I used to think being the girlfriend of a soldier was the most romantic thing in the world. I watched war movies with my dad, and while the soldiers dropped like flies on the battlefield, I daydreamed. I pictured myself as the tough girlfriend left behind, pinning for my soldier, working as a nurse in a military hospital, you know, like in the movies.
What was I thinking??? The girlfriend thing worked out. He went to basic, he wrote. I wrote back. I drove fifteen hours to see him graduate. I only recognized him because of his hands. Just like the other thousand soldiers at Fort Jackson, he had no hair, wearing bdu’s and standing at attention. I spotted him when the drill sgt. Called “at ease.” I focused on his face, trying to get his attention. It only took a second for him to meet my gaze. Very romantic.
That night we walked down the street, Jay in his class A’s, me beaming up at him. My heart swelled. I wanted to melt into him so I could be with him where ever he went. We spent the night talking singing poorly to our favorite songs, just being together. I was there two days before I had to go back home. I missed him the instant I turned around. That was the last time the Army was romantic.
Immediately after A.I.T., he was sent to Kuwait for six months. I spent the time acting like a teenager. I missed him, so I wrote him letters constantly. They looked the other way at work if I spent more than my fifteen-minute break finishing a letter. I sat in my Jeep remembering the hours we spent there talking about life. Remembering every single second we were apart wasting time we could have been together. I was a mushy mess and everyone got tired of it quickly.
Jay and I planned meticulously the moment we would see each other. Of course, it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to. It was so much better. He rode a bus all the way from Ft. Benning to Nashville. I was to meet him at the station, and drive him the rest of the way home. I was too scared to drive in the city by myself, especially not knowing where the station was, and I’d never been there by myself before. I begged all of my friends to go with me. NO one wanted to. Finally, my brother (I was shocked) volunteered to go with me. He refused to take the Jeep, though, and absolutely would not let me drive his car. We got lost. Jason ran three red lights, and blamed it on me. Mostly because I was yelling. His driving scared the hell out of me. It was all worth it though. When we accidentally found the greyhound sign, I was so relieved. Jay had been waiting for a couple of hours, and was sitting with his head down at the end of a bench by the door. His huge green duffle bag was lying on the floor between his feet. I stood there just inside the front door for what seemed like forever, probably in reality only a minute or two, unable to move. I wanted to touch the top of his head, feel the velvet high and tight, and hug him forever. For the third time in our lives, his head lifted, and we were eye to eye again. It was as if we were connected mentally, and he had heard my thoughts. Somehow, I was in his arms then, and our first kiss was like rain to a thirsty desert rose after a drought. He should have asked me to marry him then. But he didn’t. No, actually, he asked me to marry him in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, after we had picked out the rings. Yes, we bought the rings first. Don’t ask me how, because neither one of us knows how we ended up deciding we were going to get married. Something like that should be remembered, but it is lost somewhere in the hundreds of hours we spent on the phone while he was gone. Any way, we were sitting in my mother’s van, waiting for her to get back so we could get back. Unexpectedly, Jay opened the side door, got on his knees, and said, “So, will you?” And embarrassed, I said, “Get back in the Van!” He replied with what he still thinks is the funniest line ever said “If you don’t answer me now, I’ll ask the next woman that walks past, and I hope it’s your mom!” So, I yelled “yes!” and yanked him back in the car. I was able to slam the door seconds before my mom showed up.
We were married a week later. Two days after that, he went back to Georgia. Many things happened in between then and now, we have two wonderful children, a nice (?) military house, a dog, and a new van…what more could I ask for? I’ll tell you what I’d like to have, my husband. It seems like he’s never home. In the ten years we’ve been together, Jay has been to Kuwait, for six months, Korea for a year, Iraq for three year long deployments, and in the field more times than I can even remember. I’m Scared to death that I’m going to loose him this time. The violence has escalated considerably in the past year. I can’t live without him in my life. It doesn’t matter how many times he is deployed, I will never be used to it. My kids don’t understand, and how can I explain it to them?
