Dust
by Stormwolf
 
 
The day was sunny. The clouds that normally hovered over Cascade, WA 
were gone or at least thinned out. The sun was shining, and the temp 
was actually a reasonable 65 degrees or so. It was not the kind of 
day for a funeral, but Jim Ellison stood with friends and relatives 
wearing a dark suit, his head bowed, and his eyes filled with unshed 
tears as he stared at the mahogany casket that awaited to be lowered 
into the depths of the grave. 
 
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust." 
Jim ignored the words, his eyes fixed on the coffin. Beneath his gaze 
the coffin shifted, changed until it was an older coffin, less 
ornately made. It was also bigger or it seemed bigger since Jim was 
perhaps twelve standing beside his father as he looked upon the 
casket that carried his friend, Bud. He vaguely remembered the 
funeral, though before he had been given the case that brought back 
the memories, Jim had not remembered any of it. 
 
The service had been nice, that's what his father had said. Jim had 
not thought it was nice. He didn't believe it was nice that his 
friend was dead, nor was it nice the killer had gotten away. But Jim 
had not said that, knowing his father would not want to hear it. Jim 
had learned early on to believe that funerals were anything but nice. 
 
Jim remembered burying his men. He himself had been wounded by the 
crash, but had taken the entrenching tool and had dug deep into the 
muddy earth while it rained, warm, sweet smelling rain. And the rain 
had washed away the blood from the bodies but could not wash away the 
wounds caused by fire and shrapnel. It could not take away the sight 
of Sarris, his body practically torn in half by shrapnel, one side of 
his face burned beyond recognition. When the bodies had been buried, 
Jim had marked each grave with a hastily made cross of two sticks 
tied together, and their dogtags hanging on each one to identify 
them. 
 
When he had been rescued, Jim had even gone to the funerals. To say 
what needed saying to the families. Handing over the tri-folded flags 
to mothers, wives, and in one case a grandmother. 
 
Other funerals before that, friends and comrades in arms. Other 
funerals after that also of friends and comrades. The life of a 
soldier and a cop, one funeral after the other, one death after the 
other. And Jim Ellison left behind to attend more funerals, and only 
he and others left to remember them. Now someone else he cared about 
has left him behind. 
 
The wind blew as people dropped handfuls of dirt onto the coffin that 
now rested in the bottom of the grave. Men and women whose faces he 
barely recognized walked away from the casket toward the waiting 
vehicles, but Jim did not watch then leave. Instead, he walked away 
from the gravesite and toward another part of the cemetery where 
someone who had left him behind lay buried. 
 
Beside the headstone, Jim knelt placing his hand on the top of the 
marble. "Hey, Jack." Jim whispered. 
 
Jack Pendergrast had been his first partner when he had transferred 
to Major Crimes from Vice. He had been glad to be transferred. The 
Vice captain had used Jim once too often in some of the dirtiest 
cases usually involving gay victims or gay establishments. More often 
than not Jim had gone undercover as a gay man for months at a time, 
sometimes doing things he had thought that he had left behind when he 
left Covert Operations. Things that still haunted him even to this 
day. 
 
And Jack had taken that detective with his smart attitude and earring 
and found the real person beneath. And then that person betrayed him 
and left him to die. 
 
Jim stood up and dusted of his knees. He watched the dirt particles 
with his sentinel sight as they twirled in the air, a slight breeze 
causing them to swirl higher into the air before they fell scattered 
across the grass of the cemetery. 
 
"Kinda like us." Jim said out loud as he heard a footfall behind him, 
and a scent was carried to him on the breeze. "We go through our 
lives building things, family, careers, dissertations, then we die, 
and everything including our lives our scattered and broken like dust 
in the wind. And no matter how much money or things we own in this 
life, we can't buy one more minute or even a second of time in this 
world."
 Jim continued, "He gave up a lot for what he thought he wanted, and 
then years later discovered that what he gave up was worth more than 
he thought he wanted. Does that make sense, Chief?" 
 
Blair Sandburg looked at his friend, "Not to us, and maybe your dad 
didn't understand it either, at least at the end. He seemed pretty 
regretful that he placed his career ahead of his family."
 
"Lots of people do that, Chief. I did it. Maybe I am my father's son 
after all." 
 
"We are all our father's children, sometimes even our mother's. But I 
promised to try to not let something as trivial as a dissertation 
come between us, again." Blair answered. 
 
"Its not trivial. You spent a good portion of your life on it." Jim 
said. 
 
"Its just a piece of paper, Jim. Easily destroyed. My computer, pray 
it doesn't, could crash tomorrow and I could lose it all. But it can 
be re-written. A career can be salvaged. But its like you said, when 
we die, all that's left of us is not some piece of paper, or some 
award lying in a drawer collecting dust, but the memories we left for 
our friends and family." 
 
"Memories?" Jim asked. 
 
"Of course, Jim. As long as someone remembers us, we're immortal."
 
"Do you remember me, Chief?" Jim asked. 
 
"Every minute of every day." Blair whispered and turned to look with 
tear filled eyes to see the form of Jim Ellison smile at him, then 
slowly dissipate. 
 
 
 
Dust In The Wind
By Kansas
 
 
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
 
Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind
 
Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, all your money won't another minute buy
 
Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind