Kyle was supposed to be the writer, not me.

My mom often referred to Kyle as her “third son” when introducing him to family friends because he would visit my parents even when I wasn’t home. The minute he walked in the door to my childhood home, he would drop his pants and moon my mother. My mom would burst into laughter while my dad just shook his head, partly because he could never predict when Kyle would show up and drop trou, revealing his bare ass with a small tattoo on it. The man had his own key to my parents’ home, after all.

The last time my parents saw Kyle was shortly before he deployed to Afghanistan. He had just completed a journalism stint in Panama covering the Miss Universe pageant and picked up a gift for my parents. Unwrapping the present, Kyle grinned ear-to-ear, awaiting my mom’s response until she frowned.

“What the hell is this, Kyle?”

“It’s a fresco painting of Panama! Put it somewhere where everyone can see!”

My mom chuckled, intending never to display the atrocity and quietly dump it in the trash; Kyle none the wiser. To this day, we still don’t know whether Kyle meant the painting as a joke or whether he was serious. It looks like a cheesy postcard you’d pick up at a gas station and matches nothing in my mom’s house decor.

Not long after visiting my parents, Kyle left for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and then landed in Afghanistan to replace me and other members of my Army unit. I greeted Kyle with a hug when he arrived. I wrapped my injured arm around his neck and then tapped the back of his head with my cast. “This is the shit you have to look forward to,” I said with a smirk and a wink. A month earlier, I had been wounded in action when I took the brunt of a 107mm rocket while the Taliban and al Qaeda tried to attack our small forward operating base next to the Pakistani border.

Kyle laughed, then made a statement about how all the Afghan women would love him so much he’d probably be fighting jealous Taliban because of the number of Afghan babies he planned to produce. We meandered through the wreckage on the outskirts of Kandahar Airfield while he asked questions, and I filled him in on my tour of duty. Most of the time, we joked and carried on, but then he sobered and asked, “How’d you not go crazy from the fear?”

I cocked my head quizzically, while Kyle expanded on his comment. “I’m just… worried about dying, ya know? Then leaving my family to deal with the wreckage.”

I knew the feeling all too well, but in war, it served no purpose. I decided to shoot him straight and give him the truth I had discovered for myself.

“You’re dead anyway,” I responded.

Kyle frowned, but I continued, undeterred. “The minute you walked into theater, you became a dead man walking. There are no guarantees in combat. You’re always one rocket or bullet away from a dirt nap. The trick is convincing yourself that you’re already dead so that every day you wake up breathing, it’s a gift. Dead men have nothing to fear. So the sooner you make your peace with death, the faster you’ll be able to do your job. That’s what I had to do. I was really afraid at first, and you don’t want to die, but then you just become… okay with dying, I guess. It gets easier once you accept that.”

Despite the truth of these words, I have regretted them every single day of my life. I wish I had hugged Kyle and said something comforting like, “Bro, you got this. Don’t sweat that shit.” I wish I had told him he was my best friend and that I loved him. But I didn’t. Instead, my last words to one of my best friends were nothing more than to prepare for his demise and not be a pussy about it.

Kyle was killed a week later.

A year after Kyle’s death, my parents and friends staged an intervention because I had become violent, paranoid, and would drink myself into rage-fueled stupors. They encouraged me to seek help, and when I finally relented, I agreed to meet with a counselor. The day of my first appointment, I trudged up a flight of stairs, entered a narrow hallway, and plopped down in a 1970s-era chair while filling out paperwork. When I got to the question, “What is the primary reason for your visit?” my hand trembled. I hastily scribbled “PTSD.” Then, to differentiate myself from the other clients, I put in parentheses “(from war).”

Within the week, I met my counselor, Joy. I laughed when she told me her name because I found it ironic that they had assigned me someone with the name of an emotion I no longer felt. There was just the caged wolf of rage.

Joy was a decade or so older than I was. She had blond hair and was working toward her doctorate. I spent our first couple of sessions grilling her and asking personal questions about her life, family, and other leading statements I had used when interrogating insurgents overseas. Near the end of our third session, she told me about her brother and the depth of their relationship, but then revealed he had died. I fell silent, uncertain what to say, but also feeling her pang of grief. I’m not sure if counselors are supposed to show emotions, but the lone tear that trickled down her cheek, followed by a quick apology, made me drop my guard.

“I, uh, know what that’s like,” I said, trying my best to sympathize.

She cocked her head to the side and made a motion with her pen for me to continue.

“My best friend, Kyle,” I said, smiling as I recalled a time when we’d stayed up all night laughing. “He would sometimes come visit me while in college. But he… he died.”

“Tell me about Kyle.”

I turned my head and gazed at the small frosted window in the room’s alcove. The chilly November air made shrill noises as it ripped across the glass pane. I thought of my frigid nights in Afghanistan, then my last conversation with Kyle.

“It should have been me,” I said. Then, barely above a whisper, “It should have been me.”

My mom kept the fresco Kyle gave us. It’s proudly displayed in my parents’ home, bearing no context and looking completely out of place. Each time I visit my childhood home, I run my hands over the painting, slightly amused and pained. Kyle has been dead for almost 20 years now, but his stupid painting is now the ghost that haunts our home and memories. I imagine one day it will pass to my son, given that he’s partially named after Kyle. A dumb painting from Panama and a baseball mitt that he left at my house, are all I have to give to my boy to help him understand a man who died in my stead.

Where I now scribble notes, write books, and craft articles is a display case with Kyle’s photo alongside a card that states “Memento Mori” — remember that you too will die. It’s a sadly poetic, I suppose. Kyle wanted to be the writer. He wanted to craft stories and tell tomes. Now I’m the man who carries out his dream and legacy.

I often wonder whether it’s guilt or something else that forced my hand to the pen and keyboard. Of that, I can never be certain. All I know is that each time I jot words on paper, Kyle’s shadow looms.

For decades, I’ve grieved that I don’t have more than a few photos of my friend, let alone any videos of the man. Then one afternoon in April 2023, I cleaned out a drawer and found an old SD memory card used in early 2000s cameras. Curious about what was on the device, I found an adapter and plugged it into my computer. Laying dormant for 20 years was a video of a 22-year-old kid filming his best friend. But not just any message. A final message to my parents we’d never seen.

In the video, Kyle’s infectious grin is within every scene while he makes inappropriate statements to my mom and tells my dad he’s gonna “dress him up like little Bo Peep.” His final words to my parents are not words of wisdom, nor a farewell. In life, Kyle had a contagious zest for life and saw the beauty in the mundane. Beautiful weather made him ecstatic, and a good song made him crank the radio and demand we jam with him. The video is not some solemn reminder of a friend that once was, but a hilarious accolade he often stated about how we should enjoy life. The video ends in typical crude military humor where he tells my parents to “Bong out with your schlong out.”

The statement may make no sense to you, but to my brothers-in-arms and my parents, we know what it means. It’s a reminder — albeit crude — to live our lives fully. To have fun. To act crazy sometimes. To not care what others think. To live and continue living each day as if it’s a gift.

Each Memorial Day, I set out Kyle’s photo next to a Corona Extra — his favorite beer. My family and I also host an epic barbecue where we’ll laugh with friends until it hurts. While the day is a painful reminder of the numerous friends I’ve lost in combat, it’s also a beautiful reminder to continue to live.

My hope when honoring our fallen each Memorial Day is that you would do the same.

Want more? Sledge’s multi-award winning memoir masterfully captures the raw humanity, intricate complexity, and brutal barbarity of the “Forever Wars,” and its psychological toll on modern veterans.