Red Balloon

The boy held on very tightly, like he had been told. Knuckles turning white. Every thought  focused on not letting go. The red balloon meant everything to him, a gift from his father. The boy clutched the string as he watched his father drive away, unsure of when he would see his father again. He knew it would be months, maybe years, until his father returned. But his father had promised to return. Promised.

The boy took the balloon everywhere he went. Unlike normal balloons, this balloon was special. Filled with a father's love, it never deflated. It strung along happily with the boy, wherever he took it. Home. The park. School. For many months, as the seasons changed in the boy's small home town, they were happy, the boy and the red balloon.

The day the balloon deflated was the most miserable day the boy would ever know. Once full of love and life, the balloon slowly lost its air, beginning to lag behind, unbeknownst to the boy. In a matter of minutes, it was lifeless, lying crumpled and deflated on the ground. When he realized the balloon was dragging behind him rather than floating, the boy's eyes filled with tears and he let out a painful wail in the middle of the supermarket. People stared as his mother hugged him, tears beginning to form in her own eyes. She knew why it deflated. Knew the boy's pain. The fear. The loneliness.

The boy cried all the way home, clutching the balloon to him.

That was the day the boy's father was shot protecting his country. Protecting his son, his wife, his home. Like the boy's father, the boy's balloon had a small whole in its middle. That was the day the boy knew his father would never return home alive. Never fulfill his promise to return to the boy, though his father had fulfilled his promise to his country.

The boy buried his father one rainy afternoon on a hill too green for such a sombre day, but he did not bury the balloon. The balloon was a gift from his father that he would never part with. As he grew into a man, he kept the balloon with him, folded neatly and tucked first into his pocket, and then into his wallet as he grew from a boy into a man.

The red balloon was a reminder of the hero the boy's father was. The hero the boy would become as a man, fighting for his country just as his father had before him.

And just as his father had before him, the boy, now a man, gave his own son a red balloon before leaving for a war that was never ending. A reminder of his love for his son. When the man waved goodbye to his wife and son on a day filled with too much sun, he hoped that his boy would never know the pain of the balloon deflating.