She sat down on the porch swing and tore open the end of the envelope. Inside were a letter and a smaller envelope. She read the letter first.
“Dear Mom, Remember what you said to me when Timmy left for basic training? You said, ‘He’s your little
brother, Mike. You watch out for him. You take care of him. You bring him home.’ I know that I failed you,
Mom. Maybe this will help in some way.”
She opened the smaller envelope and emptied the contents into the palm of her hand. She fought to hold back
the tears as her eyes moistened over. Rising from the porch swing, she walked down the steps into the yard and started
up a low hill where a white picket fence enclosed a small plot beneath a massive old oak.
She looked at the two markers resting in the cool grass in the shade of the ancient tree. The first was a stone
marker that belonged to her husband. He had suffered a heart attack while plowing two years ago. The older marker was
a simple white cross with the words, “Timothy Donavan - Born September 4, 1925 - Died June 6, 1944.” His body wasn’t there of course. They never found his body. Officially, he was missing in action. But Mary knew he had been killed.
She knew the very moment that it happened. She felt it in a way that only a mother feels.
Kneeling down in front of the cross, Mary gently and reverently draped something over one of the cross-arms.
She knelt in silence for a few minutes, pulling some weeds that had grown up over the graves.
A few puffs of cloud floated lazily overhead. It was going to be a beautiful, warm, sunny day, but right now it was
cool beneath the shade of the old oak. Mary looked up through the gnarled and twisted limbs. The old tree had been a
favorite of her boys when they were growing up. She could still see where they had nailed boards to the trunk to make a
ladder up the side. They had spent many boyhood hours climbing through its branches. One day the tree would be a
mountain to scale. The next day it would become a wilderness outpost to defend against Indian attacks. It seemed fitting
to Mary that the tree, that had entertained and nurtured the boys as they were growing up, would now spread its arms
over Timmy’s empty grave as though it was calling him home.
I should get back to the dishes, she thought. Wiping a tear from her eye with her apron, she closed the gate behind her
and started back down the hill to the house. Looking back, she saw how the sun reflected off of the dog-tags she had
draped over the cross. Tags that read “Donavan, Timothy…”—
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