I think I envy the people who feel patriotic about the army, wars, and see the long deployments as their duty. Maybe if I believed that, it wouldn’t be so hard. Losing your husband would be much easier if you believed he died for a good reason. I just won’t ever be able to justify it that way. Maybe I should have warned you, reader, that this wasn’t one of those hooah - go army type of things. Nope, not here. Not ever. The everyday army stuff is getting easier to deal with. I’m sure that it has a lot to do with the way Jay has changed his approach too. He has done a good job softening the way I hear the army’s demands on our family. I tend to take it all a little too personally. All it took was for Jay’s life to be in danger for me to realize how much I need him. If it would help, I’d tell him so. But him knowing just how important his existence is won’t stop the army from sending him to hell and back. There are so many things I need to tell him…so much that he needs to know…but how do you sit down and say all of those things without sounding like a high school love letter, desperate, needy, and clingy? Not only that but I have no words. Don’t you wish that you could do a Vulcan mind meld, so that your thoughts would be known, not said, but felt? That would be perfect.
When Jay was deployed to Iraq the first time, I was devastated. We knew the orders were coming down the line about a month before they actually got to us, but I knew the instant the president started spewing about inspections. I remember very well when his father started the first Gulf war, and it started the same way. Jay and I sat on the couch in our front room on Dixie road, talking about what was about to happen. We discussed possibilities, whether the girls would go back home to Edmonton. We decided that moving for a second time in four months would be more traumatic, especially since we had no idea how long he’d be gone, and we’d just have to move right back.
Not too long after those talks, Jay came home for lunch, and gave me such a look. He didn’t have to say a word. I knew what was going to come out of his mouth. He sat me down on the antique couch, and simply said, “We’re going.” Our family had a month to prepare for the hardest year we’d ever live. Jay hugged me on that couch for long moments, both of us crying. I picked myself up, wiped my tears, and made lunch. That’s the life of a soldier’s wife.
I spent six months in front of the television set. My eyeballs were glued to cnn twenty four-seven. In the first two weeks, I died a thousand deaths on my front room floor. Before the men pushed to Baghdad, they were stationed in camps in the Kuwaiti desert. Each one was named in honor of the September 11 attacks. Jay’s camp was called Pennsylvania. While I was cleaning house one day, with cnn cranked up as loud as it would go, I heard a news brief. I was only casually listening, while also loading the dishwasher, until they said camp PENNSYLVANIA, and I froze. I ran into the front room, my heart in my throat. The woman on my TV. screen was saying there was a bombing. Several injured, some dead. They had no details. I felt faint. My heart skipped a year’s worth of beats, I was dizzy, the room spun around me. Slow motion outside of the movies is no fun. I’ve lost a few moments of memory for the next few moments, but I somehow was sitting on the couch, holding my youngest daughter Miah, who wanted to know what was wrong with mamma. I buried my face in her tiny body and sobbed.
For the next several hours, I could barely function. I waited with the phone in my lap for the soldiers to knock at my door. I called my FRG point of contact at least three times. No one knew any thing. I recorded the news briefs and watched them over and over again, trying to spot Jay. The problem is that all of these guys look just alike, and my husband hates cameras. We never saw him. It was three days before someone called me and said “ It’s okay for you, but there are some girls who need help.” Several guys died that day, and still more were injured. The HHC 3- 327th Inf. FRG helped several of the wives get on their feet; actually, they were great the whole year.
Jay was never hurt, thank God, but I panicked many times. I finally had to stop watching the news, because I was a nervous wreck all the time. Many times Jay called just to say, “You are going to hear some bad stuff, but I’m okay.” He was never allowed to tell me what it was though. The guys upstairs didn’t want to wives of dead soldiers to hear about it through the grape vine, and I understand that now, but I didn’t care then. Who am I gonna tell? What did you just survive? Tell me!!! He’s a good soldier, though, and follows the rules, darn his hide!
And so, here I am, eight months into the third Iraq deployment. I feel lost. I feel alone. I want to be able to hug my husband.
(Originally written 7 weeks into the second deployment, updated June 9th, 2008.
The flowers are georgous though, and hopefully we'll have a real live pumpkin soon! Miah started planning for it already. On the way to the car this morning she was planning her attack, thinking that there will be a 200lb pumpkin. She's so cute.
bush
