Sunflowers

One cannot look at a sunflower and be sad or melancholic.  It triggers a dopamine rush, happy juice for your brain.  The contrast of the dark, almost black, center to the vibrant golden petals, the large head set upon tall green stems. Fields set up in endless rows, joy radiating from the earth from a flower named for a celestial object.  Just this vision warms my insides, starts the corners of my mouth into the beginnings of a tiny smile.  Aurora herself might be tricked into thinking that dawn was stretching across the land as she gazed upon these star flowers.

“Keep your head down, Johnny!  Just look at the beautiful flower.  Listen to your father.”  

The ground shakes, clods of dirt rain down into the crater, showering us in soil.  “That was a close one”, my father mutters to himself.  

We don’t get much warning.  The television reporter says blankly there is an invasion and to get to the nearest evacuation center.  For us that is in San Francisco, north of where we live about an hour.  Our family of three loads up into our 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee with just the bare essentials. Ourselves, water, a few snacks and the clothes on our backs.  My father is determined to make it to San Francisco in record time, come hell or high water, he says.  We don’t get that far, hell comes first.  The highways are jam packed with parental units from nuclear families who try to avoid the other meaning of that word like the plague.  

The warnings are too late.  The sonic boom of a fighter jet streaking across the blue sky makes my ears pop.  It isn’t uncommon to see fighter jets in our area as we live close to Vandenburg Space Force Base, an occasional jet would shake our windows as it blasted through the neighborhood at Mach speed.  The sickening feeling is the realization it isn’t our jets, our planes, our bombs, our missiles raining death from above down on the blacktop.  The debris of human and automobile, flesh and metal, blood and gasoline stain the pavement into a gory mosaic.  Luckily, my father is an excellent driver, he quickly takes an access road off the highway and onto the backroads to relative safety.  Unluckily, we have little to no gas left.  We end up in Half Moon Bay, still a ways from the South San Francisco evacuation point.  My dad is worried.   I can tell when this happens because his face gets those lines in his forehead, his voice gets high, and his speech quickens.  I do everything he asks, this is not a time to misbehave.

Our car slows, bucking a few times in protest and coasts to the edge of the road stopping by a field of sunflowers.  The night will be here soon and with it a shroud of darkness.  I feel a sense of fear and comfort wrapped into one.  My mother, she of the flaxen hair and body by Peloton volunteers to scout the area for supplies.  It is the best choice.  She is the most fit compared to my dad and his spare tire as she lovingly calls it.  My father and I drag the tent out of the back of the car where it has rested since our last adventure into the great unknown.  We set up camp, no fire.  We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.  

I can’t sleep.  Something isn’t right.  The world feels off, like the earth has tipped on its axis.  I climb out of the tent, dew droplets on the morning grass greet my bare feet, cold and wet.  A twig snaps in the distance.  Curiosity pulls me in, closer to the possible danger.  We have set up our base camp deep in the middle of the sunflower patch, hoping to disguise ourselves among the florae.  The noise beckons to me from the edge of the patch.  I creep silently and slowly pull the stalks apart to see what has made the sound.  There standing above a dark pile is a soldier wearing an olive-green uniform with a red star on his cap.  A machine gun slung over his right shoulder.  The morning sun shines its tendrils of light onto the scene, illuminating this dark unknown mass.  

It is a body.  

A human body.  

It isn’t moving.  The sun stretches further.  The face of a woman stares back at me.  Eyes black, empty, vacantly look off into the distance.  A bullet hole marks her forehead, blood puddles around her skull.  My mother’s face frozen in time.  I do not recognize her. Her lightness, her beauty stripped away.  A golden empty husk left behind.   A hand grips my shoulder startling me back to reality.  My father raises his index finger to his mouth. 

 “Be quiet, Johnny”, he whispers.  

His face, a mask of fear and pain. 

“She’s gone”, he says.  

Two little words with the weight of the world in them.  He cradles my face in his large warm hands looking straight into my blue eyes welling with tears.  “Not now, son.  We have to go”.  

…

“Johnny, look at the flower!”  

My father insists I focus on this floral distraction as he tries to figure out a way to save us.  

“Focus on the beautiful flower, son.  It will be better soon. I promise”. 

I cradle the bombarded bloom in my tiny hands.  

A squadron of fighter jets, F-16s, rocket over our location.  Less than a minute later, a giant explosion tremors the ground.  The next few hours, days, weeks, years become a blur of fear and fatigue.  Moving from one location to another, evading the enemy, serpentining our way around the danger on the road to our salvation.  

My sunflower, a constant companion, reminds me there is beauty in this world.  Among this hellish landscape, life goes on.  Flowers still bloom.  People still live, thrive even.  The rebellion ebbs and flows.   Battles are won and lost.  Still, we go on, we push forward for the ones who didn’t make it.  For our dead.  For our country.  For our freedom. 

…

The War of the Americas has officially ended.  

The television news reporter smiled into the camera delivering this statement like it was nothing.   A weather report, a stock market prediction, a baseball score.  The tens of thousands of lives lost fighting for our freedom reduced to a sound bite.  

He shakes his head, disgusted.

Brigadier General John E. Chance looks at the frame on his walnut desk.  A picture of his parents, Margaret and John Sr. smiles at him.  He smiles back. 

 “We did it, Dad, Mom.”  

Next to the frame sits a thin glass vase.  A bouquet of fresh cut sunflowers within it.  His sea blue eyes well up as the tears come heavy and hard. 

…

A dark green sign with white lettering comes into view.  SR 92, Half Moon Bay, 2 miles.  He hits his directional to turn off the highway, glancing to the passenger seat to check on his cargo.  A jet-black ceramic urn is buckled in, safe and sound for his dad’s final road trip. 

John pulls down a backroad bringing his brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee to a rest. Beside a field of sunflowers.  

He thinks of his father’s dying words.  

“Energy never goes away Johnny, it just changes.”

Unscrewing the lid to the urn, he spreads his fathers’ ashes to the sea breeze blowing in from the coast.  

The ashes flit and dart on the fickle breeze.  

They pollinate the dark anther and yellow petals.

He whispers, “Thanks for keeping your promise, Dad.  Say hi to Mom.”