Love, Loss, and the United States Army

At some point in every relationship, you have to ask yourself a question: do I want to marry this person? It is, in my opinion, a relatively straightforward and easy question (though I’m sure someone will give me flak for it). If you have to hesitate and think about it and waffle and make pro and con lists, it is likely not the person you want to marry. If your heart gets lighter and you smile uncontrollably and have no doubts, then proceed to step 2.

However, in relationships where one member is a part of the military of the United States of America, there are a few more questions you have to ask yourself, and they’re not as easy as the first one. You have to ask yourself if you’re prepared for and willing to deal with deployments. Are you ok being left to your own devices for 6 months? 12 months? 18 months at a time? Can you keep the home fires burning, take care of any children or animals you have, keep the house in order, deal with financial issues and fixing things that break? Can you handle the loneliness of being on the other side of the world from the person you love for that long?

Harder yet: Can you deal with the uncertainty for that long? The uncertainty of not knowing  where your other half is, what they’re doing, whether they’re safe? The more difficult uncertainty of not knowing when or even if they’ll come home? Are you prepared to deal with the possibility of your servicemember dying while fighting overseas? Are you prepared to deal with the possibility of your servicemember making it home alive but not entirely whole, whether in body or mind?

These are the questions that plague military spouses and potential new military spouses these days. I’ve had people tell me they absolutely couldn’t do what I’m doing—marrying an Army officer. They tell me they couldn’t do the separation, that it would just kill them to be away from their partners for that long. Luckily, they have the luxury of not having to worry about that. I’ve had others yet tell me they couldn’t deal with the not knowing about the fate of their loved one. You always hear people say that military spouses are made of tougher mettle than the average person, and I guess that’s true. I did not hesitate to agree to marry Austin because I was sure I could deal with all of these things, the separation and the possibility of permanent separation. Maybe that makes me tough. Maybe it makes me naïve. Maybe it just makes me ignorant. I don’t know.

What I do know is that we have successfully survived being a long-distance couple for 18 months now. Yes, I’ve seen him for a few weeks here and there, which is more than I would during a deployment, but having this as background, knowing that we have survived long distance before makes it easier for me to believe we can deal with it again. My friend Cristin was long-distance with her husband for a while, and when he deployed, she said that made it easier for her, because she was used to having him gone and knew how to survive on her own without being totally dependent on him for things. Then again, she’s a camp girl, so she’s pretty independent and hearty on her own. But it’s good to know that being long-distance prior to deployment made the experience easier on her.

I also know that I could handle things if the worst were to happen while Austin was deployed. I wouldn’t necessarily handle things with as much grace as is sometimes expected from military spouses, but I would be able to deal. Likely with a LOT of Ben and Jerry’s, homemade casseroles, and wine, but I feel that’s acceptable to a point.

I am no stranger to loss. When I was five, my very first kitten was hit by a car and killed. That may seem silly to you non-animal people, but I’m an animal-lover through and through and at five, the loss of my pet was possibly more devastating than it was at 18. When I was seven, I had two more losses. My brother (10.5 years older than I am) went to college. I have always followed my brother around like a puppy, wanting to be part of whatever he’s doing. That hasn’t changed much. When he went to college, apparently it was as if I’d lost a parent. My mom had to talk to my teachers at school about why I was acting funny and refusing to talk. Then a friend in first grade was diagnosed with leukemia. That was really difficult to understand at seven, and it was even more difficult to comprehend when she died within the same year.

After Kendall died, I scared the crap out of myself with the realization that after you die, the world doesn’t stop turning. It keeps on going. The universe doesn’t even blink at your loss, it just carries on doing its thing. This is still kind of crazy to think about for me today, at 26, and it definitely kept me up nights at 7 because I was so overwhelmed by that thought.

I managed to make it to 1997 before I experienced more loss. My mom’s mother, whom I called Nana, whose pearls I’m wearing at my wedding, died. I wasn’t aware at the time, but she’d been having heart problems for a while. Parents don’t tell their 12 year olds that their grandmothers aren’t in good health, apparently. I had no idea anything was wrong until we came in from being at Wednesday night supper one night and had a message from my Uncle on the answering machine that he was in an ambulance with Nana on the way to the hospital. We drove out and the nurses put me in a room with a TV to keep me away from the action, but not before I got a traumatizing look at the battle for life that was going on in the room they so quickly ushered me away from. Mom’s father died of a combination of Alzheimer’s and a heart attack long before I was born, so at 12 I was left with only two grandparents.  It was the first time I’d seen my father cry.

Dad’s parents, whom I called Gandy and Gamma, were somewhat frail, and Gamma died first in early 2001. Gandy lasted a few months after that, to fall of 2001. I can’t recall very much about Gamma’s death, but I know mom and I were cooking breakfast for dinner when we got the call about Gandy. Isn’t it weird, the things we remember about emotional events?

Then in fall of 2007, Dad was diagnosed with cancer, and my world really came crashing down. Not quite a year later, he died. I get envious of people who still have grandparents, and even great-grandparents. I was 16 when the last of my grandparents died, and 23 when my father died. I will not lie to you—I was a complete and total wreck. I read the entire Harry Potter series again because after sleeping for a week I couldn’t sleep at all. I ate lots, and then I ate not much for a while. I was mad. All those stages, I hit them, sometimes out of order and sometimes repeatedly. But I got through it.

Just like I know that if Austin gives his life in service to this country, I will be a wreck. I will cry. I will scream. I will rail against the world. I will eat a metric ton of ice cream and macaroni and cheese and spend sleepless nights watching QVC, but I will come out on the other end and I will be ok.

So maybe my accumulated losses have prepared me to marry this wonderful Army officer I’ll be hitched to very soon. I’ve learned to appreciate life and the people in it while you can. And I’ve learned to navigate the choppy waters of survivorhood. I really hope that all of my losses so far have given me enough cosmic synergy to be skipped over in the war casualty department. I feel like I’ve paid my dues, but I know that’s not how it works. 

Does the thought of it scare me? It shakes me to my core. But I can't do anything about it.

All I can do is enjoy every moment I have with my soldier and send love when he deploys again. Then all I can do is hope and pray that I won’t have to hear those fateful words, “On behalf of a grateful nation…” But I know that if I do have to hear them, I have the strength to come out on the other side worse for wear but ok.

And now that I’ve examined my feelings and thought about those questions again, I am even more ready to walk down that aisle and say “I do” to my other half. It’s so soon now, but it still doesn’t feel real. Everything is packed and ready to go into cars early next week, and he’ll be here tomorrow. Then it’ll really feel like it’s actually happening. I cannot wait.