Private Parts of the Churchyard

I met him in the churchyard, looking at the grave of a man he saved from the wrath of a border collie named Dirty Dolly in the summer of ’98, only for the man to meet his fate a little later at the hands of a drugged-up drummer from Stockport who was distraught on account of having just been demoted to the bongos by his band.
He shook my hand. A khaki-clad chap with a cap and a map of Iraq in his top pocket, he gave me a nod and introduced himself as Private Parts. Took in my eyes and a look at the flowers I left at the base of a stone that belonged to the bones of a boy named Sean, and he smiled, and leant down to smell the petals of a rose. “Darling, I know woes like yours, but fear not, I’ve found a cure for broken hearts,” said Private Parts. “It’s an art, you know, getting over the loss of a person you love, forgetting a departure that tore you apart, you’re gonna have to trust me on this but where there’s a will there’s a way and today, my girl, there’s both.”
He had me swear an oath to keep the secret of his cure, and half an hour he kept me there with deadpan voice and dead-eyed stare and told me how to never care again. The answer was not what I had hoped. “Join the army, lass,” he said. “Forget God and confession and Tuesday’s session with a bereavement shrink, join the army, that’s the way. And stay until they’ve bled you dry, and even if you die you’re only dead, and that doesn’t seem so bad when you come to be as sad as I once was.
It’s the killing, see, that’s what you want. Weapon in hand you make a stand and see how many bastards you can slot, and for each one you take you’ll feel the ache lift a little, like a part of your soul has escaped on the back of a shoal of bullets, and a piece of what made you you is gone forever. Sever body from spirit and while you might not be happy you’ll be a sight better off than the fools with the feelings. This is called healing, and when it’s done your heart will never ache, there’ll be nothing left to break and this is good.”
I expressed some minor reservations, mainly at a certain condemnation to a livelihood in Purgatory that his medicine entailed. “It’s worth it though,” he said. “Because from birth it’s just been sadness after sadness, and complete and utter madness to piss my life away in such a state, and now I’m cheating fate.”
He offered out his palm and told me to be cautious, calm, that what the world perceived as harm to my soul was just a balm for the pain inside when someone died a little while ago. “Do you see tears in my cold and lifeless eyes?” “No,” I said, “they’re dead, not sad, and maybe slightly mad but there you go, the price of woe.” So I took the proffered limb and said “You win,” and let him guide me from that place dry-eyed and in to the recruiting office.