“Hey mommy?” , TylerAnne asks, running her hands through her new thin mane watching the blue birds through the window, listening to them sing with laughter and joy.

“Yeah baby?” The blonde mother hums swaying from side to side, making her bracelets bang together. Brooke reaches over the granite island and traces the words, ‘Be strong Brie, I’m not ready to leave you, I’ll be back and I love you. XOXO Tyler’, on her thin sterling silver bracelet, a plan solid band resting against it.

“When is daddy coming home?”

Tears fill Brie’s eyes as she turns her head away from the tomatoes she was chopping into bite size pieces, and focuses on her 4 year old daughters pale face and rounded features.

It’s hard being a teen mother; Brie just graduated high school four months ago and is taking care of her daughter alone with the help from her single mother Joann. Tyler, the father of her leukemia diagnosed daughter, is away in Iraq fighting the war that never seems to end.

“I don’t know baby, I just… don’t know.” She says slowly.

Brie can’t seem to bring her self to tell her that she, herself; is going to be gone in just a few days. She has been training at Camp Pendleton for approximately three months and is leaving for Iraq on active duty as an official Marine of the United States Armed Forces. Brooke was diagnosed with Leukemia at 4, a week after Brie signed up to be a Marine right out of High School. Once you sign up, that’s it; you cant back down and as Brooke’s disease worsened Brie became increasingly depressed, with Tyler’s absents, and Brookes sudden illness. Training just became a nightmare she brought on herself.

Initially when Brie signed up, she felt that this is what she needed to do, It wasn’t right for her to be here, in California, eating ice cream and sitting back while her husband and strangers risked there life so she could do what she always did, what she always took for granted. She contemplated leaving Brooke and missing out on four years of her life, but as an impulse and gut feeling she signed up, after leaving the booth she realized that she had just signed her life away, and what happened next, she may never know.

Brookes Diagnose was heart breaking, and Brie cried and cried until no more tears would fall from her swollen eyes. She was leaving her dying child alone, without her mother or father. She was leaving a life she was responsible for, just to die herself?

Brie left. She left her dying daughter, and found her husband lying in a Blue coffin engraved with ‘Be strong Brie, I’m not ready to leave you, I’ll be back and I love you. XOXO Tyler’ She watched as her daughters body sank deeper and deeper in the newly dug grave until the pink coffin lined with white silk was barley visible, except for the engraved message at the top of the casket, ‘Mommy, Daddy’s home, and so are you!’
Brie smiled as she saw herself in a blue and pink casket thankful that they were no longer parted. Brie looked down at her bracelets and realized the solid silver bracelet was engraved with ‘Mommy, Daddy’s home, and so are you!’ The happy family of three all smiled as there souls rise into the air together, holding hands as they reached higher and higher into the clouds, disappearing like balloons released into freedom with no boundaries and no limits.