For All the Fallen

In quiet moments, when the day's chaos settles into evening stillness, we find ways to honor those we've lost. Some light candles. Some visit graves. Some tell stories. Me? I pour bourbon.

This isn't a story about drinking. It's about remembrance, about the sacred rituals we create to keep our promises to the fallen, and about finding ways to give grief somewhere to land.

I pour a generous measure of bourbon into my glass, watching it catch the light. Just one. But it holds enough weight for all of them.

They come to me in fragments now. Mac's slow drawl…Jimmy’s quiet humming as he cleaned his gear. Scotty’s endless bad jokes that somehow got worse in the field. Each memory ripples across the surface of the bourbon like heat waves over Afghan sand.

Some nights, the memories are sharp enough to draw blood. Other times, they're soft around the edges, worn smooth like river stones by the passage of time. Tonight, they flow together like the bourbon in my glass - bitter and sweet, smooth and burning.

I stopped counting the losses years ago. Not because they matter less but because numbers can't capture what was lost. How do you quantify the absence of a laugh? The silence where a voice should be? The empty spaces at tables where brothers once sat?

The bourbon helps - not to forget - never to forget. But, to remember, to let the walls down, to acknowledge the weight of all these ghosts I carry. They're good company, truth be told. Even the painful memories have their purpose. They remind me I'm still here, still breathing, still carrying their stories.

I take a slow sip, letting it linger. Someone once told me that grief is love with nowhere to go. Maybe that's why I do this - to give that love somewhere to land. To acknowledge that even though they're gone, the love remains. The brotherhood remains.

These moments aren't about drowning sorrows. They're about honoring memories, about keeping promises made in whispers during firefights, in silent nods before missions, and in last breaths on foreign soil.

"Remember me," they all seem to say. “Remember us."

And I do.

I remember them all.

Mac, who died saving my life. Jimmy, who only saw about 2 weeks of time in-country. Scotty, whose last bad joke, still makes me smile through tears.

The bourbon dwindles in my glass. Each sip is a toast, a prayer, a promise kept. To the ones who made it back and the ones who didn't. To the visible scars and the invisible ones. To the stories that can be told and the ones that will remain forever classified.

This isn't about wallowing in grief. It's about acknowledging it. Honoring it. It’s about understanding that these losses have shaped me as surely as the mountains shaped Afghanistan's horizon.

The last sip is always the most sacred. In it, I taste dust and gunpowder, hear choppers and whispered prayers, and feel the weight of dog tags and final embraces. I taste life and death and everything in between.

I raise my empty glass to the darkness. "Till Valhalla," I whisper, though the words feel inadequate for the weight they carry. But then, what words wouldn't?

Tomorrow, I'll go back to living. That's the best way to honor them, after all. But for now, in this quiet moment with my bourbon and my ghosts, I remember. I grieve. I celebrate.

For all of them.

For each of them.

For the brotherhood that death itself can't sever.

This newsletter will be published weekly. It will explore different aspects of writing as therapy and share insights from my ongoing healing journey through words. Please share if you know someone who might benefit from this exploration.