Looking Back
By: Sapphire
"When you start a journey, you finish it."
That's what Grand mama always said. Jake and I always listened to her. We hung on her every word. We loved and respected her because she was special. She raised us after our parents died in a car crash. We were just four. "Never look back," she said. Those words...so important. I heard those words, but Jake listened to them.
I remember clearly the winter of 1940. We lived in a small house in the state of Arizona. Jake and I were eighteen and we'd been living in America for a year by then. Jake missed England and never really settled down. He had friends there, and out of all of them, he missed Andy the most. They were so close it hurt me more to watch them part than it did when I left my own friends. Andy was always ready to help Jake, no matter what. So it was no surprise that when war broke out in Europe, Jake panicked. Not because he was frightened, but because Andy was Jewish.
America had adopted a policy of isolationism. They didn't want anything to do with the affairs of the rest of the world. In America, you could choose whether you wanted to aid the allies against Hitler and his Nazis. No one was ever eager to go to war, but Jake was different. He had a reason. He told me that winter that he was going to fight. Fight for Andy.
I was terrified at this news. Jake was my only brother and Grand mama was so old. If I lost him, I felt I would lose everything. I tried to persuade him to stay but he was determined. I turned to Grand mama for support but she simply said that Jake must choose his path in life; she wasn't going to choose it for him.
I begged him and, at times, I asked him who he loved most: Andy or me. He always answered with tears in his eyes that it was not a question of love, but what was right and what was wrong. He signed up for a short course in military training that January and prepared himself for war. Deep inside I felt I had lost my own war, a war to keep my brother.
A week before Jake left for Britain, Grand mama died. The pain I felt at losing her was immense and knowing Jake was leaving me too only worsened it. He tried to comfort me, but I cold-shouldered him. I was so furious at him for putting me through so much anguish. He was leaving me when I needed him the most. Like our parents, except he had a choice! It was a terrible thing that I did...acting cold and bitter days before he left was both immature and stupid. I should have cherished the time I had left with him, but you don't think like that when you're that young.
On his last night home, I fought with him. I told him I hated him for what he was doing. I blamed him for Grand mama's death saying that he had stressed her out too much and that he was killing me. I had such an incredible urge to hurt him, because so often we hurt the ones we love the most. It's hard to explain. It was an act of desperation. I was trying to keep him here, even if it meant playing the cruel mind games that I did. Looking back, I realize now how tragic it was. If only I had realized at the time. I went to sleep that night leaving him standing silently, tears rolling down his cheeks.
He left without waking me the next morning. I was in fact awoken by the sound of a loud engine grumbling outside the house. The bed next to mine was his, and it was empty. I scrambled to the front door and flung it open. Blinking in the morning sunlight, I began searching for him. Then I spotted him. He was walking along the road towards a green and brown army van. I lost him then. Even though he hadn't left America yet, I knew he was as good as gone. It seemed at that moment as though a blanket of grief had covered me. He must have remembered what Grand mama said, because he got into that van, and never looked back.