A Burmese Heart

I did not expect contact from Yan Naing in the weeks following his disappearance. My father, mother, aunt, and I did not speak of his leaving and thankfully the children did not question where their father had gone. They were accustomed to his frequent trips, assuming that he was on an extended mission and would be back any day now. My heart broke whenever we sat down for meals and their father was not there at the head of the table. More and more families became like us, the great men of our society leaving to fight for what they thought was the moral thing to do. There was a stinging irony in so many of our children growing up fatherless so that the next generation would not have to.