The Homecoming

As I lie on the cold wet ground, a broken, blood soaked body, with the stench of death and the acrid taste of nitrates filling my nostrils. The pale grey smoke starts to lift from the body strewn battlefield where I lay. Decimated and broken bodies lay everywhere around me. I lay on my back in blood drenched field looking towards the heavens, slowly slipping into a deep, dark abyss. The sounds of the fighting slowly dimming in my ringing ears. The crumpled, broken body of my best friend Billy is laying next to me as he was one of the first to fall in the beginning stages of our attack. I am suddenly filled with a sharp, dull sorrowful pain for his loss. As my lifeblood is slowly pooling around me, my mind and memories suddenly leave the present and return to the past of our youth. A childhood filled with hopes and dreams for ourselves and our friends and relatives. Memories of our lifelong friendship, memories of our escapades from spying on our sisters when they went out on date's to snitching the first fresh baked cherry pie, while it was cooling on a window sill.

As these memories rolled gently through my receding, numbing mind, I also recall the beginning of our war with the Invaders. They were a race of people that posed as our friends and ally's but turned out to be our conquerors. As the years and bloody war waged on, our defensive militaries became decimated and short on personnel. The only alternative we had for survival was for all of us to band together and fight them on our terms. We were nothing but a bunch of wet-nosed, rag-tag country folk with a strong desire to drive this scum from our country and our lives. As time rolled on, I witnessed the death and maiming of many of my friends and family. With my mind ever so slowly fading, the sounds death and pain around me were dimming to a faint whisper turning to complete silence in my ears. My sight also gently turning to total darkness and oblivion.

Suddenly, I am engulfed in a warmth that fills my entire body and my ears are filled with the sounds of jubilation and joy. As I slowly and reluctantly open my eyes, I realize that the pain and agonies of my wounds have completely disappeared. I sit up slowly and look myself over and find to my amazement that my body is whole again. There were no more broken bones or burns or bleeding puncture wounds.

I find myself suddenly surrounded by people, all of whom I knew in the past. They were all clamoring to get my attention and shake my hands, congratulating me. It quickly dawned on me that these people had died or were killed in battle. To my surprise, a very familiar face appeared before me, a face of a lifelong friend and brother, Billy. Grinning like the cat that swallowed the Canary, he knelt before me and grasped my hand to help me up off the ground. He started telling me "That all was ok now and that I will understand very soon." As I stood there astonished and somewhat confused I heard another familiar sound, a dogs bark, coming from directly behind Billy. Bounding into my arms was a fur ball of a dog. A dog I had raised since he was a pup, a dog that had shared just as much fun and trouble as we could get into over the years. His name was Rex, and had come into my life in the dead of winter and no one to take care of him. He had been one of my most loyal companions for years and had been killed in a booby trapped ambush several years ago.

All of a sudden everything became calm and quite. Looking around I saw another very familiar and loving face. Hers was a face that had somehow been transformed from a look of loss, pain, and suffering, to one of angelic beauty. Gone were the worry wrinkles and crows feet. Gone was the look of personal loss and old age. This face was unequivocally my Mothers. My Mother who was long dead, dying early with the loss of a husband, sisters and sons, was standing before me with a loving smile and pixie like twinkle in her eyes.

She reached for me and gently grasping my hands, gave me a light, feathery kiss on my right cheek, a kiss that only a loving Mother could give. With tears of joy in her eyes, she softly whispered "Welcome Home my son, Welcome Home." Suddenly, with a wave of love and understanding, I realized that I was truly home.