Where Does a Memory Live?

Most sane people would think the choice to leave Afghanistan after a year and a half is a no brainer.  For me it’s the most emotionally taxing decision I’ve ever had to make.  There’s one simple enough to say, but incredibly hard to explain, reason.

Leaving Afghanistan is leaving him, 1^st Lieutenant Daren M. Hidalgo…behind.

Afghanistan holds the worst moment of my life, the moment I found out the boy I had spent the past 4 months spending every moment he had on KAF together was killed, but it also holds all the best moments…every moment I had with him.

When I leave this place I leave the Dutch PX that he was convinced I was confused about because there is a Deutsch PX as well.  I’ll leave the front desk where I first saw him.  I’ll leave the boardwalk bench where we got caught being on a “date” by his soldiers.  I’ll leave the chair outside my old mod where we sat for hours one day just talking.  I’ll leave the DFAC where we first had a meal together and the spaghetti sauce was so watered down I wouldn’t eat it so he was worried I was anorexic.  I’ll also leave the parking lot that’s now become a motor pool where we first talked about our families, friends, jobs, and dreams for the future.

Last summer I met a soldier who had just been blown up, a wounded warrior.  We became close friends and shared a lot.  I was there through his painful recovery - physical, emotional and mental.  Not knowing it at the time, but looking back now, I can see that that soldier was my chance, the chance I never had to nurse Hidalgo back to health.

Just a few months ago one of our friends got blown up and was life flighted to the hospital here on base, Role 3.  We went to go see him and I held his hand as he lay in the bed.  I tried to joke to cheer him up, and watched him get awarded his Purple Heart.  That friend was another chance, the chance I never had to visit Hidalgo at the hospital.

See by going home now I thought I’d run out of those chances.  But I know through my work, I can still get them.  I can hopefully work for Wounded Warrior Project or continue with USO and still get a chance to be there for someone like I dreamed I could have been for him.

When I was planning my vacation for this winter my friend Erin and I decided to go to Australia.  Then I realized the dates, we’d be gone during the first anniversary of his death.  I immediately didn’t want to go.  I wanted to be in Afghanistan for the anniversary.  I wanted to be where I knew him.  Where our memories lived. 

Besides a few of my coworkers, everyone that knew him was gone already from this god forsaken country, so why did I want to be here?  Erin has lost someone she loved dearly out here too, so I figured she would at least understand me and my dark day and be there for me, so I went.

Here’s the thing… in a hotel room in downtown Sydney, Australia, thousands of miles from where I had met, known and loved a boy, I could still remember his big ass grin, hear his laugh, and see his face at all of those places we shared.

As horrifyingly hard as it is for me to admit it, his memory lives in me and I know that.  I just don’t think until now I was strong enough to realize it.

After he died I slept every night with, as weird as this sounds, a knife he gave me.  I clutched it so hard I got on a blister on my hand.  During the day I wore it in my pocket.  Gradually the questions about the knife got too annoying and prying, so I began just keeping it in my bag.  If even one moment went by when I didn’t know where it was, I panicked.  It was all I had of him.  The first time I left, and couldn’t take it on a plane I was petrified of how I would react without my security blanket/knife.  I got through it.  As time went on I began just storing the knife in my drawer.  I still know exactly where it is, but I now know exactly what it is. 

It is an object, not a memory.  Afghanistan is a location, not a memory.  The memory is in me.  It’s the way I feel when I think about him, and the smile I crack through the tears when something reminds me of him.

That’s where it is, and that’s where it will always be.

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;

which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

-e e cummings

Team Daren

I ran a marathon.  But this is not a marathon blog.  While yes, mile 18 was my big fat brick wall and by mile 20 my knees were screaming noooooooooo, stop the horror!  Nonethless, I ran, I walked, and I ran and with my sister’s encouragement, lots of water, and lots of sports beans later we crossed the finish line.  But, like I promised that is not what this is about.  This is about a boy, like many great writings have been.  A boy who through his passion for life inspired couch potatoes and military super athletes alike to run a race in his honor.  This blog is about Team Daren.

