“Loss,” he says. He’s quiet for a moment. “It’s one of the most common aspects of war, and yet I’ve never experienced it.” “You better hope you never do,” I say, thinking of my family all over again. Loss is a wound that never heals. Never never never. It scabs over, and for a time you can almost forget it’s there, but then something – a smell, a sound, a memory – will split that wound right open, and you’ll be reminded again that you’re not whole. That you’ll never fully be whole again.”