After being sent away I remember more. Everything between there and the fall is pretty clear. Some of the small details are still a bit fuzzy, but everything after that is a lot clearer than their deaths.

Steve says it's a good thing I don't remember it too well. He says that it makes it easier to 'deal with'. Whatever that means. It doesn't matter that I don't remember their names or faces. I remember them dying. They were killed, and I could do nothing to stop it.

But as I said, it was pretty clear. At least, as clear as a four-year-old's memory could be.

When I woke up, I was young. Too young. Four years, at most. I was so small. So vulnerable.

I remember wondering the street for a while. This was before the war, but right after another. Even though the United States hadn't taken as much hardship as some other countries, but it had still taken a hit. Enough that no one wanted to even look at a small child.

I finally, somehow, wandered into a church where the nurses took me in.

They had cared for me, fed me, and patched up my scrapes from roaming the streets. After a few days, two people roamed into the church, still hurting from a loss.

If I remember correctly, and my memory is spotty at best, their son had died of the Spanish Flu just months ago. It was worse because he had been one of the few. Not many had died, but he had. Maybe I should be grateful. His death gave me a home. But I just couldn't do it.

They had come to the church for hope and reassurance that their son was in Heaven. His name had been James, but everyone had called him Bucky.

I remember a picture of his face. He had short hair and bright eyes. The couple had told me that his hair was the color of melted chocolate and his eyes were the color of the sky.

They had not taken me on that day. It was weeks later when they did. They had come in so many times with their prayers, for a parent never truly can forgive themselves when they lose a child. Even the gods feel grief.

Their prayers were full of words that made no sense to me, but that was of so much value to them. I don't quite remember what they said, it was the faces that had shown me how they felt. It was the way the tears had streamed down their face when they could no longer hold them in.

It was, if I recall, the third week that they saw me. Well, they saw their lost son. That was one of the only things I remember after all this time, they had prayed for their son to come back home.

Why? I had no idea. Not with all the shit in this world we live in. I almost envied James, the little boy who died in his parent's arms. Almost.

The day I went home was amazing. It was so different from when I had stayed with the nuns. The only room they had for me was a pile of unused blankets in the laundry room. It wasn't any type of punishment, they just didn't have anywhere else to put me. It would be ignorant to assume that I was the only child roaming the streets in the years after The Great War.

I realize now how stupid we had all been to think that war would end because we had all seen its horrors.

Maybe not stupid, just idealistic. Maybe the thought of another war so soon after was too terrible a thought for any man, woman, or child to bear.

But maybe not idealistic either. Maybe we were in denial that we, as humans, could get worse than that. Worse than the worst we had ever been.