Have you ever met someone’s family and thought to yourself, okay that explains it.  I’d be a wackjob too if they were responsible for my raising.  Well upon meeting Daren's family, it was the exact opposite experience.  Daren Hidalgo’s parents, brothers and sister are exactly the reason why we all loved that boy.  I had spoken with friends and family of Daren’s in the months after his death, but had never met any of them face to face.  Well minus the one time in a DFAC I saw Miles across the room and recognized him from Daren’s Facebook but didn’t want to be a creeper so instead I chose to just awkwardly stare at him while whispering and pointing to my friends that I thought that was Daren’s brother.  (because just introducing myself and saying hi would’ve been the embarrassing alternative, riiiiiight).  Miles later told me, he definitely did notice the table of girls in civys that said USO and knew it was me. 

Anyway, first time meeting Jorge, Daren’s father, and upon seeing me he says, “SARAH!” and embraces me in one of those awesome bear hugs!  You can literally feel the love this family exudes.  In Jorge, Andrea, Jared, Miles and Carmen, you can see his radiant smile in theirs.  

The day before the race there was a marathon expo  and you picked up your registration packets from The National Infantry Museum.  You could choose to run in memory of a fallen hero.  They had small bibs to place under your race bib with the fallen hero's name.  We already had ours, 1LT Daren M. Hidalgo, but they had a table set up if you didn’t personally know a fallen hero, so you could pick one to honor.  As I perused the table one name jumped out at me, “PFC Jesse Dietrich.”  I attended his ramp ceremony.  I was there when he was loaded into a plane in Afghanistan to start his final journey home.  I read the brief synopsis and he was 20 years old from Venus, Texas and killed August 25^th in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan by small arms fire.  I thought about how this race was bigger than me, bigger than one girl hoping to finish 26.2 miles.  It was a race to honor those men and women who fight a war, so we don’t have to.  It was the Soldier Marathon.

People came from all across the country to run in Daren’s honor.  Some knew Daren from Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, others from West Point or 3/2SCR, others were there as friends of one of Daren’s family.  While waiting in line for the spaghetti dinner I overheard an older gentleman behind me say, “Well look at that, they know my grandson.”  My sister and I had the race bibs with Daren's name attached to our bags.  We turned around to introduce ourselves to Daren's grandparents.  It seems it doesn’t matter who you meet through Daren, every single person is going to be overwhelmingly nice.  

Overall there were more than 50 runners gathered on a FREEZING 40 degree morning huddled together in heather gray shirts emblazoned with “TEAM DAREN” across the front to run for our fallen hero.  Some ran the marathon relay, the half marathon, or the full.  My sister and I chose the full.  By mile 15 I was saying, “Okay Daren, why couldn’t you have sponsored a 5K, really?!”  But his motto was always, “You only have one life to live, so go big!” and that we did.  I just tried to stay focused and remember who I was running for.  I remembered messaging Daren while he was back at the COP about one of his soldiers telling me a story that he had to wake Daren up one morning so he looked for the smallest dude in a sleeping bag and told him to wake up.  Daren immediately woke up and karate chopped his way out of his sleeping bag.  Daren’s response to this story was, “F yeah I karate chopped my way out of the sleeping bag, I hate those people that don’t start moving.”  So I kept moving!

At mile 6 there was a hill with Drill Sergeants "encouraging" us.  "YOU THINK THIS IS A HILL?!  YOU HAVEN'T SEEN A HILL!  OH YOU BEST NOT BE SLOWING DOWN NOW, KEEP IT UP, KEEP IT UP!"  It was hilarious and helped push us to the top.  Also thankfully, it was the last of the hills.  The scenery was gorgeous and people were sweet along the route yelling, "Go Team Daren!"  The route also looped around itself so we got to see other Team Daren runners and yell at them along the way too.  There were soldiers stationed all along the route to support us.  I did feel a little out of my element, wait a minute, I'm the one supposed to be supporting you.  At mile 25 we passed a man waving a Steelers "Terrible Towel" announcing to each of us, “You’re a marathoner!”  Those are words I never planned on hearing in my life, but was ecstatic to hear.  Because of one boy's presence in my life, I’m completing something I never dreamed I could.  Before this marathon I had ran one 5K.  ONE!  Now I’m running 26.2 miles.  Gretchen and I came around the bend toward the Avenue of Flags at Fort Benning 5 ½ hours after the race began.  I knew we’d see our parents waiting at the finish line.  What I didn’t plan on seeing was an entire crew of Team Daren fans shouting and clapping for us - probably the last Team Daren team members to cross the finish line.  As we neared the finish, the announcer said, “And now crossing the line are Number 255 Gretchen Kemp from Martinsburg, WV and Number 256 Sarah Kemp who took leave from Afghanistan to come here and run this race.”  (Turns out Daren's father, Jorge, had told the announcer the last bit as we were jogging up the avenue.)  I swelled with pride and jogged through the pain as Gretchen and I lept across the finish line in full cheesy fashion.  Then soldiers coined us and placed a dog tag medal around our neck.  Free beers and massages followed.

