I never saw him again

At “I never saw him again.” I begin crying.
My grandfather’s friend is sent into combat on Christmas Day. That was the last they saw of each other.

As for my grandfather Chit, I never saw him at all.
Except in photographs, and perhaps reflected in the eyes of my father and other family members.

I have finished transcribing this letter.

There is a second letter.
It is from a woman, Emily Sapp, whose husband Walter witnessed the moment on the battlefield when my grandfather met his death.

I am proud of all the people who fight for good every day, on the battlefield and off.

William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

I recall a story now; it wafts in from the corners of my memory. That the woman who worked for my grandfather’s parents, when the news finally came that Chit had died, she said that she knew. She said Chit had come through and visited that night. She had seen him. He was no longer on the battlefields of the war far away but had come back home for a moment.

Why did my grandmother never share these two letters with me? Too much grief? Conversations she did not want to have? But we did try to talk about certain things and we visited historic WWII sites and attended local Veteran’s ceremonies.

Was it complicated that her second husband, who was also my grandfather’s cousin, was of Germanic ancestry, and that they would visit Germany to visit his family, and would have a fountain built for their kindreds?
How do we all reconcile these things?

My grandmother and I watched ‘Saving Private Ryan’ together and it broke both our hearts. Later that day she told me that Chit had told her he was afraid that was what would get him, that there was some new technology, some red laser sighting system or something. That night when the wind shook pecans down on the tin roof I jolted awake, certain that I was in the war.