He served his country, did his tours, came home, and then vanished into the kind of life that doesn’t make headlines—forms, waitlists, returned calls that never get returned.
When the funeral home called me, they didn’t try to soften it.
“No family. No friends. No one’s coming.
Just like that: a flag, a casket, and an empty row of folding chairs.
His name was on the file in plain black ink: Staff Sergeant Daniel Mercer, U.S. Army (Ret.). Cause of death wasn’t my business. What was my business was the silence—how a man could wear a uniform for years and still end up with nobody listed, nobody arriving, nobody even calling to ask where he’d be buried.
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