After four years of long distance dating and marriage, I was sure we’d be ready.
My husband and I had become the queen and king of goodbyes. We’d efficiently executed dramatic, sappy, teary-eyed farewells in airports from Alaska to Singapore, and we had almost mastered the cutting-off-and-moving-on part of long-distance relationships. After all, when you attend colleges in different states and one of you is in the military, departures just become part of the routine.
Thus when I drove my Army hubby to Fort Wainwright to deploy to Iraq for a year, I assumed I’d handle the venture just fine. There was no way I was going to be one of those out-of-control wives who cries, “I can’t live without you!” as other soldiers pry her desperate hands off her husband and send her home sobbing in the family Corolla.
Not this woman.
So when we’d finished unloading my husband’s ruck and pack and I was bawling hysterically and repeating over and over through snot and sobs, “I can’t live without you,” I knew this deployment was going to be a whole lot harder than I had first imagined.
Being a military wife isn’t easy. No, I’m not on the battlefield, and no, I’m not the one facing the fire. Those are true heroes. But I do take some of the shots. I sacrifice, too.
While my husband faces the attacks of insurgents and the casualties of war, I face the attacks of depression and the casualties of worry and stress. It’s not just a long-distance relationship I have to hold together anymore; it’s my sanity.
And that task has never been harder.
For one thing, I’m pregnant. Between updating life insurance policies and completing burial worksheets, I schedule doctor’s appointments and search out labor coaches who can assist me in the delivery of our very first child. I spend my free time mailing off ultrasound pictures to APO addresses and posting my most current schedule and emergency numbers around my house for possible injury informants to find when I leave for more than a few hours at a time.
It’s a lot for one person to handle. And it’s sometimes difficult to hold my tongue and be supportive when the only thing I want, the only thing I ask for, is to be a normal family — together in the same place for more than six months at one time. It doesn’t seem like that should be asking too much. And yet, when it comes to serving our country, I’m starting to realize that sometimes it has to be.
Although I complain about holidays alone and long, lonely nights, I quickly forget that my husband endures those things, too — only he endures them in 100-degree heat with only a chow hall, an M4 and a platoon of all-male Army medics to keep him company. While I retreat tearfully back home for recovery weekends, he has no option for a vacation or even a night away. The craziest part about it all is that he actually considers this lifestyle an honor.
For a hero who sacrifices so much just to serve each day, the least I can do is serve him honorably in return — by staying strong, praying hard and realizing that sometimes my husband’s call to serve is more important than my wish to be served.
After all, it’s not just a career choice that causes those long lonely nights and those dreadful deployment goodbyes — it’s a passion and patriotism that keeps not just my husband, but this entire country alive. Through missed anniversaries and single motherhood, I choose to serve my husband, and my country, from the home front. I am a military wife.
Local freelance writer Michelle Cuthrell wrote weekly columns about life as a military spouse, while her husband, a lieutenant with the 2-1 Infantry Battalion, was deployed with the 172nd Stryker Brigade. This first column appeared Oct. 21, 2005.