Lakyn Webb
He rode the city bus to the VA, always early, always dressed like dignity was a duty
shirt crisp, shoes shined to a mirror’s edge, as if he owed the world a polished version of himself.
He was ninety-something, still sharp-eyed, still carrying a posture etched by battles he would never describe.
He had been a prisoner of war, but he never said where, or when, or how long. The details were locked behind a stare that could end a question mid-air.
But he told me once about the Congo how he was lost for two months, fevered and disoriented,
carried back to life by a forest community who shared their water, their shelter, their mercy.
He survived continents, conflicts, viruses, and the slow erosion of outliving everyone he cared for.
But he didn’t think his life mattered.
When the psychiatrist asked if he wished he were dead, he didn’t break eye contact. “I’m ninety-three,” he said. “What exactly am I staying for?”
Then he looked at me, long and discerning, and something inside him softened.
“You understand empathy,” he said once. “That’s why I like you.” He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to.
To the hurried staff moving too fast to see him, he’d mutter under his breath, half armor, half warning: “If you’re looking for sympathy, check the dictionary.”
Humor as shield. Loneliness disguised as wit. He carried his pain quietly the way some men carry medals kept close, rarely shown, never mentioned.
After he died, the confusion grew. No obituary, no next of kin, no clean narrative to explain who he had been.
So I held a small gathering at his apartment complex. And people arrived neighbors from twenty years, the bus driver who knew his stop, the mail carrier who saved his letters, the woman downstairs he once helped through chemo.
Each person came with a different story, a different version of him, a fragment of a life he never fully revealed.
We pieced him together like stained glass, each shard bright, incomplete, and unexpectedly holy.
He thought his life was pointless. But mine bent around his. And so did theirs. And theirs. And theirs.
I carry him with me, into every room, every shift, every moment someone needs to be seen before they can be saved.
He believed he didn’t matter. But he did. And we will not forget him.
Bio
Lakyn Webb is an emergency room nurse at the VA, a PhD student in the UAMS College of Nursing, and a Disaster Health Services and Communications volunteer with the American Red Cross. She also serves on the UAMS College of Nursing Board and is the Director of Research for the UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center. Her work reflects a strong commitment to nursing leadership, service, and community health.