Thoughts Upon Encountering A Recent War Widow

The young widow sits surrounded by family and friends,

Her friends, and his friends,

Friends of the family, friends of the soldier.

A “hero”, they say, killed in action in a far-off land.

 

They try to comfort her, ask what she wants, ask what she needs.

They try, but they do not succeed, they do not even succeed in comforting themselves.

 

She wants to cry, to shriek, to throw off the thin, brittle mask she has somehow managed to carefully deploy with her shaking hands.

She wants to let loose the torrent of tears that feel like they will never end.

She wants someone else make the decisions for a little while, to tell her what to do, to stop asking her to questions when every piece of her strains just to keep her upright as she reels from this unfathomable blow.

 

And she needs to know why.

Why her man, her friend, her lover, is dead.

Killed in action in a far-off land,

In a war none of us understand.