We returned to our hotel room with the lovely Sarah Brahm and Megan Pringle who were our roommates for the weekend.  I had never met either of them before, but knowing that they were Daren's friends was good enough reason for me to believe they wouldn't drug me and steal my belongings while we slept.  They, of course, turned out to be absolutely lovely ladies.  We all slathered ourselves in icy hot, placed ice bags on our legs, knocked back some pain killers and lamented about our sore muscles.  Later that evening we all went to Fudd Ruckers for a Team Daren reunion.

I was mingling with friends and family of Daren when it finally hit me how I recognized one particular man who ran for Team Daren.  All weekend I tried to place him.  He was Captain Garcia from 3/2SCR, G Co,  Daren’s unit in Afghanistan.  It was the first time I had recognized someone in the states from meeting them in Afghanistan.  We immediately began swapping G Co stories and USO tales.  It was nice to make a connection with someone who had been there for all of it too.

It was also a chance for my parents and sister to meet Daren.  Although they can’t meet him in the physical sense of the word, they got to meet him that weekend in the smiles, laughs, ridiculous and heartfelt stories that everyone who knew him shared.  They got a glimpse at the boy who everyone loved.

Through it all I think about the way Daren has changed my life and somehow finds ways to continue to do so.  A year ago this month I spent some time with Daren in Afghanistan.  He happened to be at KAF, and it was my day off so I needed to do some laundry.  There were plenty of washers available, but upon our return after gathering my stuff there were none.  I was pissed.  So I gave up on the laundry and instead we just talked.  He asked me about what I wanted to do after this.  I told him that I loved writing, but always got nervous that it wasn't good enough.  He shared with me his journaling so I wouldn't feel as self conscious about my blog.  Then he told me something I will never forget, “Don’t worry about what to write, don’t worry if you think it’s stupid or inconsequential.  If you thought it, it’s worthy.  Write it, even if it’s just that you got pissed today because there were no washers available. “  Well Daren, I write, and I run for you.

Please visit www.rememberdaren.com to learn more about Team Daren and how you can honor our fallen hero.

My sister Gretchen and I running down the Avenue of Flags.  I have a look of determination to get to the finish, hers is  a look of joy that the finish is so near!

We're marathoners!  The medals looked like dogtags.

Toward the end of the race soldiers were running with the racers to encourage them to finish strong.

Virtually everyone in this picture is part of Team Daren.  My mom, sister, Sarah Brahm and Megan Pringle at the foreground.

This is why we do it; this is worth the pain. Love is this.

I’ve always heard that grief has stages. Something about denial, anger, acceptance and some other ones thrown in there.  Well, in my personal opinion that’s a load of crap crafted by someone who likes to sort their sock drawer by color, height and approximate elasticity.  Grief doesn’t package itself in pretty boxes that you unwrap one at a time.  It’s like a needy, irritable child.  Some days it is easily abated.  It will just lie still in the back recesses of my mind making itself busy stirring up warm memories.  Then there are days like today where it pulls at my pant leg and demands my attention while screaming at my subconscious.

On the “good days” like this Sunday, I feel a sense of calm, peace and joy, that I got to know Daren for as long as I did and created as many happy memories as I have.  I can recollect those memories with a warm feeling in my heart and a smile on my face.  Then there’s days like today where every soldier that walks through our center doors with Daren’s unit patch on makes me want for the next one to be him.  I think of all the experiences he will miss out on by dieing so young and I get LIVID pissed. 

A friend of mine out here told me that God gets it.  It’s okay to yell at him and be mad at him one second and thank him for all your blessings the next.  God has wrath, look at what he did to the world in ol’ Noah’s day.  God had feelings, just read the scripture where after Lazarus died he felt so bad for his family it says, “He wept.”  Not he teared up, or he cried, he wept.  So basically God can give me a lil leeway on the whole hot mess situation with how I feel about Him these days.

