Shattered Image

We all hugged and laughed as Ted made jokes. He walked out to his plane and climbed on board, pulled on his helmet and raised his hand high in one final greeting, beaming his beautiful joyous smile.

I tilted the mug over my lip and let the carbonated beverage flow in a long swallow. It was my second glass. In spite of the hour, I was seriously considering a third. After the two reconstructs I had done for CILHI, I knew what to expect in terms of remains. The skulls I had worked on previously had been put together from pieces—lots of pieces. The one on which I would do the reconstruct this time was only in five pieces. The forensic anthropologist had put them back together already. Apparently, the only reason there were pieces of the skull to reconstruct was due to some fluke of protection that had been offered by the pilot’s helmet, and the nature of the crash.

All that was left were just pieces of bones, bones of those long dead—dry bones.

I laid my head back against the chair and whispered, “Dry bones…”

I thought about death and life, about dry bones and prophecies of resurrection and the words of the prophet Ezekiel flowed into my mind: “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry…”

They were very dry—a symbol for those long dead.

The prophet continues, “Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.. and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army…behold they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts…Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves…and shall put my spirit in you and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land…”

Place you in your own land…

The dead lie on the jungle floor for thirty years or more and what’s left by the time they are discovered and brought home is a pretty disheartening sight. The recovery teams mark off the supposed “burial” sites like archaeological digs. They trowel slowly and carefully within the dig and “exhume” each and every little piece of anything that looks as if it might have belonged to a human or one’s body. They tag everything, bag everything and ultimately bring it back to American soil. They bring it all back to the U.S. Army CILHI labs at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii. There, forensic anthropologists, forensic odontologists, DNA lab technicians and, sometimes, forensic artists come together to help identify the remains of the missing. We are all the new undertakers of the post-Vietnam era. You don’t need a real undertaker just to put “rocks” in a box. Sadly, that’s what most of the remains look like.

That was what was eating at me now—rocks in a box. Now they might be someone I knew. It’s one thing to put your hands on the skull and bones of a stranger and try to ID them and bring them some level of peace, and their families some level of closure, but it is something else altogether to contemplate placing your hands on a skull that may have housed the thinking brain of a friend—a skull that held his eyes, ears, mouth and the nose through which he breathed the breath of life itself.

Teddy Nikolaides used to tilt his head back and laugh out loud with absolute joy. Did the skull I would cast in Hawaii once reverberate with that laughter? The burden of determining that answer now lay solely with me. If I determined the remains belonged to someone else, it would be a huge blow to me and to Teddy’s family. If I determined the remains belonged to Teddy, we would all have to deal with the reality of his death. Since that fateful day in Vietnam, his death had not been confirmed in any tangible way. There had been no real closure. He just flew off one day and never came back. I sighed and polished off the rest of the root beer that was in the bottom of my mug. I had another frosted mug in the freezer and it was time for a third.

It was early morning, when I was startled awake by the word “Mom!”

I looked up to see the sun filtering through the lowhanging branches of my backyard. Initially, I couldn’t remember where I was or what I was doing there. The first thing I realized was that my feet were cold. Then I realized there was a tall, strawberry-blond man standing over me, but I couldn’t see his face due to all the backlighting from the sun. He was wearing a gun in a holster that hung on his belt and the sunlight glinted off of a gold detective’s badge. I recognized my son’s voice, and then I remembered where I was and what I was doing there.

“I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to get the smelling salts.”

I shielded my eyes with my hands and squinted so I could see his face.

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought maybe you had some kind of spell.”

“Don’t be smart. I just fell asleep.”

“Well, how many ‘mature’ women spend the night on the patio sleeping on an Adirondack? Then there are all these mugs and bottles…”

“Root beer, smarty, and you know it.”

He was chuckling now and enjoying every minute of it.

“I’m sure you’ve never done anything like this,” I said as I struggled to sit up straight and regain part of my dignity.

“Mario, you’re not looking so speedy this morning.”

I backhanded him in the leg.

“Watch your mouth.”

Mario was his nickname for me—after Mario Andretti. I had acquired this moniker on account of my love for a fast car with a stick shift and an open road on which to drive it. Sometimes my right foot would become very heavy, especially if the road was really open.

He chuckled. “So, what’s the occasion?”

“I had a bad afternoon yesterday. What are you doing here so early anyway?”

“I came by to see what kind of progress you were making on the bust of our Red Bud victim.”

“I was working on it, and then Irini called.”

“Theia Irini?”

He used the Greek word in referring to his “Aunt Irene.” Irini had been our close friend since before Michael was born, and he had grown up with her around and being a part of our extended family in faith. She was his godmother. He had learned to speak some Greek, too, and he did a pretty good job.

“Yes,” I said.

“What’s wrong? Is Greg okay?”

Greg was one of Mike’s best friends.

“Gregory is fine.”

“What then?”

I sighed and put my head in my hands, running my fingers through my short, graying red hair. I looked up at Michael.

“CILHI thinks it has Ted’s remains.”

Mike sank into the chair next to me.

“Wow.”

We looked at each other.

“So, what’s the rest, Mom?”

“Not enough teeth for a dental ID and nothing to compare the DNA with, but the skull is in decent enough shape.”

Mike looked down at the ground between his feet.

“Whew.” He paused a moment and then looked over at me. “So, what’re you going to do?”

“Well, I’ve committed to it. I have to, no matter how I feel about it.”

Mike nodded. He reached over and squeezed my right shoulder. “It’s the right thing, Mom. Anything I can do?”

“Be here.”

“You got it.”