As he walked through the cemetery,
passing white headstones,
bleached white from the daily sun,
he was careful to stay on the path,
for fear of disturbing the well deserved sleep
of heroes.
As he aged,
his view of what constituted a hero
had changed,
and had changed him.
The daily struggles
reminded him
of the human fate
that was magnificent on one day,
and desperately sad on the next.
He was impressed
by the flowers and flags
and other objects
meant to demonstrate
a little bit of the loss,
suffered by those left behind.
The brown leaves scattered about
didn’t seem to care where they landed,
and the grass grew,
without a thought of the solemnity of the place.
When he saw a woman
hugging a gravestone,
carrying a flower in her hand,
he fought off tears
at the waste of a life,
and he wanted to hug and console her.
But, he knew that she had to do her grieving
in private,
away from the living,
and in communion with the dead.
He heard the lonely sound
of a bugle in the distance,
and knew that another soul
had been sent to a reward
we can’t be sure of.
The only thing he knew for certain,
was that death is inevitable;
but, that some deaths,
the deaths of heroes,
have to matter more. 