The other day I came home from work tired and spent and my roommates were getting up to go to work.  I had my cell phone flashlight on to see in the dark room I share with 4 other ladies when my one roommate popped out of her area.  I just started flashing the light like a strobe at a rave and broke out some ‘hot’ dance moves.  Her response was, “You’re an idiot” while laughing the whole time.  I loved seeing her laugh.  It made my night.  It all started to make sense, I get why Daren was the way he was, damn it feels good to make other people happy.  In that way, in my goofy, sometimes “schtupid” lighthearted fun way, that’s how I’ll honor him. 

I am utterly amazed at the sheer number of people who have read my post about Daren.  I am filled with a sense of humbling awe at the responses people have written me.  I sincerely thank every single person who has taken a moment to read my post.  I did what felt right.  I wrote what I wanted the world to know.  It has helped me tremendously to see the good in the bad.  My friend Beth said in an e-mail, “Daren’s death has changed you… God brought him into your life not to F you up with grief but to push you in the right direction that was meant for your life.” 

While at this point I still disagree with the big man upstairs and think that I could have learned more from Daren’s continued life here on earth than from his death, I know it is out of my hands.  I’m not supposed to understand it all.  The Man has got a plan and I need to trust in it.  My friend Lindsey said, just think Daren will be up there on “Team Sarah” cheering you every step of the way.  I like to think of him that way, watching down over all of us, color commentating our lives.  It’d be hysterical.  I love to picture Daren in the line of the Brad Paisley song, “But when I get where I’m going, and I see my Maker’s face.  I’ll stand forever in the light of His amazing grace.”

A friend asked me if I had wished I didn’t know Daren that well, that wouldn’t that make it easier.  Absolutely not.  Knowing Daren was a gift, one that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Another one of Daren’s friends, Sarah Brahm, had posted the song This=Love on a memorial site for Daren.  I think it’s just the perfect song to remind me of Daren and his love for our country, our freedom and us.  He died for us and for that we can never repay him, but you know what, I know he would have never asked us to.

I remember always liking his “about me” section on his Facebook.  It’s one line. 

- About Daren: is alive and loving it. -

He did.

First Lieutenant Daren Miguel Hidalgo was laid to rest today 7MAR11 at West Point Cemetery.  His 25^th birthday was Friday.  They sang Happy Birthday to him at his funeral.

The sharp knife of a short life

I am not naive enough to believe that I was going to come to Afghanistan for a year and not lose someone I knew.  I could have never imagined it would be Daren.  He was so full of life I didn’t think a full head on collision with a speeding train could stop his heart.  In a world where most people I meet can seem very one dimensional; they’re a soldier and not much else, Daren was like one of those pop up books with the gorgeous pictures that jump out and grab your attention and maybe even has some sound and lights and somehow the batteries just never need to be recharged.

“I knew he wouldn’t die, because his life was like the roots of a tree that went miles into the soil and miles around its trunk and came up in my cousins in their faces and their voices and their character.  I didn’t think you kill a tree that big.  Not even God could kill a tree that big.” - Donald Miller discussing his uncle’s death in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Daren making me laugh on Halloween.  I had asked him to pose with some decorations that my friend Carri had donated.  

I had met Daren Hidalgo a time or two before when he first got in country before pushing out to his COP.  I vaguely remember making a dumb joke about Hidalgo and that being the name of a horse (thank God he didn’t hold it against me).  Then a few weeks later on Halloween night he and some other soldiers from his company volunteered.  It was my first holiday away from home and he made me forget that I was in Afghanistan.  By the end of the night I thought holidays will not be so bad with my new family out here.  He was hysterical.  His huge dimples reminded me of an athlete who has huge muscles because they work out so much, he had these huge dimples from smiling so much.  Everyone was drawn to him like mosquitoes to a blue light, they can’t quite pinpoint why but they were captivated.

He was at KAF because he had escorted the belongings of a fallen soldier in his platoon.  That night we talked about death and how no matter how much ‘training” he had, he was human and felt emotions about his buddy dying but that he had to be strong to lead his men.  That’s the kind of guy Daren was, he always, without a doubt, put others first.  

