glass half empty

whenever i see military men and women at airports, i always assume that they're headed home. i guess i can't even say that i "assume" because an assumption involves a second option that has been written off whereas i take it for granted that they're all heading home and it doesn't cross my mind that maybe, they're leaving.

that is until on our flight back from quebec when i overheard the following exchange between the men in the row behind me, two of which were in uniform:
16A- so are you boys heading out or heading home?
16B & 16C- unfortunately, heading out.
and thus my glass half full of naïvité was poured out as i realized that they weren't a flight away from the arms of loved ones who might as well have been holding their breaths this whole time. well technically, they were going a flight away, just in the less favorable direction.
and the holding of breaths recommences.

16B moved to 14F to escape being stuck in the middle, the least enviable seat, placing him across the aisle from an amiable baby girl with big eyes and an easy smile, proudly displaying the few teeth she had, countable on merely one of her soft baby hands. i watched him watch her with a smile playing on his face and adoration trying to hold its ground against the ungovernable advance of sadness in his eyes, beneath his long lashes, for he had long lovely lashes. i couldn't help wonder if he had children, if he had someone he wanted to have children with, and at the very least, he was the child of someone.

he was somebody's someone, a neighbor, a husband
a brother, a father, and a mother's only son
he was an uncle, a cousin, somebody's best friend
and i'm sure at times a shoulder to lean on
he was somebody's someone

the words of lonestar came to mind as i coveted his thoughts. who was he missing? which goodbye was he playing in his head? surely these goodbyes weren't pervaded by an air of lightness founded by transience and tears weren't hard to come by. what did he fear the most? did he regret anything? and most of all why?

what good possibly comes from going through war? the best case scenerio is that you survive, but at what cost? i saw on the news while i was in canada, two brothers who had just returned home from serving the country, maybe even on their plane ride home, they were posed the same question, "heading home or heading out?" and they had been able to answer with relief, home. and the poser of the question would surely have lit up with an irrepressible smile for their well-beings--they survived. only to be killed soon after, the both of them, in a car accident. life is tragic. death is imminently persistent, why tease it further? why poke it with a rustic stick, even one with a verdant leaf breathing some life into it, and provoke it?

prayerfully yours, in the words of the USO, until every one comes home.