Epilogue: How to Stay
He lived six more days.
Nathan didn’t go to school. I didn’t make him. Neither did Denise. Cole came every afternoon. He brought chicken soup in a thermos. From scratch.
Greg couldn’t eat it. Cole brought it anyway.
Nathan played the guitar. The cheap pawn shop one from the motel room. He sat on the end of the bed and played every chord his father had taught him.
On the fourth day, he played Friends in Low Places.
He was terrible.
Greg laughed so hard the nurse came in to check on him.
On the fifth day, a man arrived.
Older. Sixty, maybe. Gray buzz cut. Leather jacket. A screaming eagle pin on the lapel.
He stood in the doorway of the hospice room with his cap in his hands.
“Rhodes,” he said.
Greg opened his eyes.
“Hollis,” he whispered.
Sergeant Hollis. From Iraq. From Tennessee.
Nathan had found him. On Facebook. In a 101st Airborne veterans group. He’d posted a picture of his dad’s jacket. The patch. The name tape.
Looking for anyone who served with Sgt. Gregory Rhodes, 2004–2006. He’s in hospice in Lexington. He doesn’t have much time.
Hollis drove four hours from Clarksville.
He sat by the bed for three hours. He held Greg’s hand. They didn’t talk much. Greg couldn’t talk much anymore.
But when Hollis left, Greg was smiling.
He died on the sixth day.
A Thursday. In the afternoon. The sun came through the window, lighting up the orange leaves on the trees outside.
Nathan held one of his hands. I held the other.
Cole sat in the chair by the window with his knees pulled up to his chest. Denise stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders.
Greg hadn’t spoken since the night before. His breathing had changed. Slow. Long gaps between breaths. The nurse said it wouldn’t be long.
Nathan leaned close to his father’s face.
“Dad,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
Greg didn’t open his eyes.
But his hand moved. Just a little. In Nathan’s.
Nathan started singing.
Quietly. Badly. Off-key. Just to his father.
“Blame it all on my roots…”
And as he sang, he reached up with his free hand.
And laid it on his father’s cheek.
Like he was feeling the song come out.
Greg took one more breath.
A long one.
Then he didn’t take another.
Nathan kept singing. All the way to the end of the chorus. His voice breaking on every line.
Then he put his head down on his father’s chest and sobbed.
I put my arm around my son.
And I held him.
And across the room, by the window, Cole Carter, sixteen years old, covered his face with his hands. Denise held him while he cried.
The funeral was at Camp Nelson National Cemetery. Twenty miles south of Lexington. A veterans’ cemetery. Rows and rows of white headstones on rolling green hills.
It was small. Me. Nathan. Denise and Cole. Sergeant Hollis and two other men from the 101st who drove up from Tennessee. Greg’s sponsor from AA, a gentle old man named Walt, who’d been sober for thirty-one years. Two guys from the auto parts store.
And Marguerite. The social worker from the ICU. She came on her day off.
An honor guard folded the flag over the casket. Thirteen folds. Slow and careful. Like a prayer.
The sergeant of the honor guard knelt in front of Nathan. He held out the folded flag.
“On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Army, and a grateful nation,” he said, “please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”
Nathan took the flag.
He held it against his chest. Over the olive green jacket. Over the name tape that said RHODES.
He didn’t cry. Not then.
He just stood there in front of his father’s grave holding the flag.
Afterward, Sergeant Hollis came over.
He shook Nathan’s hand. He held it for a long time.
“Son,” he said. “Your dad saved my life. Twice. In Iraq. Did he ever tell you that?”
Nathan shook his head.
“He wouldn’t,” Hollis said. “He never talked about the good stuff. Only the bad.” He looked at the grave. “October of ‘05. Outside Tikrit. I got hit. Shrapnel. In the leg. Your dad dragged me two hundred yards under fire. On his back. Then he went back for Martinez.”
Nathan stared at him.
“He was a hero, son,” Hollis said. “He was a hero who came home broken. That’s not the same as a bad man. You understand me?”
Nathan nodded slowly.
“He told me about you,” Hollis said. “Last week. At the hospice. He couldn’t talk much. But he told me one thing.” Hollis’s voice cracked. “He said, ‘Hollis, my boy found me. After ten years. My boy took care of me. I didn’t deserve it. But he did it anyway.’”
He put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder.
“He said that was the proudest he’d ever been,” Hollis said. “Prouder than anything he ever did in the war.”
That was a year ago.
Nathan’s seventeen now. A senior.
He still wears the olive green jacket. Every day in the fall and winter. The sleeves are still too long. He won’t have them hemmed.
He plays the guitar. The cheap pawn shop one. Every night. In his room. I can hear it through the wall. He’s gotten good. He’s not terrible anymore.
