Part of my 500 word Iron Author daily challenge series.

What loss and remembrance mean for one so close.



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Comments and critiques welcome.


Robins Nest

Few things linger like the shot of a rifle. Nancy had little experience with guns, but whether real or imagined she found that single-shot rifles sounded different from the automatic AR-15 or M-16. The chattering of a magpie was nothing like the lonesome coo of a robin. If gathered and singing together, a dozen robins would be but a chorus of melancholy. Robins had always seemed so sad to her, even as a little girl. The reports of the several-gun salute they had given Brad still echoed in her mind and probably her memories to come.

Memories. Funerals seemed preternaturally able to remind us of what had been forgotten. The people around her, the soldiers and guardsman, the mourners, family, and friends all faded, and Nancy was a little girl again; the tender young age of eight.




There was a tree in her backyard, a young ten-year-old oak that had been planted by previous owners shortly before her parents moved in. She was born in the house, raised there, and hadn't been aware of the tree long enough to see it grow. That spring, a nest had appeared on the one fork in the trunk. Her excitement had been overwhelming. A young-reader book on birds was found in the library and she watched the nest almost every day. A family of robins had built it, and as much as she wanted to climb up and see if there were any eggs in it, her father forbid her from using the ladder.

One day one of the birds disappeared. Where there had been two robins regularly in that wicker nest, one sat, and it's calls seemed different. She woke up to that bird chirping in the yard for a few weeks that spring, and though it would never return in the years that followed, during those days she sat by the living room window, leaning on the frame and watching.

Hey, Nance, he said, walking up beside her. What'cha doing?

When she didn't reply, Brad didn't ask again but neither did he leave. His elbows found the frame, his head leaned in, and he joined her, stood by her, spending a quiet moment with his older sister watching the lone bird cry.



She took a shuddering breath and tilted her head back, fighting back tears that spilled free anyway. That afternoon was one she hadn't thought about for most of her life, and on the day of her brother's burial, it came back. Nancy dipped her head, feeling fresh warm tears as she looked to the new granite headstone. The army had been her brother's passion, something he fell in love with on the quest for college, and she never failed to support him. Her little bro.

“If I can never bring you back” she whispered, “then at least I've brought you home.”

With nothing more to be done, Nancy said goodbye without voice but fallen tears. He was gone, and she remembered why the robins cried.