We spent a lot of time that week just talking about everything: growing up in PA and WV (we both liked pepperoni rolls), being Catholic, choosing the military or me choosing to come out here, and especially about missing our families and friends.  We debated whose mom sent better care packages.  He insisted his mom was “The Queen of Care Packages” because she had so much practice with him and his brothers all in the military.  He said she clearly topped all other care packages because sometimes she even put in magazines with hot girls in them.  He was so proud of his brothers Miles and Jared.  He joked about the “rank race” between them all.  He claimed it wasn’t really that fair because Jared was in the Marines and they have different criteria for promotion.  He loved his sister and getting to be an uncle.  We shared stories about our nephews and the joy of being able to give them back after playing with them.  He also talked about learning Spanish and how one of the most favorite moments he ever had was when he finally learned Spanish well enough to have his first real, actual, deep, involved conversation with his Dominican grandparents.  

Although I may have only known him a few months, I feel like I knew him for years.  Time plays some funny tricks out here.  Daren brought out the best in me and in everyone he knew.  He encouraged me to write.  My entire post about “No Washers Available,” was about him.  I said I was feeling uninspired and he told me he wrote every day.  I said I’d feel stupid I had nothing exciting to write.  He read me one of his journal entries and then told me even if I just wrote about being pissed there were no washers available I should write something down because life’s too fast you don’t want to miss it.  So many people spout logic about live life like you are dying or make the most of each moment, but Daren is one of the only people I’ve known to actually accomplish it.  I talked about trying to learn different languages so I could greet every person that came in the center, but that Pashto was too difficult.  He said, “You’ll learn it, I know you, you care too much.”  He made me want to live up to what he saw in me.  I understand why his soldiers loved him so much.

He was so funny and full of life.  Soldiers from his unit are always coming through the center when they rotate into KAF and Shaw (one of his soldiers) told me a couple weeks ago that he had to wake Daren up and he said, “LT get up!” and that Daren immediately sat up and karate chopped his way out of his sleeping bag.  Shaw said it was hysterical.  I can picture it, and it makes me laugh.    Gentry who volunteered with Daren at the center and was in his company said, “He could always bring a smile to anyone’s face and it was contagious.  You couldn’t help but be around him and be in a great mood.  He was one of the best leaders I have known in the Army.  He never looked at anyone any different regardless of rank.”  Another soldier Cooper said, “He was a hell of a man, and everyone that knew him is gonna miss him.”  My roommate/coworker/friend Sarah York said, “You know I’ve only known 4 men in my entire life that I consider GREAT men.  The kind of man that every man should aspire to be.  Hidalgo was one.”

I feel incredibly blessed to have known Daren.  I am positive that anyone who met him will say that.  I’ve talked to soldiers in his company the last few days and it is as if I’m trying to ingest every last tiny morsel of Daren I can, trying to hear every last story and have every last image of him making every one smile and laugh.  

His last messages were that he was going to be coming through KAF soon for some scheduled maintenance.  He was supposed to come on 21FEB.  On 20FEB11 Daren was killed by an IED.  I got a text that night at 2324 from my coworker, “Showtime is 0340 for 1 US Army.”  I had no idea how that text would impact me.  As a USO staff we try to have at least one person attend every ramp ceremony for a fallen soldier at KAF.  I had been to about 4 or 5 previously, and since I just finished up my shift, it was my turn.  I didn’t see the text until 0300.  It was bitterly cold that night and I was tired and honestly did not feel like going, but knew I would be honoring a fallen soldier so I got in the truck and drove to the flight line.  I was wearing a ridiculous hat with flaps on it that I felt a lil funny for wearing, so I took it off when I arrived.  Soldiers from every country were chitchatting quietly before the ceremony.  I spotted the general who is in charge of KAF, the one who watched me sing like an idiot to Kix Brooks a couple months before.  I looked and saw the MRAP waiting on the flightline to bring forth the casket.  As I looked around with my hands in my pockets fidgeting to stay warm I saw the 6 soldiers assembling to walk out to carry the casket and I stopped moving, I stopped looking, I stopped everything when I saw their unit patch: “TOUJOURS PRET”  Always Ready.  My heart sank into the pit of my stomach, that was Daren’s unit.  Although I wouldn’t allow myself consciously to acknowledge that it could be him; somewhere, somehow I knew something wasn’t right.  This was going to be someone I knew.  I walked out onto that runway and stood in line at attention across from a line of soldiers.  I was concocting in my head the angry e-mail I would send Daren.  I would yell at him for not responding to my e-mail from 2 days prior and making me worry that it was him.  I’d ask about the deceased and hope he wasn’t close with him.  I’d see if he was coming soon.

