My father left me on the last day of summer1My father left me on the last day of summer. Summer kept her promise and returned, but he did not. What was the point of living when you were going to die anyway? When they announced the list of the dead and my father's name was on it, we cried. I wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night to see him smoking again. No folded newspapers in the morning. No book he promised to buy. No freshly brewed coffee served. Not him. I volunteered to be a nurse in 1917. Not because I was mad about the war, but rather to learn more about my father. Maybe I could meet his friends here, you know. Maybe they would have told me how much my father was fighting to the death and all that. Despite this, the main reason I volunteered was because I had lost the meaning of my life and no longer had the courage to continue living since he left. All I needed was the strength to carry on with this shitty life and maybe, just maybe, someone knew what my father's last words were and could tell me. Many times I had imagined what his last words would be. Maybe he would tell me something like: tell my daughter she has to live when I'm not here. I told her to stay strong and take care of her mother. It was pathetic, I knew, but I needed to know. They sent me to France for training and then took me to Italy for the Red Cross hospital. When people say the battlefield is like hell, they should see the hospitals. The beautiful thing about the battlefield was that people there were dead, unlike here in the hospitals where people were still alive, suffering and screaming. We basically saw people dying slowly here, in pain and broken dreams. I didn't know how long I had been here. Maybe two weeks or two years. I began to lose track of...... middle of paper......, which would one day be buried with the question unanswered and the truth unrevealed. I would never have known of my father's heroic deeds or his last words. Maybe he said something like: God, please take care of my family, or maybe---Phil, tell Helen and Eleanor I love them, or maybe something like: This soup tastes funny. I would never know. But it was fine. In any case, that wasn't what made me love him. Your dream has also been shattered; the nostalgic memory would always remain to remind you how precious and true your dream was. And I appreciated it. I really did it. Maybe my father died for nothing and his life was useless. But my father was still my father, and no war can change that fact. “Mom! I am home!" I screamed and ran when I saw my mother waiting in the courtyard. He was crying and from afar I could see the joy in his eyes. You have to live, Eleanor, live. Live. Live. Live