

all
because you stood.”

The words crawl over her skin, it’s simplicity, complexity, accuracy;all sticking to her dermis like jam on little children’s hands. She was never one for poetry; the tearful words wreaking their havoc on the congregation (at least all bar herself) and she gets frustrated. This recital’s supposed to what? Make her happy? Remove the stone that walled off her heart when she heard the news?

A moving eulogy it is, she’ll admit, but for herself… She’s the one in metaphorical white in a sea of literal black and she’s a singular being, a statuette; alone and solitary as she’s always been. Well, almost always. While he was around, he wouldn’t permit a solitary existence on her part. Temperance doesn’t quite understand why she’s in the first row, standing next to his brother as if he ever officially made her family. He tried, she knows (as is evidenced by a metal promise on her left hand) but surely now that he’s gone…For the most part, she’s glad he got away from the sun and the sand and the blood and the once-was-garden she was sure his boots had trampled. But she’s still stuck in this transitory place with her silk blouse being permeated with his brother’s tears.

--

Once she gets home (a word that hasn’t been applicable since he left for duty) she sighs and takes in the small, but obvious reminders of their life. She never thought it was possible. Turns out she was right. She figures that maybe (not maybe, it’s for certain) she’s happier alone. After all, it’s what she’s trained for since she was fifteen.

And she’s fine, for the most part. She holds herself together as she moves through the apartment, her fingers collecting the dust that’s fallen. The big black object in the corner of the room catches her eye and takes all her breath. He suggested she take up the piano again and had bribed and cajoled; and eventually just bought one because he knew she hated to own things she didn’t know how to use.

As she unsteadily sits on the piano bench big enough for two; he’d made damn sure of that; (although her accompanist tonight is a tumbler filled with bourbon, rather than a clumsy but charming FBI Agent), her state of paralysis ends. Temperance - in a fitting tribute to her once-upon-a-time love - clumsily presses the keys and in her head, it all sounds in reverse. After all, she was supposed to be able to play. The notes used to represent - at least when she played - a sort of ease and double entity. Now it all just sounds like loneliness. At last, something she’s used to.

“Poison oak, some boyhood bravery
When the telephone was a tin can on a string
And I fell asleep with you still talking to me
You said you weren't afraid to die

In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes
Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer?
Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more

Than when you turned away, when you slammed the door
When you stole the car and drove towards Mexico
And you wrote bad checks just to fill your arm
I was young enough, I still believed in war

Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam

But me, I'm a single cell on the serpent's tongue
There's a muddy field where a garden was
And I'm glad you got away but I'm still stuck out here
My clothes are soaking wet from your brother's tears

And I never thought this life was possible
You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for

The end of paralysis, I was a statuette
Now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
And when I press the keys it all gets reversed
The sound of loneliness makes me happier”

Poison Oak by Bright Eyes