My Brother Sent Us His Own Obituary Poem by paul mumbuna

We sent my brother to war.
The boy who once sat beside me in the night,
Listening to bedtime stories whispered by our father in the dark.
He too would flinch at the dramatic sounds Dad made,
Leaping toward the light
Right after Father finished telling Big Foot.
But there he was now
Standing 6 foot 8, dressed in full military gear…
Ballistic eyewear, a plate carrier strapped over his green camou uniform,
An assault rifle resting on the chest
That had somehow grown into the frame of a strong, upright man.
There he stood,
Ready to die for us, for his family.
And it was then that I saw how life no longer lingered in his eyes
How those same eyes had shifted into death-filled, watery brackets.
He always dreamed of being an arms dealer or something close to weapons,
We just never knew it would become this.
Down at the train station, the time had come.
The world moved as if underwater.
slow, heavy, unforgiving.
The whistle screamed.
Mother held her breath.
I watched his hands tighten around his rifle,
As though letting go would mean letting go of himself.
He turned once
Just once
And in that brief moment,
I saw the boy he used to be
Flash through the man he had become.
Then he stepped into the train,
And the doors swallowed him whole.
We didn't send just my brother to war.
We sent a piece of our home,
A memory,
A lifetime of laughter and fear,
Of stories in the dark
And the light we used to run toward.
And the station remained still
Long after the train was gone.

But war has a way of writing its own stories.
And sometimes, it writes them in blood.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
Messages grew fewer, shorter, colder
Like the sun slowly withdrawing from winter.
Until one morning,
A letter arrived with his name on the front,
Written in the handwriting I knew too well.
The same handwriting he used
To write his name on our shared storybooks as kids.
I opened it, expecting a hello.
Instead, I found his goodbye.
He had written his own obituary.
As though he knew.
As though death had whispered its schedule into his ear
Before the bombs did.

He wrote:
'If you are reading this,
I have finally become what my uniform demanded.
A shadow fading into a cause bigger than my heartbeat.
Tell Mother I did not die afraid
only human.
Tell Father his stories made me brave.
Tell my sister I heard her crying through the gunfire,
Even when she was miles away.
And tell my younger self
That I am sorry
For taking him to a place
Where boys never return as boys.'
My hands trembled.
The room fell into a quiet I had never heard before
A quiet that had weight.
A quiet that pressed itself into my chest
And refused to leave.
He died on a cold morning, they said.
A morning when the mist rose heavier than usual,
And the soldiers swore they heard footsteps
Of those who never made it home.
But I knew
He left before the bullet touched him.
He left the moment he wrote those words,
Sealing them with a trembling breath
And courage he never asked for.
We sent my brother to war.
And in the end,
He sent himself back
In a letter,
In a memory,
In an obituary
Signed by the man he became
And the boy he once was.