If I Don’t Come Back

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Ebb and Flow.

While sitting in the 20th iteration of a high-level meeting and discussing the same things we’ve talked through 19 times before, I noticed a VIP sitting in the corner, absent-mindedly trimming his fingernails. It reminded me of stories of kamikaze pilots trimming their nails before a battle from which they would not return.

So that there would be something of them to bury.

I thought, too, of all the stories, movies, and books where a soldier wrote a last letter before battle and left it for a buddy to give his loved ones.

“If I don’t come back, give this to my girl.”

“If I don’t come back, tell my girl I loved her.”

I want to live my life so I don’t ever have to say, “If I don’t  come  back,  give  this  to….”  I want  the  people  I adore to know how I feel, here and now, and never have to wonder and never have to be surprised later.