Walking In Solomon’s Shadow
My big brother had always led the way and I had followed him happily without a second thought. Yet was it still the right thing for me to do?
Coffee Break Tale
When I took my first, staggering steps at the age of thirteen months, it was to follow my brother, Solomon, into the sand pit at the bottom of the garden. A photograph shows him standing over me with a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other.
I’m looking up at him, and my mouth is forming the first word that I could say – “Som”. I couldn’t say “Solomon” until I was nearly seven, and by the time I was seventeen I didn’t call him anything other than Sol.
Sol. It was a good choice. It means sun in other languages, and Solomon was the sun in my small world, when I was growing up. Four years older than me, he was the brother who always fearlessly led the way.
When my dad recently turned out a box of old photographs, every posed picture showed Solomon beaming at the camera with his arm draped protectively around my shoulder, and every candid shot showed me circling around him.
“I love looking at these,” Dad told me. “Good memories, that’s what these are.”
I picked up a photograph and studied it. It showed me and Sol on the brow of a hill, holding onto the string of a kite. My face was a picture of wide-eyed fear, but my brother’s determination to win the battle with the wind was written clearly in the grim set of his mouth. “How old were we here?” I asked. Dad peered at the picture and frowned in concentration.
“That was on Sycamore Hill,” he said. “I reckon Solomon was about fourteen.”
“So, that made me ten,” I said. “Why did I always look scared?”
Dad took the photograph from me and put it back into the box.
“Solomon got scared too; he just didn’t like showing it.”
It still hurts him, talking about Sol. You see, when Solomon died, the sun went out for us all, but the only way I knew how to keep my brother in my life was to speak openly about him.
His funeral was a grand affair. His mates, who’d fought by his side, formed a guard of honour. We carried his coffin from the house to the church and they marched alongside us.
All you could hear was the sound of army boots clipping the concrete and my mother giving vent to her pain and her grief; loudly and without restraint.
When I told her that I was going to follow my brother into the Forces, the same regiment and the same career, she begged me to reconsider.
“Don’t do this, Adam. Please. I can’t lose another son.”
“You know it’s what I’d always planned to do,” I said. “Solomon would be happy for me. He had a great life, Mum. He loved what he did. He was proud to wear that uniform.”
“He died wearing that uniform!” she shouted at me.
I gathered her into my arms and she cried quietly, with her head resting on my shoulder. When her tears had subsided, she took my hands in hers.
“Sometimes I think you’ve spent your life walking in Solomon’s shadow, but if you’re certain; if this is what will make you happy, then go ahead.”
Those words took me by surprise. Walking in Solomon’s shadow? Is that what I’d been doing? Is that what I’d still be doing if I joined up like Sol had done?
The words continued to haunt me all the way through my basic training. Running up a hill with a pack on my back, I heard Sol urging me on; learning to handle a weapon, there was Sol warning to me concentrate and listen; even at the passing out parade with Mum sitting teary-eyed in the front row and Dad standing proud, I could see Sol marching in front of me.
Then it hit me. I wasn’t walking in his shadow; I was honouring his memory. I was remembering the fine man that he became and the loving brother that he had always been. And he would always be there for me, my brother, Solomon, in my head and in my heart.