Thank you, ShellSueD, for sharing that cake picture. It's like you somehow knew I'd write a story around it. ;) All familiar characters are Janet's. The mistakes are mine.
You could hear a pin drop on the fifth-floor, and on every one of the six others that make up the Rangeman building. I know that even if an alarm went off right now, the men assigned to deal with it would move without making a sound, kiss their index and middle fingers and raise them heavenward, before taking the stairs down to the garage to handle the situation.
Memorial Day for most is store sales and family weekends spent in backyards across the country, but for me ... it's a day dedicated to being thankful as well as deeply mournful. I've made it back more times than I logistically or statistically should have, but many men and women never got to see home or their loved ones again. I never forget that. Before I created Rangeman, back when it was just Tank, Bobby, Lester, and I, keeping each other sane, we'd plane hop to visit the graves of our brothers we weren't able to save who we'll never forget.
Now that my empire has expanded to include three buildings, with ninety-percent of my employees being Veterans, two moments of Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Armed Forces Day, required-silence has been factored into the each of those workdays for those of us who still have to work. For a security firm that runs 24/7, holidays are nonexistent. We're always on duty. But at exactly 1100 hours, all my buildings - here and in Miami and Boston - come to a standstill. Men stood respectfully without needing to be reminded. And no one says a thing for one-hundred-and-twenty-seconds ... as we all say our silent 'thank yous' or 'I miss yous'. Our appreciation should take longer than two minutes, but our memories and those remembered are with us everyday not just on the designated ones. And I won't risk my men dwelling on death when they have so much to live for.
As per tradition, after we all mentally come back to the present moment, a cake my mother and Ella collaborated on would be brought out and we'd celebrate those we lost while reconnecting with the people we're lucky to still have with us. We aren't taking time out to acknowledge a single date of birth, we're honoring entire lives … some that ended far too soon. My position is both life and death need to be respected equally.
Stephanie's arms didn't loosen despite the men now beginning to move around and swap stories about who or what they had just been remembering. This is exactly what I had envisioned when I formed my company. By sharing their stories, my men are helping each other heal without even realizing they're doing a lot of their own therapy.
"I don't know why," Steph said in a hushed tone so no one would overhear, "because I'm not a cryer unless someone just tried to kill me, but these two-minute life-pauses three times a year have me blinking back tears every single time. Well, maybe I am more emotional than I want to admit. You've seen what a wreck I am at funerals … even had to throw out that T-shirt I sobbed all over because of one."
"It's not hard to explain. You care about people, Babe, whether you know them or not."
"I guess, but it's hard to establish, never mind keep up, a badass image when your eyes are red and watery and you're sniffing not-so-subtly."
I pointed to where Tank was speaking with my cousin's-ex Sybo. "You still believe Tank and Sybo are the scariest men working here, even after having family dinners with them sitting right beside you while my mother fusses over them, and are their eyes dry?"
She squinted as if that slight movement would give her a zoomed-in view of the two men. "Yes," she decided.
"Look closer."
She did and suddenly saw what I did. They appear to be completely unaffected by the moments of silence, but if you know the signs and pay attention, you see not only the pain memories can bring back, but also the good times spent with those you've lost. Both can cause tears in the right/wrong moment. She is right in a way, there were no tears actually shed between the two men, but she spotted them lurking right below their deliberately stoic surfaces.
"The fun part about working with you guys is I learn something new everyday. A year ago, I never would've pictured you serving cake to your men without a weapon being involved. Wait ... scratch that, not even then since you'd just disable the guy, add the gun to your arsenal, and toss the cake before I had a chance to sniff it out."
"A smart man knows not to stand in the way of Mama Manoso or Ella when they have it in their minds to do something nice for someone else. It worked out. What had once been an extremely personal day of remembrance, has turned into an inclusive way to cement the bond the men here have formed. The one day I and my core team had set aside to mourn our dead ... morphed into one where everyone here appreciates everybody important to them, past and present, alive or no longer with us."
"Great ... I'm going to need a tissue in a minute if my emotions keep getting sucker-punched. But while I'm already making an idiot out of myself, I'll say that I appreciate you more than even you know. And I'm thankful for the guys with us now, and grateful to the ones who helped get you all here. Now ... where's that cake?"
"Coming in behind you," I answered, wanting to grin at how the cake almost dwarfed the two women wheeling in the cart carrying it.
"Those two are my kind of people," Steph said to me. "When they say cake, they're talking one big enough to feed an Army, pun intended. I hope their feelings won't be hurt when they see no one touching the round layer. I mean, you can't eat that, not even me. It's too special."
Given the army I do employ, the base of the cake is a football field-sized sheet cake, but the cake acting as the sheet cake's centerpiece is a three-layer round cake painstakingly iced so not even one spatula mark could be detected in the white icing. Painted in edible 'ink', an almost circle of life outline of Soldiers/Marines/Sea and Air-men, patrolled the round cake's perimeter. Above the Servicemen, my mother I'd bet - given her love of a floral touch - pressed delicate Red Poppies made from pulled sugar to honor the tradition of those in uniform from the days of WWI to present day, and to keep in line with the words 'Lest We Forget' for the ones whose blood had unfortunately been shed in battle. Those three words were written in Ella's hand on the larger white sheet cake, which was treated to the same flowers and Servicemen border around its square edges.
But what Steph had been referring to was the scene my mother and Ella had created on the very top of the entire cake. Along a grassy trail 'paved' with sugar stones, walked a slouch-shouldered older man who was leaning heavily on a cane. He'd stopped in front of a Memorial Wall that reminded me of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Leaving no person or detail unforgotten, the names of the men I, my family, and my men, have lost, had been 'carved' into this private wall.
That had me in the emotional place Steph has been simmering in all day, but what really got her going again, reducing my mother and Ella also to tears when they saw everyone's reaction to it, was the old man on the cake was turned to be walking away from the wall and cast into shadow onto the Memorial right alongside the names of those we've lost. But the shadow we all can see, wasn't of the old man he is today. No, my mother's sun cast him as the young, strong, invincible-feeling, Soldier he'd been when his world had been rocked with pride ... and then loss.
I'm far from old and I can't truthfully claim to be retired, but having known her my entire life, I understood my mother's symbolism. She knows that even when I'm old and gray, I will always see myself as the Ranger I became shortly after enlisting ... the Ranger I remain to this day. More importantly, I'll always be a man who carries on for those I swore I'd never let be forgotten ... this Memorial Day, and the three-hundred-and-sixty-four days before and after it.