The wind was whipping through the flightline.  The speaker for the mic stand was swaying.  I couldn’t see the chaplain but I heard him speak some bible passage that was meant to give us hope that the deceased is in a better place.  Sometimes they say the name of the fallen soldier, and other times they don’t.  This time he did.  The chaplain said, “First Lieutenant” and my mind sighed with relief because I had momentarily still thought Daren was a Second Lieutenant, but then I remembered he had just been promoted, “Daren” and I knew it right then and there, there are not many Darens, it was him, “Hidalgo.”  Honestly I’m not even sure I heard the Hidalgo part.  I gasped aloud and saw the worried look of the soldier across from me whom I could tell was thinking, “This chick is gonna lose it.”  I had been to ramp ceremonies before, I usually spent my time praying for their family and friends who knew them.  I would look out at the fallen soldier’s unit with pity, and ache in my heart for their pain.  Always in the back of my head, I was thanking God I didn’t know the deceased.  My worst nightmare was imagining attending one of those for my friends.  My nightmare was coming true and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I quickly told myself to get the F over it because it was happening and the ceremony would be over before I knew it and I would miss it.  I would miss honoring him.  I pulled it together and I stood there and I saluted him.  I watched the soldiers hold him while holding their arms around each other’s backs.  I can still vividly see his steel casket with the flag draped over, the two female soldiers at the front, the one male soldier who looked no older than 19, the gleam off the second soldier on the right’s gold wedding ring as he grasped the back of the blouse of his fellow casket carrier so fiercely his knuckles were white, the fancy writing of Mississippi on the back tail of the plane, the slow haunting music of Amazing Grace.  I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head and watch him be placed into the plane.  I stared out into nothingness.  Then it was over.  We were dismissed.  I thought this can’t be happening, it’s not real, this is a nightmare, I’ll wake up.  I looked back three times on my walk back across the flight line, just to make sure the plane was still there and the soldiers were still there, and this was still my life.  I made it to the car and immediately dialed one of my coworkers, “It was Daren” was all I could get out.  

It was a shocking way to find out.  But I would not want to change it.  I got to stand there and honor my friend.  I got to give him one of the first goodbyes.   I got to stand there and honor him not just as a representative of the American public or as a USO staff or as a DOD civilian, but as his friend, someone who knew the man who just sacrificed his life.  I will always be grateful for that.  Being over here I don’t get a chance to attend his funeral or go to a showing and see pictures and talk to his friends, all these things that bring solace in a time of a grieving.  I’ve struggled with what to write in this post.  Finally, yesterday morning I woke up with the feeling that this post isn’t about me, it’s about sharing with whomever will listen what an amazing man I came to know.  I have loved reading other posts Daren’s friends have put on his Facebook.  It brings a smile to my face to get to know the non-deployed Daren.  In each note on Facebook, each comment on a news story online or interview on a news station, people always say the same thing  about Daren, it’s about what Daren did for them, what Daren did to make them happy to bring a smile to their face, because that’s what Daren did.  He lived for others.  He died for others too.

I spoke with the brave soldier who was blown up next to Daren.  He said that after the explosion while Daren was lying there he was joking with him the whole time.  He was telling Daren to cut it out, but Daren wouldn’t stop.  That’s the kind of guy he was, trying to make everyone else feel better  and laugh and making sure everyone else was okay, while he was the one hurting.  I know that’s what he’d be doing today.  If somehow he could pop down here just for a lil while, he’d be telling jokes and trying to cheer us all up.

The last time I saw Daren one of my favorite earrings had fallen out and he had helped me look for it, and we found the stud but not the back to it.  I have since then found another back and still wear the earrings.  The day after Daren was killed I worked all day and held it together.  I knew he’d want me to.  I did my job and helped the troops with a mostly smiling face.  That night after my coworkers and I locked up, I stood at the front desk where Daren had sat and helped so many days and I lost it.  I began crying.  My entire day of pent up emotion came crashing out in waves of tears and sobbing.  Then I heard the tiniest sound, just a lil ‘ping.’  I looked down at the counter and there was my right earring, the same one I had lost and Daren found.  I looked for the earring back on the floor and in my coat.  It was nowhere to be found.  I touched my ear again and broke out in a huge shit eating grin.  I looked to the sky and said, Damnit Daren, I’m running out of backs.  I shook my head and laughed, with tears streaming down my face and one earring in I whispered to him, thank you, thank you for reminding me you’re still here.

I’ll be seeing you.