Author Matthew Heneghan

Almost everyone I know waxes poetic about those drawn-out days of summer—the dog days, when the sun hangs high like some rock god belting out ballads for the people. Sure, it’s got sunsets that bleed like oil paintings and lakes that mimic the sky, mornings can feel like a hug, and evenings like a welcome. I recognize all that. I do. I may have even felt some of that whimsy myself beneath a late August heat. But mostly, August just reminds me of something else.

Pain.

There’s a set of days that dwell on the calendar forever destined to ache. The first being August 11^th.

August 11th, 2006. You probably don’t remember what you were doing that day. Maybe you were hungover from a bender at your local haunt. Maybe you were in love with someone who wasn’t in love with you. Maybe you were just alive, blindly moving forward, stuck in traffic, wishing at every red light that the day was over.

Me? I remember exactly what I was doing.

I had just come off a tasking out east and before being given the chance to drop my ruck off at the barracks, I was called into the unit. 1 Field Ambulance at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. Homebase.

I still wore the cologne of smoke grenades, spent rounds, and time spent in the mud. An acrid scent like a burnt tire that had been dipped in melted crayons — holdovers from my time on maneuvers in the field. Hadn’t even the chance to shower when our C.O. sat us down to break the news.

His words still live like a deep echo in my mind. “…We lost one of ours today — a medic.”

Corporal Andrew Eykelenboom was the first Canadian medic killed in combat since Korea. Let that rattle around your brain for a second. Not since the Korean war had Canadian medics suffered a loss. That’s a lot of history in the rearview, and suddenly here we were — dragged back into the ugly prose of war, boots on foreign soil, blood in dust. Same sad song played out on a new record for a new generation.

Something inside me dropped — fast and sickening — like an elevator in freefall. I didn’t know him. Not really, anyway. But it didn’t matter. We wore the same patches, took the same oath, and the age on our military issue I.D. cards read the same. Twenty-three. That’s how old he was when he died. That’s how old I was when I learned that I could die. That death wasn’t just a future concern — it was real. And on August 11^th 2006, it penetrated the halls of our parade building and lingered like something had gone bad in a fridge and you can’t quite understand what it is.

I was handpicked to escort Boomer’s remains home. They call it, repatriation. We were tasked with carrying his remains from Trenton, Ontario to Comox, B.C. A journey no one wants to make, but one you don’t say no to. Not for a brother. Not for someone who wore the same colours, breathed the same dirt, and patched up the same goddamn wounds you did — only he didn’t get to come home breathing.

As the days of July fall, the menacing thump of August’s boots marches closer. I feel it before I understand it. That sick churn in my gut like something holy and horrible is trying to crawl out of me. Sorrow. Between August 11^th and August 18^th, that is the only word that comes to mind.

One night, after carrying Eykelenboom’s remains off a chartered West-Jet flight to B.C. the funeral detail hit the town. That’s what you do when you’re trying not to drown — you drink. You drink until the walls blur and the inside of your chest doesn’t echo so loud. You drink to numb your bones and calm the nerves. I drank to forget the feeling of his cold metal casket pressed against my cheek as his remains rested on my shoulder.

There wasn’t enough whiskey to drink ourselves straight that night. Though, we tried. Getting kicked out of a bar or two along the way.

I ended up on a pedestrian walkway that meandered along the water. I leaned on the fence and felt the lingering heat of the day still clinging to the metal. I watched the water, listening to the rolling untamed static. I thought about the day; his parents… his poor parents. Their grief was thicker than the humidity in the air. It was the first time I ever felt like falling to a knee while standing at attention. It’s hard to hold your knees straight when your heart breaks. But I managed. Somehow.

One of the other soldiers attached to the funeral detail came and got me, flinging himself over me like a drunk Snuggie. The night was young and our grief still far too sober — so off we went to find another tavern.

We did.

I remember looking around the bar. Civilians. Civvies. Laughing, clinking glasses, flirting like the world wasn’t broken. And maybe it wasn’t for them. Maybe they had the luxury of ignorance. Or maybe they just didn’t have a body in a flag-draped casket burned into their brain. Maybe they didn’t feel the weight of a ghost still strapped to their shoulder. Of course they didn’t. They didn’t even know that a son of Canada was dead.

We drank. We smiled fake smiles. We told lies to ourselves so we could sleep that night.

Later, I tried to write about it. I sat by the window, the light of the moon and a struggling street lamp lighting the pages of my notebook, whiskey in one hand, memory in the other. I wrote, like I always do, “I don’t claim to have the answers. In fact, I possess many more questions than I’ll ever have answers to…”

But I never finished it. Couldn’t. Or, maybe it was finished and that’s all there was to say.

Because how do you write about a man you carried home in pieces without shattering into a billion solemn shards yourself?

How do you make sense of a world that keeps spinning while yours is permanently stuck on August 11th?

You don’t.

You just carry the ghost.

It’s been nineteen years. Nineteen years in the span of a hiccup. A blip. Barely a fucking blink.

This piece has no end. Because grief doesn’t end. It doesn’t abide by the calendar on our fridge. It doesn’t care about the gap between youthful days and middle-age present. It laughs when we say “…long ago.”

For things like this — losses such as these — grief never leaves. I’ll never get over it. I’ll get through it. As I have done. But some days… days like today… grief comes like an unwelcomed visitor with muddy boots, tracking dirt through the life you’ve built. But as is with all visitors — they leave. So will it.

I’ll make it through. I did back then, and I’ll do it today.

Rest easy, Boomer. Thanks for your service, pal.

And when August comes again — as it always does — I’ll light a candle, drink something less potent than I may have years ago, and sit with the ghost a while. Just me and the memory. No answers. Just presence.

I will remember you.