by Ryan Christian

Created on: December 19, 2008

Staring through the scratched, foggy window of the old plane upon the sandy wastelands below, Will Sanderson lay his chin on the butt of his upright rifle and silently wished that he was going home under different circumstances.

Though it was difficult to focus under the loud propeller hum, he remembered as they had sat him down in an uncomfortably empty meeting and planning room and told him that his little sister had died; she had finally given into the cancer. He immediately felt guilt rise up within him. He had decided to join the Army when he was eighteen years old, right after Lissa had been diagnosed with skin cancer, and the weight of the decision had eaten at him ever since, like a cancer in of itself.

Now, five years later, he found himself on this old, rickety Air Force C-130 troop plane, heading home to bury his sister.

In a way he had not been surprised to hear of the news. Will had known as he ran cordon-and-search missions in the heart of Iraq that she was wasting away in a grim haze, and he could see the light fading from her eyes in his dreams as he slept atop the hood of a Humvee. He would write her and lie about the things he did and saw; he would call her and tell her to "hang in there." It all seemed so futile now, because he was now going to pick up the pieces.

Will knew that he was looked to by the rest of the family to keep it all together: the family's one hope of getting out and doing something meaningful, being successful. He was expected to be strong, to console his mother, his baby sister (she was five years old and would not understand why her big sister had died), and to carry on. He sniffed in the musty air that mixed with jet fuel and hydraulic oil and wondered to himself how he was going to do all of that, when it seemed to him that he just barely holding himself together. How would he do the same for everyone else?

In the midst of it all, he promised himself that he would try to put it all back together.

Will had never wished more that his father was still alive than he did right now. His father would have the strength and resilience to handle this. He knew for a fact that his father never would have questioned his own ability to face down tragedy. Will had no one to go to now; he had had to grow up a long time before this, but something deep inside him still had this childish notion that his father would have fixed everything, if only the man were still alive. Perhaps his mother would take her daughter's death easier with

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