I started smoking a few months after Joe died. I was seventy years old and, according to my doctor, my lungs weren't in the best place after breathing in secondhand smoke for several years. But, honestly, I didn't give a shit anymore. The first time I lit up a cigarette, I inhaled the wrong way and ended up coughing for several minutes. It tasted like I was licking an ashtray. How the hell did Joe and the others stand this for several years? But, in no time, I eventually got used to the taste and the nicotine started to take an effect.

My house was too big for me now. I was an old woman, living alone for the first time in her life. I didn't realize until after Joe had died that I had never lived alone. Before the Army, I was with Sally and Mary and Elizabeth, then Easy, and then Joe. I was finally alone for the first time in my whole life, and I hated it. I missed living with someone, with anyone.

For this reason, Malarkey, Luz, Guarnere, and Toye all lived with me for about a month. They crammed themselves into one of the bedrooms across the hall to sleep. I was having a lot of trouble with sleeping lately. Malarkey mentioned something about how I was so used to having Joe there right beside me. This still made it hurt like hell.

In the months following Joe's funeral, there are countless times where I feel like I can still feel Joe around the house. Right before I open my eyes in the morning, I feel like he's still laying in bed, either asleep or waiting for me to wake up. Whenever the house creaked, I could swear that it's the sound of Joe's footsteps. But then I wake up or I remind myself what really happened. And then I feel like crying or like laying down some more, not wanting to even face the day if Joe wasn't anywhere near me.

One night, after my brothers went home to their wives and families, I had a dream. I saw Joe with the little girl we had lost, the pair of them sitting on a bench and both looking at peace. I woke up right afterwards and tears filled my eyes instantaneously. I laid in bed for the longest time, thinking hard about what I had dreamed about. And, after a restless hour or so, I fell back to sleep with a small smile on my face.


In ninety-five, I got a call in the middle of the night from Buck. He reported that Nixon had passed away, and that the funeral was early next week. I quickly wrote down the information and collapsed back into bed. Lewis Nixon, dead? The idea was so foreign in my mind I couldn't even imagine a world without Nixon. When I got there for the funeral, I was reunited with Easy again on sad circumstances.

Winters was the man we instantly surrounded for support. He had been Nixon's best friend before and during the war that brought us all together. We stayed with Winters for as long as we could, telling stories and remembering Nixon for the man he had been.

"He helped me, back in Germany," I said at some point. The men all looked up, none of them ever hearing this story before. "After I got that letter from Sally, I went to Nixon to get drunk. He helped me out that night."

This was met with silence, and Winters smiled softly. His red hair had long turned snowy white, and right now it shined in the light. He reached over patted my hand, and I squeezed it back.

Later that same year, Toye died too. One of my first friends from Toccoa was now gone, and when I got to see his wife and family again for the funeral, I saw that Toye's son was a mirror image of him. Jason came with to the funeral, helping me travel and going to see what the remaining men of Easy were doing. His daughter was almost fifteen now, and she was starting to show an interest in her dad's military career and the military as a whole.

On the plane ride to Pennsylvania, Jason told me about how Sarah was already going to the library to pick up books on the ASVAB. Jason shook his head and smiled, almost to himself. "She's going into high school, Mama, and she already has a whole plan set up with the military."

"Is it the Army she wants to join?" I asked.

"I think so," Jason said, tearing open a bag of peanuts. "Jesus, now I know how you and Dad felt when I said I enlisted. I figured out why you were pissed the second we landed on Vietnam."

"Yeah, well, don't try and talk Sarah out of it." I advised. "In my experience, the more you try to talk your kids out of something, the more they're gonna try and do it. That's the way it was you and Vicky. Just talk to her and make sure she understands what will happen if there's another war coming on."

Jason blinked at that and had a solemn look on his face. "D'you wanna talk to her? Sarah could spend a week living with you or something. Winnie wasn't on the frontlines; you were. If Sarah ends up where you ended up, then I want her to hear what you have to say about it all."

"I'll see what I can do," I said. At the moment, there wasn't a war going on. As long as it stayed that way, I couldn't see why Sarah would be stationed somewhere dangerous. And besides, she was only fourteen right now. She could change her mind about all of this by the time she's eighteen.


As time went by, I went to even more funerals. Bob and Hana died within a month of each other; Hana going first from some kind of blood disease, and then Bob dying of a broken heart. June passed away from a stroke in ninety-nine. Luz died in ninety-eight, something that tore me up from the inside out for months afterwards. America got into another war after terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers in New York, and Sarah Liebgott ended up stationed in Afghanistan as a nurse. And yet, life went on.

I got to see my grandchildren grow up and have their own children. My hair finally turned completely white, not a single auburn hair left. Warren was diagnosed with lung cancer, but he had stage one and it was completely treatable. I managed to quit smoking for good in two-thousand-two, but, a few years later, I found out that it didn't matter.

I was diagnosed with my own case of lung cancer in two-thousand-nine. It was stage two when they found it, but it was progressing fast enough to almost be at stage three. They asked if I wanted to treat it with chemotherapy, and I refused. I was eighty-seven, living longer than I had once imagined. At this point, I was tired. I had seen the effects of chemotherapy on all kinds of cancer patients throughout my life; I didn't want to turn into that.

I'd rather let the cancer kill me than let the drugs do that.

Surprisingly enough, I got another five years. The cancer spread slowly through both of my lungs, up towards my throat, and then finally started creeping to my heart. I stayed in my house, stubborn enough not to sell it. I rewrote my will from the one I had when I was twenty.

The house and all of its contents would be divided amongst my five children. The money I had in the bank-half of it would go to the hospital I had worked at (the hospital that was taking care of me) and the other half would then be divided in half to the Catholic and Jewish churches that Joe and I had both gone to. There were a few things I wanted to be buried with, like my medals and the brass knuckles Toye had given me all those years ago.

Emma, my youngest grandchild, stayed with me most days. She helped take care of me, since I could no longer move around on my own anymore. She kept me company, kept my house clean, basically did everything for me that I could no longer do.

In twenty-fourteen, I was about to turn ninety-two years old. I had lived a very long life, considering how I once made myself think that any day could be my last. I had met some of the greatest men in my life, men who had remained with me throughout my entire life. Guarnere had died just a month ago, and that seemed to be a final straw health wise. My doctor told me that I had a few weeks, maybe a month at the most. I was abnormally fine with this; I'd be with members of Easy again.

When the time came, I'd be ready. I had lived a long life. Most of it in peace, which was what everyone from Easy deserved. I think, for the most part, everyone from Easy got that life in peace. Everyone had met someone who helped them get better, everyone lived into old age, and now, I could only imagine everyone up in heaven waiting patiently for the rest of us to join them.

I thought about the men who had already passed away: Luz, Toye, Nixon, Grant, Webster, Winters, Perconte, Guarnere, Skip, Joe...and the idea of death didn't seem scary at all.