May 26th will be 15 years since you died.
But who’s counting?
I am.
You’ve been dead as long as I was alive when I met you.
When you said I was your best friend, I went home on a cloud and wrote it in my LiveJournal.
Today, because I’m an emotional masochist, I googled your name.
I like window-shopping pain.
There was an article describing you: “If Ashton L.M. Goodman had a choice of driving a sedan or a 40-foot tractor-trailer, she’d pick the tractor-trailer.
'She was a work-hard, play-hard girl,’ said a friend, Airman 1st Class Vrajhi Brisby. ‘She didn’t care if she broke a nail, got greasy, got sweaty. If she messed up her hair, she didn’t care. Even if you were sitting in the truck, she got dirty.’”
And I know that was true. But other things were true too. How hard you worked to be one of the boys. How quickly you outwardly mocked softness in yourself. How furious you still were at your father for leaving your mom for another woman. As if being harder than everyone else could spare you from becoming like her.
The article continued:
“Her vivacious spirit, zest for life, and eagerness to experience it all will forever be remembered by our team,” said Capt. Stacie N. Shafran.
It’s a bitter pill to know that all they can do is remember your spirit and life, and they did so little to preserve it.
The article was in The Military Times in their “Honor the Fallen” section, which seems like an exceptionally bleak feature. I clicked on “Home,” and it took me to a 9x7 grid of young faces framed by uniforms. Below the grid, arrows to more pages of the grid. It wasn’t until the 30th page that I saw your face, smack dab in the center, a photo from your Facebook, in your uniform.
I didn’t keep going through the pages. At that point, knowing there were at least 1,890 of these faces with articles attached was enough. How many more pages of 9x7 grids are there? I don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
I’m not alone in my pain, yet I am alone. Behind each of those thumbnails and stories: “Greatest guy ever” and “Would give you the shirt off his back.” Why are the dead always the greatest fucking people anyone’s ever met?
But believe it or not, it wasn’t the military article that was the sharpest knife to the heart.
It was a fucking Facebook post on our school district’s Facebook page from just three fucking weeks ago.
Three weeks ago.
THREE WEEKS AGO.
Not even a month ago.
This is breaking news.
This isn’t the Military Times archive.
This is in real time.
Two assholes — that’s all I can see when I look at them. Apple Watch, fake nails, giant diamond ring, stupid smiles, holding a stupid check against an ugly American flag backdrop. I don’t know who they are. Never seen them in my life. Their nametags are too small to read.
The caption: “Honoring a hero. Senior Airman Ashton Goodman Scholarship was presented to WCHS. Warren Central alum, who served two tours and traveled 10,000+ miles delivering vital aid. We honor her service & sacrifice in 2009. Her legacy continues to inspire the next generation of Warriors.”
This pisses me off to no end. Fifteen years for them to realize you joined the Air Force to pay for college? Dead before you even finished the freshman courses. Guess someone else can be saved from that fate. I should be happy. Like one kid gets the golden ticket with your name on it. Marked safe, just for today, from being blown into pieces so badly that not all of you can be recovered.
One lucky kid gets the American flag check. I want to know how much it’s for and where the money came from, but there’s no details.
Of course there aren’t.
It’s probably for $500 and won’t do shit.
But it got 62 likes and four comments.
One comment: “I love that she is being honored in this way. Ashton was an incredibly sweet girl with tiny freckles and a mischievous little giggle. She was kind to everyone, and I am not at all surprised that this was the job she chose while in the Army. I’ll always feel thankful and blessed to have been one of her teachers.”
Doesn’t that make you as angry as it makes me? Because you were angry and bitter too. Yes, you had freckles and impossibly straight teeth and a huge smile and mischievous little giggles, but you also were outraged by injustice. You would topple displays of rat poison in Walmart and kick cars double-parked. I loved that side of you. You and I laid on the graves of children, yelling up at God, at the cold black sky, in fury. That was my Ashton too.
And my Ashton was sad too. You laid on the cool tile in the downstairs bathroom of your mom’s house, drunk, and told me how you were driving the first vehicle in a convoy in Afghanistan — the first tour, the one you didn’t die during — and how there was a little kid standing in the middle of the road in front of you. Dirty face. Holey clothes. Couldn’t have been older than seven.
You asked the commander sitting in the passenger seat what to do, even though you already knew the protocol. Then he said it flat and direct: “Speed up, don’t stop.”
And you did. Because insurgents would send kids out to stop convoys, then attack.
You knew: It was this kid or the whole group of you.
I saw how your eyes squeezed shut as you described running over that kid and how it felt like a speed bump. How speed bumps now made you cry. How seconds later, someone on the radio said, “WOO weee we must have hit a helluva goat.”
But that’s okay. Because now you get 62 likes and four comments, and one of them is a teacher SOOOOOO thankful and blessed to have been one of your teachers. Wonder how thankful and blessed she is for the kids she taught who didn’t die.
Nobody at Warren Township mailed me a check for carrying this around fifteen years.
She didn’t even know you were in the Air Force, not the Army. Or that you were the third generation of women in your family to join the Air Force. Or that you didn’t “choose” that job — you really thought you were going to be an airplane mechanic because that’s what the recruiters told you when you signed.
I know because I was there. I was holding your hand as you told me how excited you were and how safe you would be. You wouldn’t ever see action, just engines and rotors and grease, and your college would be paid for.
But it’s all fucking lies. And there are grids and grids of photos of kids promised engines and rotors and college money.
And behind each of those photos is some stupid, sad bitch like me still crying and hurt by it all.
