The war was older than me, it was older than my mother, but my grandmother remembered. She remembered a time before the blood. She loved to tell us how beautiful our city used to be, before it all went up in death and smoke. When she walked out the front door, she saw our street as it used to be. When she used to walk me to school she would talk about the pretty flowers along the sidewalk, she would point out all of the delicate carvings on the school walls. That's how I grew up. I thought bent metal beams were flowers in bloom and burn marks by the school's doors were carvings made with love. She never let anyone tell me any different, her memories were how I saw the world. It was how my mother saw the world before the recruitments started. I didn't understand it before. When I was younger and the military showed up on TV. When my father packed his bags and walked right out the door. My mother cried for days after he left, and I think some part of her knew that he wasn’t coming back. I didn't  cry when he left because my grandmother didn't. I remember how she sat by the window and watched him leave. She didn't cry or scream, she just watched him walk down the street and out of our lives forever. Now that I'm older I finally understand why. My grandfather walked down that same path before my mother was even born. My grandmother had sat in that same chair and cried as the soon to be father walked out to fight a war that we still hadn't won. My mother changed after that. She didn't smile or talk about the non existent flowers, it was like a part of her left with him. I thought that my mother was empty for years, until they sent us a letter in the mail. I was old enough to understand the war at that point & I remember how angry that letter made me. It was typed out, as if they shipped hundreds a day. The only thing written by hand was my father's name and his supposed date of death, which was listed as 8 months after he left. I remember how my mother didn't cry this time. If I thought she was empty before, now she was more than hollow. She walked into her bedroom and never came out again. It was my grandmother that took care of her until she eventually joined my father. It was just us after that. To this day, I still wonder how grandmother survived losing her husband in the same fight. Maybe her will was stronger, or maybe she knew that no one would be able to take care of my mother if she wasted away. Either way, she took care of me for years after my mother's death. She still told me to watch for flowers. To always trace my hands along the patterns on the wall. My grandmother traced different patterns than I did. It was like her hands remembered as much as she had, as they ran along groves that no longer existed. When she died, it was like the memories died with her. There was no one else that remembered what she did. And if they did then I’ve never met them. They called for another set of recruits right before she died. I still think that’s what finally killed her. She had watched three generations of young men be called to their deaths. This was the third time she had watched a bright young soul pack their bags and go fight a pointless and endless war. I just wish she was still alive, I wish she had lived a little longer. Long enough to make one more memory, to see something new…

To finally see someone come home.