Corporal Wheeler

    "That's not him," Amouk insisted as she looked down at the obituary pulled up on the small phone screen.  "He had blonde hair and blue eyes."

    She continued to read down through the announcement.  It was already five years old, he had passed in March of 2017, and she closed her eyes to see backward better.

    "He never talked about his family," she said as her eyes opened and she looked down into the picture of an old man and saw the boy she had known.  "I'd be a widow now then... well, I'm a widow already."

    Amouk's mind traveled back in time 75 years.

    "Ellen, marry me," the young Corporal proposed.  He was from Chicago and would return there, hopeful that she would accompany him.

    "I'll have to ask my mama," she had answered, and so she did when she went home from her walk with the handsome corporal.

    After some thought, her mother had answered, "I want to be able to speak with my son-in-law and his family,"  The answer had been spoken in Inupiaq.

    Ellen had just looked away.

    "And it is so far.  You would be so far away from me," her mother had continued.

    Returning to the present for a moment, Amouk explained, "She had just lost my sisters as they were about the age of being married.  My one sister was engaged when she died from the flu.  1945.  Daddy had gone back to herding reindeer that season.  They buried the girls. I couldn't leave her too."

    "I'm flying out, and I want you to come with me," the Corporal explained.

    "I can't," was Ellen's only answer.

    "Ride with me in the taxi to the airport?" he had asked.

    She did, and the ride had been a tearful one, the young man unable to convince her to continue on with him.

    Amouk looked back down at the obituary and saw the names of his children, "We could have four children, he had told me.  It couldn't be.  I went home and decided I couldn't even keep his picture.  Someday my future husband might come home and see it.  I got rid of his photo."

    Amouk braced herself with one hand on the countertop and swung at my arm with the full force of her 92-year-old frame.  I stood still to allow the impact.

    "I told you not to go searching for him," and she shook her head as she made her way to the living room.

    She sat on the couch, "We were such good friends.  We could just walk and talk and talk.  It must have been 1947, but my mom had just lost my sisters."

    "I met Howard, my husband, later and had to learn to speak Siberian Yupik to talk with his family.  My mom couldn't speak with his family either," Amouk laughed at the irony.

    "You made me promise not to move your daughter too far from you," I reminded her of our conversation when I had asked for her daughter's hand.

    Amouk returned my smile.  I now had a better understanding of the importance of that promise.

Young Ellen in Nome (early 1950s)