I can’t stand the thought of him being gone. My dad is dead. The thought keeps going through my head, like a movie I can’t forget.

“Come on Dylan, it’s time to go,” my mom calls from down the hall. I had been too upset last week to go to my dad’s funeral, so I had yet to go see where he was buried, that’s where we were about to go.

“One second,” I say though I know she didn’t hear me, I could faintly hear her footsteps getting quieter.

I quietly leave my room and go to my parent’s room, I go to their closet and grab my dad’s U.S Army camouflage shoes. Me and him had worn the same shoe size.

The shoes made me feel closer to my dad, on the toes of the shoes it said ‘Captain Welks.’ My father’s full name was Josh Tony Welks. He had told me last year on my twelfth birthday last year that once my feet were a little bigger I could have them, two weeks later he was deployed, never to return alive.

He was too close to a bomb explosion, his body was so badly hurt that they had to have a closed casket, or that’s what my mom told me anyways.

“What were you doing in my room?” my mom asks me. I just so happened to walk out of her room as she was walking down the hall towards mine to see what was taking me so long.

“Getting these,” I say, holding up the shoes. I could tell that an image of my dad passed through her mind when I held up the shoes.

“Okay, just don’t wear them today, it’s all muddy outside, and I don’t want you to ruin those shoes,” she tells me keeping her eyes on the shoes the whole time.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Go get some shoes on.” She ignores my comment from before.

I go to my room and grab a pair of black and blue Adidas and put them on, on my way out of my room I grab some superglue, a picture of my dad and me that I had sitting on my dresser, and a mini American flag.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I say to my mom who is standing by the front door.

“What are those for?” she asks me noticing the things I’m carrying in my hands.

“You’ll see,” I say and walk out the door to our car.

We get to the cemetery five minutes later. With my things that I had brought in my hand I walk towards where I was told my dad’s grave was.

When I get there I open the superglue and put some on the back of the laminated picture that had been sitting on my dresser, after glue is all over the back I stick the picture on his grave marker by his name. Then I put glue on the side of the stick the flag is on and stick it on the left side of his grave marker. I look in my pocket and find a sharpie, I write on the flag ‘I will always miss you, -Dylan,’ and then go back to my mom’s car.