THE LAST EULOGY

It was a very familiar neighborhood where everybody virtually knows everybody. The street was a mini-commercial zone with side street vendors, kiosks, and stalls lined on both sides of the road. Happy villagers patronize the merchants with bright smiles that betrayed their love for life and peace they enjoyed amidst poverty and wants. Ever since the troop arrived a year earlier, the people had enjoyed relative peace and the constant harassment of the locals by the Taliban had completely ceased. The people loved their new friends from America but they still felt and see their presence as an occupation. Nina was different, for she had already perceived intuitively that the Americans were of good intention and had come with the new gospel of freedom and human right to Afghanistan. She fraternized and had befriended Sergeant Smith who visited their provision stall regularly where she helped her sick dad as a shop attendant. She could have been given out for marriage a long time ago, but as the only daughter with aged and ill parents, they decided to keep her for a while for assistance. Luckily, Smith came and the friendship had evolved into a relationship. At seventeen, Nina actually looked more mature than her age and had assured Smith that she was willing to elope with him to the US whenever he was ready. She was willing to elope because the consent to marry an infidel was unlikely to come from neither her parents nor relatives who were entrenched in their Islamic culture and faith.

It was a bright Saturday afternoon. The sun seemed to have stood still, directly above the locals who had come out as they always do to take care of their businesses. A gentle wind flowed and swayed leaves of three branches as well as grasses nearby. Two boys of about ten and twelve years old herded their sheep across the road where a military truck just pulled by the roadside. Nina was in her usual grey flowing dress, attending to customers who had come to buy foodstuff. She doesn’t always see the need to don hijab as she perceived it as a cultural ploy designed to keep women in perpetual subjugation. She constantly and silently rebelled against norms she considered as a violation of true freedom and basic human right. She was a charming beautiful damsel whose sociability was sometimes misconstrued as flirtation. As she looked up and saw the military truck, she quickly ran inside the stall to adjust her dress and take a look at her face from a hand mirror to make sure she was presentable before Smith, who will soon be around to check on her.

“Hello, my sweetheart. Are you there?’” Smith shouted as he came around and stood in front of the stall with Jones and Tommy. They were well equipped in their military attire. Big dusty boots and a heavy jacket on top that seemed to be fully stuffed with weapons and what looked like grenades.

Nina peeked and gradually emerged with bright smiles that left her countenance shimmering in an impeccable beauty. “Yes, my dear soldier.” She said effortlessly and emphatically in heavily accented English language.

She drew close and slightly embraced Smith shyly despite many eyes that were staring at them. While Jones and Tommy withdrew a few yards away from the lovers, Smith handed Nina an envelope that contained few dollars and promised to return at sundown before she closed for the day.

Because of the crowd on this Saturday afternoon, the soldiers on foot patrol couldn’t spot the twenty-two-year-old man in an overflowing caftan, looking suspicious and somewhat jittery. Smith and his two friends had not walked up to a block away from the stall when the young man came in front of Nina’s stall where the crowd was heavy. Nina was still in front of the stall staring at Smith as he continued to walk away. A loud ominous sound came out of the man in caftan “Allahu Akbar” God is great, and then ‘boom,’ the bomb underneath the caftan exploded. Smoke, fire, dust filled the air. Smith and his friends turned back and started running. Smith was running and was praying, crying, and hoping for the best.

At the scene of the suicide were other soldiers who had arrived and encircled the crime zone. As the smoked of the suicide bomber cleared, a little away from Nina’s stall, were her half- charred remains tossed gruesomely by the side. Away from that was her right arm lying separately which Smith recognized with the bangle he had given her as a gift. Smith sat on the road and barely held a sitting position. He looked dazed, confounded, and was staring in a blank space not knowing what just happened. Jones and Tommy had their both hands on their head, shading tears and trying to help scores of others that were badly injured. Other soldiers kept piling up in what looked like two dozen corpses by the roadside.

Smith managed and stood. He wobbled to a side street where he will be away from the commotion. He pulled up a knife from the right side pocket of his khaki pant. He was about to slash his neck when a heavy knock at the door interrupted the nightmare. He woke up perspiring heavily in a cold winter morning in Huston, Texas. His mother was standing at the foot of the bed.

“Honey, your breakfast is ready.” She said with some concern about Smith who had been behaving weirdly ever since he returned from Afghanistan a month earlier.

“Where is Nina?” Smith inquired, staring at his mother as he sat on the bed sweating and panting.

“Who is Nina?” The mother asked. “You had a nightmare again? Smith, you should try and see Dr. Williams for counseling today. You are no longer yourself. You are apparently losing grip on yourself.

“I am sorry Mama. I will be fine. I am coming” He wobbled into the bathroom to freshen up. He sat on the john and began to cry. He was crying about a lot of things. The images of carnages, of little children and young adults who lay dead on the ground in Afghanistan, ran through his heart like searing pain. Nina’s unforgettable death together with Tommy who just hanged himself a week ago in Maryland left him totally exhausted and traumatized. In addition to these, Smith was losing his mind very fast and seemed to be sinking into a depth of depression. He was banging on the wall of the toilet when his mother came to the door and started yelling.

