When the dead come home

By COLBY FRAZIER

I was late to work today.

My daughter and I had finished running our errands, but I’d forgotten to get her a lollypop.

“Pop, pop, pop, pop,” she yelled.

We went back into the bank and she sifted through the plastic, black pot left over from Halloween, searching for her favorite color, blue.

By the time I had her back in the car seat, California Highway Patrol officers had the intersection of Highway 246 and Alamo Pintado Road in Solvang blocked. I pulled out into the street and waited. Maybe there’s a bike race, I thought.

A couple of seconds later, a fleet of police motorcycles approached, lights flashing.

Then I wondered if President Bush had stopped off in town for a pastry and coffee.

But just behind the police bikes, bearded men on Harley-Davidsons, one with a helmet painted like an American flag, rumbled through the intersection, hanging a left on Alamo Pintado towards Ballard and Los Olivos.

Following them was the hearse and a modest limousine. The officers in the street stood tall, saluting.

As the traffic signals went through the red, yellow and green motions over and over, the usually bustling intersection was silent. No one honked in anger. A Coors Light beer delivery truck, which wasn’t being stopped form turning right onto the highway, stayed put.

A dozen or so bank employees stood on the corner, watching as several hundred cars passed by, hazard lights flashing.

The funeral procession seemed fit for a king, and rightly so. It was for Marine Cpl. Aaron Allen, 24, of Buellton.

Allen, a 2002 graduate of Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, was killed in Fallujah, Iraq by an improvised explosive device. It was his second tour of duty.

According to a story in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal, Allen enlisted in 2004 and was set to leave the military in March of next year.

In the story, family and friends described the young man as a “jokester,” who planned to propose to his longtime girlfriend and make a home in the Santa Ynez Valley.

I sat there in my idling car knowing none of this. It’s unlikely many of the motorists did, but it appeared all of those stuck in traffic knew something was happening more important than work, lunch and beer deliveries.

This scene has unfolded more than 4,000 times since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and not once has it directly impacted my life.

Watching the procession pass by, I couldn’t help but wonder how this could be possible. It seemed unfair — not to me — but to the hordes of soldiers fighting, many of them dying, that I get to go through the motions, preparing to eat a big Thanksgiving dinner this week.

I hesitate to write about my personal feelings on the war, so I won’t. Whether one is for it or against it, people are dead and more will be dying soon. Real death. The kind that comes home to America — the streets of Solvang.

I shut the car off and noticed most other people had done the same. I felt sad, guilty and hopeless.

I toyed with the idea of skipping work all together; take a day to think about all the things that aren’t happy and convenient.

Sure, our eyes might glaze over when, on the evening news, the nicely dressed anchors read the death toll and talk about surges and winning and losing.

But when death arrives at the busiest intersection in town, it’s difficult to not hang my head and weep.

My one-and-a-half-year-old daughter doesn’t miss much. I’m not sure she understands most of what I say, but she knew sitting at that intersection for nearly a half hour that something wasn’t right.

As she grew impatient, yelling for her mother, I told her, “It’ll only be a few more minutes. This is a funeral. A boy died.”

But that just made her cry harder.

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Beautiful column : 11/26/2008

What a lovely piece. Really well written and just perfectly summarizing yesterday's motorcade to the cemetary. Thanks for writing this and I'm glad your publication published it.

LNE

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: 12/19/2008

Who feeds there one year old a lolly pop.. and worse while you drive. *** choke choke**

mom

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