He’s applying to colleges. Nursing schools. He wants to be a hospice nurse.
“Somebody has to be there,” he said. “When people are dying alone. Somebody has to change their bandages and make them soup and sing to them. Even if they’re terrible at singing.”
Cole is applying to the same schools.
He wants to be a social worker. Like Marguerite.
Marguerite wrote him a recommendation letter. She wrote one for Nathan too. I read them both. I cried.
Cole keeps Bumblebee, the little wooden car, on the dashboard of his truck. He got it back. Just as he said he would.
He still makes chicken soup every Saturday. From scratch. Denise’s recipe. He carries a thermos of it to the VA hospice on the fourth floor. The same unit where Greg died. He sits with whoever has no visitors.
Nathan goes with him.
They go every weekend.
Friday afternoon to Sunday night.
The first time, back in March, Nathan came downstairs on a Friday with his backpack over his shoulder.
He stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“Mom,” he said. “I’m going to the VA. With Cole. To the hospice. There’s a guy on the fourth floor who doesn’t have anybody. A Vietnam vet. Mr. Delgado. We’re going to sit with him. We’ll be back Sunday night.”
He paused.
“I’m telling you,” he said. “Because I’m not doing that again. Lying. Not ever.”
I looked at him.
“I know,” I said.
“You can call the nurse’s station. Anytime. To check. Ask for Marguerite. She’s on weekends.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll text you. Every night. Real texts. Not don’t wait up.”
“Nathan.”
“Yeah?”
“Go,” I said. “Take him some soup.”
He grinned. Greg’s grin. Crooked.
He came over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Love you, Mom,” he said.
“Love you too.”
He left.
At nine-fifteen that night, my phone buzzed.
Mom, Mr. Delgado taught us to play pinochle. He’s really mean at it. Cole lost eleven dollars. I’ll text you tomorrow. Love you.
And a picture. An old man in a hospital bed. Wearing a Vietnam veteran cap. Grinning. Holding a fan of playing cards. Two sixteen-year-old boys on either side of him. Laughing.
People sometimes ask me how I could forgive Nathan.
For lying. For eight weekends. For the thirty-six hours Denise and I spent at my kitchen table believing our boys were dead.
I tell them the truth.
There was nothing to forgive.
My son wasn’t hiding a girlfriend. He wasn’t doing drugs. He wasn’t at a party. He wasn’t in trouble.
He was in a thirty-nine-dollar motel room on Versailles Road, on his knees, changing his dying father’s bandages. Spending every dollar he earned to keep a roof over a man who’d left him on a curb. Learning to make chicken soup. Sleeping on the floor. Holding a bucket.
And he did it because his father asked him not to tell me.
Because his father wanted me to have my peace.
I thought I was protecting my son for ten years.
I locked the door. I changed the number. I let him think his father didn’t want him.
And it turned out my son didn’t need protecting from his father.
He needed a chance to love him.
And when he got that chance, sitting on a curb outside a Speedway with a blue raspberry Slurpee, he didn’t hesitate. Not for a second.
He didn’t ask whether his father deserved it.
He didn’t ask what it would cost.
He just knelt down and gave it.
That’s who my son is.
I didn’t know. Not until he walked through my front door at 4:37 in the morning with blood on his hands and his father’s name on his chest.
I keep Greg’s letter in my nightstand drawer.
The four pages. Folded in half. Soft at the edges.
I put the cashier’s check in Nathan’s college fund. Eight thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars. I told him where it came from.
He didn’t say anything when I told him. He just went up to his room.
A little while later, I heard the guitar through the wall.
Friends in Low Places.
He wasn’t terrible.
Some nights, when I can’t sleep, I take the letter out and read the last page.
He used to put his hand on my face while I sang. On my cheek. Like he was feeling the song come out.
I think about that every day.
Greg Rhodes was a soldier. A hero, according to the man he dragged two hundred yards under fire. A drunk. An addict. A man who left his six-year-old on a curb.
A man who got sober and stayed away because he didn’t think he deserved to come home.
A man who saved twenty dollars a week for ten years for a son he never expected to see again.
A man who died with that son’s hand on his cheek. Singing.
All of those things were true.
All at once.
Nathan’s leaving for college in August.
He’ll take the jacket. And the guitar. And the flag.
He’ll take Greg’s eyes and Greg’s hands and Greg’s crooked grin. And my smile. And Denise’s chicken soup recipe. And everything Mr. Delgado taught him about pinochle.
And he’ll take the one thing his father gave him in eight weekends at the Starlite Inn on Versailles Road.
The thing nobody can teach you in nursing school.
How to sit with somebody when they’re dying.
How to hold their hand.
How to stay.
Even when nobody asked you to.
Even when they told you not to come.
Especially then.
Note: This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. All images are for illustration purposes only.
