There they hung, the uniforms, lining the hallway where they had hung all my life. It would be the last time he walked past them for many months, probably years. He took it slowly, pausing before each one to remember.
First the cuffed olive green of his great-great-grandfather’s, the pockets fraying away and the seams worn with age. Although it had been well laundered, he could almost see the bloodstains that must have covered it as it had carried the wounded back behind the lines amid the spatter of gunfire. He rubbed his fingers together, slick with the imagined mud that soaked the fabric in the shallow trenches as rain and explosives pelted the ground. He smiled at the thought of the wrinkles crushed into it by his great-great-grandmother when she welcomed her husband home safely.
He wondered what she had felt when she saw his great-uncle march away wearing the next uniform on the wall. The green had once been the same, but time had faded it less than its predecessor. This one had been mended, the holes where shrapnel had ripped through it still visible despite the stitching. He imagined his great-grandmother’s hands shaking as she arranged the pieces, the only thing returned to her from the trenches of France. Her son’s body had long since returned to dust in the very fields where he died, his cross tended by grateful strangers.
Next hung his grandfather’s tiger stripes. His grandfather had never been able to talk about what had happened in the jungles on the other side of the world. He had watched his grandsons grow and play with distant, haunted eyes. Loud noises had always agitated Granddad, and Grandmother had quietly sent the boys home whenever Granddad lost his temper and started yelling about cowards. His heart had been broken, she had explained, first by the horrors of the jungle war and then by the resentment and ingratitude when he returned safe but changed.
The last uniform was the most important to him, and he placed his hand on the glass case as if by doing so he could touch its owner. Dad had put on the sand colored uniform with its rusty splashes of color as a way to honor the father whose sacrifices had been forgotten. He had worn it proudly for five years, seeing his tiny son only a handful of times before hitting a land mine in a faraway desert. His picture and this last uniform were the reason for this last walk today.
By this time tomorrow, a fifth uniform would begin its own journey to the wall. He placed his forehead against the glass in the closest thing he remembered to a hug from Dad. “I’ll make you proud, Dad,” he whispered before continuing his last walk out of the front door, the promise hanging in the air as the final memorial.
The Word Worker 
Thank you Heather. It’s beautiful.
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