The Honor Guard That Refused to Fold

I have folded the flag over four hundred times in my life, and I never once got used to the weight of it. Cotton and dye and thread, nothing heavier than a bath towel if you weighed it on a scale, and every single time it comes off that casket it feels like I am holding up a piece of the sky.

The four hundred and first time was for Merle Adkisson, and I did it with hands that would not stop shaking.

Merle and I built the Ash Fork VFW honor guard together in the spring of 1996, back when the post hall still smelled like fresh paint and every folding chair in the room had somebody’s name on it because we had all bought our own. I came home from Vietnam in 1970 a Sergeant First Class in the United States Army, C Company, out of the Americal Division, with a Bronze Star I do not talk about and a piece of shrapnel still riding around somewhere behind my left knee. Merle came home from the Navy a Chief Petty Officer, river boats on the Mekong, and he used to say the only difference between us was that his war was wet and mine was not. We buried thirty years of Ash Fork’s soldiers and sailors and airmen together, side by side, rain or shine, and I always thought one of us would be the one left standing at the end.

I did not think it would be this soon, and I did not think I would be standing there with only one other man beside me.