What Comes After

The mind is a funny place - it can be your greatest friend or your strongest enemy.

What comes after - when you mind has been the only place of truth and certainty, yet turns on your like a viper, poisoning your life and slowly eating away at what makes you, you.

What comes after for that boy, not yet fifteen, who thought he had a life full of adventure.

"Either you go to jail, or your join the army, boy"

Words said to a child living on the streets - a small slip of a boy, malnourished and cold.

No one thinks to ask what comes after, what happens to the families involved- a ripple effect which spans generations - that single choice.

We all start off with so many hopes, so many dreams - but he just wanted a warm bed at night and a hot meal.

What comes after for a man, an elite soldier, who fought for king and country, yet has nothing to show for it. A London Cop, perusing the dark ally-ways of downtown London in the 80's. The man you would call in to dispel riots, who was small and quick, wiry and strong.

A man to be reckoned with in court - his facts kept straight, records in perfect order. You couldn't catch him out, he had the numbers and the proof.

His life was set before him, but a fluke injury left it in tatters - a botched surgery leaves it hopeless.

Now he is a father, and grandpapa, a soldier who lives on a farm - where the work never ends - a small cottage with no insulation and thin plywood for a floor. But, the fire roars those cold months and it is warm and full of heart.

He was never apart of it - those years his children grew up, into their own individual people - working twenty-four days on the Oil Fields and Ice plains. He came home for four days each month, but even then, he was outside - not apart of that close-knit group of four.

Four souls, hidden from the world- on the far reaches of a small, unimportant town, surrounded by farmland and thousands of acres of crown-land. We were a team, we fought those -40 winters together, frozen lashes, carrying five-gallon buckets of warm water into the paddock. Seven trips it took - fourteen buckets, sun or blizzard. We had to be strong- close because we rarely saw other souls.

You see, we were outcasts in that little town. Twenty years of life on a lonely little farm. The four of us were comrades, we worked tirelessly together and he was on the outside of it all.

Even now, as life took us from the village, he doesn't fit. Two souls, who are set in their ways have to learn to live with each other again.

So what comes after, for a man who suffers from severe PTSD, who was once strong and physically capable, now unable to work, as his knee flares and his elbows ache, his body riddled with arthritis. What come next for a man who's body was battered and broken, old injuries re-surfing. A man who's heart is open honesty, branded a liar and braggart.

No one thinks to ask what comes after for a man who cannot find a place - who left his country of birth and who has never stopped working or striving. He dares not let his mind quiet, always working, always watching movies in the evening. He does not let his mind rest because when the mind of a soldier is at rest it swirls with vicious, poisonous thoughts, memories of violence slowly creeping in - anger flashing in his eyes and exploding from his mouth.

"Go to jail or join the army, boy"

How those words have changed the course of many lives, staying with his family, his children and wife, now passing to those new souls of his grandchildren.

Such is the life of a soldier, it doesn't just stop with the man, it carries through generations, it ripples around him, following him like a shroud.

So what comes after?

A little family who loves him but can't understand, a mind which quickly betrays him and a broken body, but a heart untouched by the truth of war, a man who does not have a dishonest bone in his body, who does not know what it is to judge, but simply accepts and loves each person who crosses his path.

So what comes after?