“Smith, Smith, Smith, honey please come out!” She screamed, shouted, and yelled, but Smith wouldn’t open the door nor stop crying. His mother picked up her cell phone and dialed Madelyn, Smith’s only and elder sister who was working in Chicago to report the episode and seek direction on how to help her son.

Madelyn was busy in the office when the call came. During her break time, she returned the call. She already knew whenever the mom calls at an odd hour like this, it is something serious. This time her mind was on Smith whose military experience in Afghanistan resulted in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and which had kept the family on edge. Immediately the mom picked the phone, Madelyn, overwhelmed with anxiety asked:

 "Mom, how is Smith?"

"I don't know Mady. The episode is getting out of hand and I am afraid Smith is going to hurt himself. This is how it was with your father before he took his life with that accursed handgun I hid in the attic. I wanted Smith to see Dr. Williams, but he declined. I am thinking of sending him over to Chicago to stay with you for a while. Maybe a change of environment might bring some relief and healing."

 "I learned that Tommy hung himself in his bathroom in Maryland and Jones, his schoolmate is seeing a psychotherapist regularly? Okay, I will give Smith a call and tell him to take a flight tomorrow to Chicago so that I can monitor him. Mom, take care. Let me call Smith. I will soon be going into the office."

 "Bye Sweetheart," the mom said and hung up the phone.

 Madelyn dialed Smith and after three times, a voice on the other end was heard sobbing and wailing. "What is it, Smith? Madelyn asked.

 "Mady, Jones blew his brain," Smith muttered uncontrollably. "Now listen, Smith. Take a flight tomorrow and start coming to Chicago." Madelyn said as though that was a way to run away from death.

 Smith cut the call and switched off his phone. He left the Starbuck where he was when Jones' younger brother Philips gave him the news of the death, and shortly afterward Madelyn called.

 With the news of Jones' death, Smith became confused and disoriented. He simply lost his mind with total disconnection from reality. He went home locked himself in his room. While the mom was in the kitchen preparing lunch for him, Smith took a cup of cyanide and gulped down. He stretched on the floor and gave up the ghost!

 When the mom knocked severally on Smith's room door, and there was no answer, she became jittery. She ran and called her neighbors who came and dislodged the lock. On the floor was Smith with foams in his mouth and dripping down. Every effort to resuscitate him was futile. The mom cried and cried and sat on the couch mute. The good neighbors helped and deposited Smith's remains in the mortuary.

 The news of the suicide of these young soldiers who returned from Afghanistan spread all over Texas. The state governor opted to give Smith and Jones state's burial together. The date was set for Wednesday 20th January 2021.

 The remains of Smith and Jones were taken to St. Jerome Catholic Church Huston Texas, first for a funeral mass. And after the priest had finished the sermon, Monica stepped to the pulpit and gave a short eulogy for Jones, her younger brother. At exactly noon, Madelyn took the pulpit and bellowed: 

“We all gathered here today to bury Smith and Jones his friend, and our beloved brothers, who were just 26 and 27 years old respectively. It is not that death is a terrible thing but who cannot see something wrong with the death of two vibrant young men who were just starting life? No one can accuse these two young men of wrongdoing in the manner they took their lives. Smith and Jones didn’t take their own lives; war took their lives and left us stricken with unbearable grieves. I am devastated and my heart is in smithereens and the same with all others who have seen the ugly side of war. I am particularly touched because this is the second time war ate my loved one. Firstly, my Dad from the Iraq war and now my only brother, Smith, from Afghanistan. 

I have taken some time to think about war and specifically U.S war around the globe. I am tempted to stand against war and demand that the United States stop sending these kids to war, the experiences of which they are psychologically immature to handle. For the past hundred years, we have been in wars all over the earth: we went to II world war, the Korean war, the Vietnamese war, Iraq/Kuwait war, against Saddam Hussein, Syria war, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc. I wanted the end of these wars so that we Americans can have a peaceful and happy life.

Unfortunately, it is clear that my musings were totally off the rational compass. When I set emotion aside, it dawned on me that we now live in a world where war has become a necessity. What the United States has been magnanimously fighting is the darkness that threatens global peace and safety. The U.S devoted her time, finance, and human resources to stand against darkness wherever it rears its ugly head. It is clear that the consequences of not fighting darkness are submission to the annihilation and effacement of every living thing on earth. Darkness will propel some demented folks to invade us or any powerless nation for spoils and subjugation.

It is true that the pain I feel now is excruciating, but it is better I suffer this than the whole Americans to be taken over by foriegn power for destruction. My Dad and brother and Jones have made the ultimate sacrifice for our safety and peace. They went to war and upon their return, they lost their mind from traumatic experiences. I pray heavens will judge them with mercy, for their deaths were as a result of mental illness.

We must go home and be proud of who we are. We should wipe away our tears because military service is an act of heroism from which many shy away. We have paid our dues and may this be the last eulogy for us! May God bless the United States and may God protect our troops. Amen!

Smith and Jones were laid to rest in the federal cemetery afterward. Madelyn’s Eulogy was adopted by the state of Texas and became the State's Eulogy for every military funeral. It is what is known today as THE LAST EULOGY!