Sway, Back and Forth

Note and Disclaimer: While the story is super sad (even I was crying), obviously, I don't own the characters, episodes, plotlines, etc. of M*A*S*H. However, any O.C. characters and references that I made up do belong to me (thank you, Melinda, for everything!), so, as always, please ask for permission before using. Thanks!

It had been a week since the funeral and the reality of the situation had not settled in just yet. Friends and colleagues had passed away over the years, left and right, but none of hit him harder and more potently than this one.

A dark and forbidding house, still overly large and helping the people of Crabapple Cove, was all that remained for the life of the former Korean War doctor, Hawkeye Pierce. A former prankster of the community in his young child and adult years, he had come back home from Korea with a wife and toddler, with more children to come afterward. Soon, with some help from his wife, he became an active member of the community, taking on the position of "town doctor" after his father had retired and untimely died a decade later with his family around him.

But, even with his family – and the whole town, for that matter – helping him cope with the death of his wife, he still felt helpless, empty even. A piece of his heart had been taken out of him suddenly. His arms had not been so helpless since the beginning of the war in Korea, his pillow and the odd nurse the last thing he remembered holding before his wife had come into his life. He had been crying from homesickness as the nurse slept with him, cuddled on his chest. He couldn't remember the woman's name, but knew that his younger self was thinking about how unfair it was to be drafted. War was hell and he knew it, then and now.

Sighing and shoving back his greatest fears after he ate his dinner, Hawkeye walked out of the kitchen, his dishes in the sink, into the dining room. He stared at the living room from there, where a rocking chair stood in a forlorn corner, almost whispering its secrets and memories to him. He shivered, remembering the last person who had sat in it.

He recalled that night so well, starting so innocently enough after each had given their usual nightly farewells. His wife disappeared from their bed sometime in the night. Hawkeye didn't detect anything wrong until he rolled over, half-asleep, not feeling her warm body on her side of the bed. Waking up when he realized the problem, he got up, slowly walking downstairs and calling her name softly, looking for her.

All Hawkeye remembered seeing was her body sitting ever so serenely in her favorite seat – that rocking chair – and smiling. The two blankets that all four of their children were wrapped in as babies were lying in her lap, still held in her wrinkled hands. Her slippered feet remained motionless, the back and forth swaying motion of the seat silenced forever. A soft upturn of her light pink lips had completed the scene, complementing everything, even the angelic glow on her cheeks.

Still standing in the dining room, tears finally running down his face, Hawkeye gulped, grabbing onto reason, even though there was few left to him. The Korean War had given him less to believe in, but with his wife in his life finally, something had given him hope to hold onto, even though there had been nothing but death around them. Yes, it was difficult, but it was war. And war was a million things. War was…

War…war was something…

Hawkeye thought that he would be the first to die. She had been prepared for it. After all, he had been the one diagnosed with cancer a couple of years before. It was treatable, but not curable. The both of them had accepted it with quiet grace, readying the arrangements for his funeral and how everybody was going to survive with him. Their four children and numerous grandchildren (their few great-grandchildren still infants) had been gathered together and told of this and that, each with their own assignment when that time came. They knew what to do.

However, nobody was prepared for her death. She had prepared for nothing, thinking of nothing but the present day. She lived one day at a time, taking everything when it came. The war had changed her into that.

Hawkeye almost smiled to think of the young, and then old, face of his beloved wife. Those grey eyes that allured him many times, that thick head of brown hair turning to white that wiped away his tears…the image of her in that ugly green uniform came rushing back to him, through thick and thin. The first night she had spent in the Swamp on his invitation, when she had told him all about her life, popped up first. Then, hours later, there was their first kiss in front of her crammed quarters…

Memories continued to swirl in his mind, but Hawkeye shook him off, as if a tree with dying, brown leaves. But, they all came back again, except postwar images came instead of the O.R., sparing him of more pain. One had stood out as his eyes took on that old rocking chair again, one of their daughters now a small, wrinkly baby who liked staying up later than normal. Even feeding her every two hours didn't help, Hawkeye remembered, and his wife tried her hardest to keep her asleep.

"Sway, sway back and forth," she sang one night in that rocking chair when their second child was still a newborn, her feet pushing feeding the motion. "Sweet dreams come to you, keeping you company this night…"

"What are you doing?" Hawkeye had asked when he came downstairs, seeing her smile so contently as she looked up, fatigue lining her face as she stopped.

"Hawkeye, it's after midnight. What are you doing up so late?" She would have crossed her arms, but their daughter remained wedged there. "Shannon might wake up if we make too much noise."

"I could ask you the same thing. You're making a racket."

"Oh! Well, I was singing Annabeth a song."

"A song? What kind of song starts with 'Sway, sway back and forth'? It sounds silly."

She blushed. "My mother sang it to me."

"Really?"

"Yes. I don't remember all the words to the song, but it was about rocking young children to sleep and letting peaceful dreams come and keep them happy all night. It goes on and on. It was a song my grandmother sang, too."

"Sing it to me."

"Well, what about Annabeth?"

"What about her? She need sleep more than I do, but it'll help me more than her. If I sleep, I can help her better at night. She'll just not get her way, which is keeping us awake."

Laughter rang out. "Hawkeye, Love, you're impossible sometimes. Annabeth is just a baby."

She seemed to have been the main fixture of it with the children, Daniel Pierce used to joke before he, too, died. It was impossible to imagine that rocking chair without her, he even added, not knowing how much it would be.

But, now it's possible. She's dead.

Hawkeye hadn't been able to face tearing through his wife's things, to organize everything she left behind. Their children and grandchildren had been doing that for the past few days, asking him shyly about everything when they found things they didn't know what to do with, like the yellowed pages of a poem. Blindly, he just nodded and turned away. He said nothing to them, letting them handle affairs without his help, as if he were dead as well.

Nobody had been able to ask about the rocking chair, though. They left it alone, gingerly walking around it as if it was taboo. Once, their great-granddaughter had crawled over to it, but her mother picked her up before it was touched.

Hawkeye couldn't face it, but knew that he had to. All he had left of his wife now was that rocking chair.

Dust lightly coating it, dancing in the dim light, the chair remained the centerpiece of his life. No matter what happened, it would always remind him of the greatest times of his life.

Finally, with some hesitation, Hawkeye walked to the dreaded object. His hand draping over it, he let the gentle touch reach every corner of the wooden piece. The grime from the week before caked his hands, but he didn't notice or care. Instead, he stopped, sighing, as if asking permission from his wife to sit down.

Go, Hawkeye. Go sit down, silly Love. He knew that she would say that.

Cradling the bottom with his old body after a few minutes, Hawkeye lowered himself down carefully, closing his eyes. Without meaning to, everything came back for the final time (he hoped), cutting away the pain of separation as warmth filled him, the smell of a lifetime of marriage coming back. He knew that she was in a better place, waiting for him to come. But, with every breath still left to him, she was there still.

Hawkeye opened his eyes with dried tears, realizing now the power of spirit. Even without his beloved wife, there was still the bittersweet. Fifty-three years married had been generous, fifty-six years knowing each other had been beautiful. Four children had been given to them to enjoy and none of them had luckily gone to war as they did. Grandchildren quickly followed and they had also seen peaceful times. Two great-grandchildren remained, hopeful to see better times than now, for sure. He still had what his wife had given him.

And there was nothing less. Sway, Jeanie, sway back and forth. Let those sweet dreams keep you company this night.