I love snow. I love how it can make everything soft and quiet. Snow in Washington is unusual, but then it has been nearly ten years since I was last here. So many things have kept me away. I feel like I need to apologize for my long absence. I know I won’t stand out. I will be just one more person talking to the cold granite.

The reason I’m here is as clear to me as if it happened yesterday. I can see his face so vividly. If I close my eyes and concentrate I can feel his breath on my face. He was perfect. He was someone else’s perfection, but for a moment I thought of him as mine. It was an all too brief moment. Then that someone else had to experience what I had experienced a week earlier; the loss of their seemingly perfect other half.

It wasn’t his perfection I had really wanted anyway. I ached for my lost perfection. A week earlier my soul had been torn out, stomped, kicked, and beaten senseless. It was then stuffed, unceremoniously, back inside my deflated body. It was more than I could handle.

Thirty years later I find myself remembering all of it. And I find myself missing him. I barely knew him, and yet I miss him as much as I miss David. I always wanted to contact his family. Let them know how much he loved them and wanted to spend forever with him. I never had the strength or the courage.

A cold wind blows off the nearby river. I clutch the jewelry box inside my pocket. Few know about the wings and even fewer know the entire story. Every year I tell myself to leave them. To give them back to him. I can’t bear to part with them. Keeping them with me keeps him alive. I keep my eyes glued to his name; an occasional passerby is all that disrupts my vigil.

A man in a naval uniform approaches, head down. He stops in front of me. For a moment he just stands. Damn it, boy. Get out of my way. Don’t you know I’m trying to keep Lieutenant Harmon Rabb alive? He’s talking, but the wind carries his words toward the Wall. Finally, he moves. He reaches forward and traces his fingers along a name. I crane my neck to see over his shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, Dad.”

Hellfire and damnation. This isn’t happening. This isn’t the little boy who sent his father letter tapes talking about Marineland and shark’s teeth. This is the man he became.

I step up closer. He turns, a bit startled. A light comes to his eyes but quickly fades when he doesn’t recognize me. I quickly wonder who he had hoped I would be.

“I’m sorry. I forgot to bring something to light this with.” He takes the small candle I brought with me, pulls out a lighter, and lights it for me.

“Who are you here to honor?” he asks.

I brace myself, “An aviator. Lieutenant Harmon Rabb.”

I see all the questions in his eyes.

“Little Harm. That’s what your father used to call you isn’t it?”

He smiles a bit.

“I met your father onboard the Ticonderoga. I was traveling with Bob Hope’s USO tour.“

Recognition dawns, “You’re Jenny Lake. I have your album with Count Basie.”

“Ah, my jazz experiment.”

The corner of his mouth turns up in a small, sad half smile. I clutch the jewelry box even tighter. It’s time to share my story for the last time. It’s time to give up the wings and lay Harmon Rabb to rest in my heart. He has a beautiful son who can carry on the vigil without me.

End

Notes: Everyone always assumes that Jenny was some sort of slut that had sex with Harm Sr. a mere week after her fiancé’s death. And that Harm Sr. would be so readily unfaithful to a wife that he so adored. I saw neither one of them that way. I saw two people under a hell of a lot of stress that had a moment of longing for those that couldn’t be with them and settled for kissing someone while they imagined those they truly missed. I would like to believe there was nothing but the kiss, but, alas, poor Yorick…I mean, I can’t ignore Harm and Jenny’s last conversation in which she looks so expectant and he tells her if it had been another life. And a second kiss isn’t an accident. Curses, my hopes were dashed.

Well, was it worth the trip? Let me know at virtualjag@yahoo.com