Dad Died Twice
by Laura Claridge

I recall him as mostly asleep after days of riding his postman’s bicycle under the Florida sun, delivering mail during those long, unremittingly hot Florida days. No wonder he fell to the cool terrazzo floor and lay there, more unconscious than just resting.

The tan mailman’s shirt and shorts had replaced his decorated Marine’s uniform. At nineteen he had gone to war in the Pacific and fought in the famous Battle of Saipan and on Iwo Jima. He came home with many medals, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts—and a chrome plate in his head. My young, handsome father was grievously wounded, how wounded no one knew at first; but as time wore on, his brain injuries worsened instead of abating. We did not know then that he had begun to die. My dad, William Powell, was the first in our family’s series of serious brain injuries, and I have reason daily to think of him, and with regret.