Rhonda will be all right. No reason to believe there isn’t a side to life after you get done enduring the anguish, whatever particular branch of agony life brings to you, leaving it on our doorsteps the way cats do after killing mice.

We all get agony in one variety or another. I sure found that to be true, after getting home from the war. For awhile, the whole world seemed like some malicious cartoon. I didn’t know how to talk or move or think. I got a job driving a forklift, but there was no adrenaline in the routine, no real purpose to any thing I did. Routine… what a rotten way to spend your life.

So I worked. I drank. I thought about the war. I missed it. Some soldiers miss wars, grieve them. You don’t hear that side of it much, but some of us do.

After a few confusing months, I contacted a man who had gotten home before me. I needed to ask if it got easier. If the world ever got its color back or spun forever pale and joyless. Maybe spinning is the earth’s sad routine.

We met in a park to talk. He fed corn chips to a swarm of seagulls. It was overcast.

“I don’t understand anything that’s going on back here,” I said to him.

“Who does?”

“It made more sense before.”

He showered the sidewalk with corn chips. “It isn’t before. It’s now. This is what we’re left with.”

Seagulls squawked and jockeyed and fought each other.

“Has it gotten easier?” I asked.

“No.”

“A little bit?”

“Not at all.” His corn chips were gone. He crumpled the bag in his fist. “It doesn’t ever get easier, I don’t think.”

The seagulls waited around for a few seconds. Then they realized there was nothing left and flew away.

“Maybe it does,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a matter of waiting it out.”

Old Vern is still waiting. Maybe we all are. Maybe that’s another part of our sad routine.