A Ghost In the Crowd

In early November 2012 I found myself feeling very much alone in a remote corner of Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. I was frustrated, anxious, and a felt like I had failed somewhere in life. When I left the Army in February I had assumed I would never deploy to another 3rd World shithole to face rocket fire, snipers, and IEDs again. Over the course of 7 months of unemployment I became more depressed and more desperate to find a job. To say I hit rock bottom would be an insult to those who have; however, I saw no light leading me away from the dark path I was crawling...slowly...down.


So I took a contractor job in Afghanistan, and for over a week I sat in my room with nothing to do. It took several days to get approval for the badges needed to gain access to where I would work in the Detention Facility In Parwan (DFIP) so my days were spent sitting in my room bored out of my mind and sitting in the dining facility surrounded by military and the hauntings of my previous deployments.


It was at one of these meals that I happened to look over at another table and saw a ghost. There sat a sailor who looked incredibly similar to SSG Amy Tirador, so similar that to this day I would swear they had to be related. For those not aware, SSG Tirador was my human collection NCO who killed herself in November 2009 on FOB CALDWELL, Iraq. This sailor could be Amy's sister and I sat there and stared at her for several minutes, or at least long enough to know I was staring too long...and I didn't care. Eventually the sailor got up to leave and I was able to catch a glimpse of her nametag. It took every fiber of my being to not get up myself and follow her to wherever she was going.


I went back to my room and spent much of the night going full stalker on the internet. Did SSG Tirador have a sister? Did she have a relative in the Navy? Am I losing my mind? What the hell am I even doing here?


For the next three weeks I never saw the sailor. The camp where the DFIP is located is pretty small and I would see the same people day in and day out, but not the sailor. I was beginning to believe that she was a figment of my imagination, the universe having an inside joke with itself.


On my last day at the DFIP before I moved to Kabul and the IJC I saw the sailor again. However, while I recognized her as the person I had seen earlier she did not look all that much like Amy as when I first saw her. Less the sister I thought she might be and more a distant cousin.


Every once in awhile I will think I see SSG Tirador in a crowd; I even thought I saw her at NGIC the other day wandering the halls. I realize now that it's just the ghost of my worst failure as a leader. One day I'll make the pilgrimage to Upstate New York where she is buried and try to let the demon go...