A Hero’s Funeral, the Sun
by Lana Hechtman Ayers

takes you, the turning earth takes you. Oh, you are
glorious dead in your coffin, Red Cross dress-uniforms
salute you, flag draped over mahogany, a few weeping
openly at graveside, your brothers-in-arms from rescue
missions, your wife respectfully composed, stays strong
for your two young sons, fidgety in suits, who scarcely
knew you, scarcely know what life is, let alone death.
Our mother in a nursing home nearby, unable to attend,
sometimes unaware she ever had a son, others, sorry
she did. It falls on me to inform her of your passing,
brother, and I hope it will not cause her another stroke.
Most of the time, she dwells in an imaginary world
with her talking dog Patchy and visits coffee shops
that don’t exist, escaping the worst of her reality–
confined to a wheelchair, forced to quit a four-
packs-a-day, seventy-year-long cigarette addiction.
When I tell Mother you died, she doesn’t cry, yells,
“Why my only good child? Why? It should have been you.”


This poem begins with a line from Patricia Fargnoli’s “Winter Sky Over Cheshire
County, New Hampshire” and is dedicated to my brother Alan, a Red Cross volunteer
EMT who was present at the World Trade Center on September 11th and died of a rare
leukemia attributed to exposure to toxins in burning jet fuel.