Revolutionary's Tears

The Revolutionist

It went on for days, months and then years...

Until the sound of guns and bombs became a comfort to my ear, drumming the same familiar rhythm every time.

Until death became a part of the sun and the moon.

Until blood became an identity of our lives.

In a war, a man is nothing but a tool.

The courage he mustered to serve his country as what those men on the Militia encouraged him to do matter not. The pain of leaving his family behind will not be given much care. Nor is the body he shall leave behind as he dies which shall only be but a number.

10,972 dead. 878 injured. 15,457 survives.

The number of soldiers matters most, more so are the count of deaths and those who shall live for a few more days than the others.

Will history be accounting how many enemy each soldier killed? Will people learn of the lives we live and the lives we took?

I set the thought aside as I watched my mother clean the table with her old wrinkled hand while she held the dishes on the other.

"The life of a patriot is dangerous as it is even without wars and now you are telling me you enlisted yourself?" She asked but not of anger, her eyes held a shade of worry and fear. I did not answer.

"Do you not remember what happened to your father and brothers? They all walk out through that door and that was when you were still seven. And did you see them return?" She finished, her voice rose as she threw the rag cloth down.

She paused and looked down, hiding her face. But I know.

I have always known her pain, I shared them. I shared her longing, her fear and tears. Still, I did not answer.

"What is a free land when my boy would be dead?" She whispered, her voice finally giving away a hint of weakness.

"What is independence without wars?" I countered masking my own fear with the determination I mustered since I told her about joining the Patriots.

What are wars without sacrifices? I wanted to say but decided not to.

I saw her shoulder quivered. I heard the familiar sound of sob she pressed and hid.

It was the sound of her pain that broke and haunted me and the one that I braced for each night whenever one in the family joined the army.

My mother has many bad habits. One which I particularly hate is she hides her sorrows and only show her fierce and strong demeanor.

She is a woman who lived longer than war itself. She is a Patriot too, a fighter of her own who survived each night by crying and holding on to the promises of return that never came true.

I wanted to utter the same promises but I know that those would only be empty words. So I just stood there, not coming near her nor slipping away to bed.

I just watched as the tired flame of the candle shape her fragile little silhouette figure reminding myself of why I enlisted on the army.

I shall make her crying nights stop and all her nightmares vanish.

I shall give you a free country, void of war, blood and tears.

I know of the uncertainty of going to war, of what will become of me when I go. I shall be dead, if not my body, my soul will be.

If people died on war, then let my blood drench my beloved land so long as it would be an instrument for independence.

The sun hid behind the clouds but its glare still pierce. The wind brought both bullets and dirt. The earth no longer barren with dead bodies and blood adorning it. The smell of gunfires engulfed my nose.