A Different Kind Of Graduation

My sister’s oldest son decided to enlist in the Marines in the middle of his junior year in high school. Reverberations of disbelief and concern were felt as the news traveled though our family. Although my sister was sure she would be able to talk her then sixteen year old son out of his decision, a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, he boarded a plane from Denver to San Diego with only a determined smile and the clothes on his back.

A sweet young soul that tolerated high school and got into his share of scrapes with his parents and the law had made a life-changing choice that was foreign and frightening. After over a year of trying to talk him out of it, he was gone.

We were all numb. They had him now. We offered comfort and hope to my sister that the war would be over before his future deployment. While we all knew it mostly likely wasn’t true and that he would probably end up in Afghanistan, we didn’t talk much about anything but being there for his graduation from boot camp at the Marine Corp recruiting Depot on Oct 17^th.

As we took our seats in the bleachers we witnessed the pageantry of the ritual. Every Friday six-hundred young men with an average age of nineteen become US Marines. The difference on this day… one of them was my nephew. They marched in front of us with clenched fists, straight backs and expressionless faces. They moved in perfect unison. My sister tried desperately to find her son’s face as they passed by. “That’s him,” she shouted a few times only to see that it was the wrong platoon number. “They all look the same. I can’t find him,” she said with growing frustration.. After a few moments we looked at each other and realized, that was exactly the point.

When it was over and my nephew was able to greet us, it took a few moments for him to unclench his body and accept our hugs. He then resumed his perfect stance and smiled. He was proud of his accomplishment and we were proud of him. It was then I cried.