Tonight's story isn't mine. This morning I walked past a friend of mine. Her porcelain face seemed tense and harried. She told me she had a rough weekend. She sat with me in my classroom in the relative peace of the hallway before the first bell. She has recently adopted a dog with some bizarre health problems, so I anticipated hearing about her Wilma antics, but when she asked me if I had seen the news, I knew it had to have been war related.
Her husband deployed late June to Afghanistan. Teary eyed she told me that her husband's helicopter had been shot down Friday during Ramadan's Night of Power. 50 or so insurgents had swarmed the base and attacked his helicopter. His Apache took 15 bullets. She said it was a miracle that none of the crew were wounded or killed. She said it was the only such incident since the beginning of the war where there were any survivors. Some of you, not being military spouses or mothers, may not understand why she spent the entire weekend sobbing after she knew he was fine or why it was all I could do not to cry as we talked this morning, but it goes back to what I said yesterday about the illusions of safety and control we have even when we know better.
Even we, in the thick of the home front, lose sight of reality. As long as the emails and phone calls keep coming, we focus on the missing them, the missed date nights and holiday dinners. We focus on how the stupid generic trash bags he bought before he left tore and spilled brown sludge all over the kitchen floor. We focus on the things we'll do when he gets home. We ignore the danger and pretend that those dark government cars only come to someone else's home. I have been surrounded by this for a few years now. I have watched a girl literally shatter as her mom said those dreaded words, "Daddy isn't coming home." I didn't even know her, but helped pick her up and held her while we got her off the phone and to the counselor's office. But even then, I tell myself, that it can't happen to us.
My friend got a big dose of reality this weekend and it made us both realize that no matter how the press paint it, these are war zones and people are killed, people loved just as much as my guy is. Right now, I am trying my best to finish writing for today and get to bed, Chad's shirt laying beside me, the dirty shirt he wore all day one day last week and covered in cologne before finally taking a shower and changing.
Just one deep breath and the tears come. I decide to put the shirt in a plastic ziploc bag so it will smell longer, never knowing when or if I will ever get a chance to ask him to dirty a new one and try to tell myself that 36 hours without an email doesn't mean anything. It usually doesn't, but today I needed to hear that he is ok, even though what happened was in another country because while I tell myself no news is good news. They call or visit when the bad news comes. I need that touchstone, that momentary, "you're ok today" so I can rest easy and not worry. The worrying would kill me if I let it. Which is why we all do it, we all pretend, until we can't, that they are just away, but they are so much more than that.
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