Day 241: This stinks!

Yesterday was hard, then we got a phone call around 10 a.m. that made the whole day harder.I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s holiday, so I kept my day close to the vest in last night’s blog.  Yesterday morning right after presents and just before a delicious breakfast, my dear husband called.

I was upstairs changing the baby when I heard the house phone ring. I knew it was him and tried to hurry down my sister’s steep stairs with a squirmy baby. I heard my BiL answer the phone and finally say, “Ohhh, Chad, Merry Christmas!” After a few minutes of polite banter, my sister jumped in and suggested he probably wanted to talk to me.

I happily answered with a bright, “Merry Christmas!” His reply was not cheery. He was very down. He said, “They try to make it nice for us, but I would rather not think about it being Christmas.” He is not a big Christmas fan and usually doesn’t care one way or the other, so for him to be so broken up over missing it was devastating.

I struggled with one more, “I love you,” as we said good-bye, trying to keep the tears from becoming sobs. I picked at breakfast and finally couldn’t hold it any longer. I started crying at the table. I saw my mom’s eyes fill with tears watching me start to cry. She kept telling me it is OK, it will be OK.

But it isn’t. It is hard. It is torturous. It is unfair. It is not OK. We are surviving. We keep surviving. But missing four years of your family’s lives is not acceptable. There has to be a better way to solve the current crisis than continuing to send soldiers over and over again.

I haven’t seen his face other than in a one second video or in two pictures since the first week after he left. Why isn’t internet service provided to the soldiers? We can’t afford to pay $120 a month for it when he moves from post to post and is only there half a month. If the government cannot provide free internet for the soldiers, then they should have skype or video chat enabled computers in the public MWR areas.

At some point, it starts to feel as if he has never been home. I start to forget the way he smells, the way he sounds when he mumbles goodnight, the way it feels to lay on his chest. The ache diminishes sometimes, grows sometimes, but most of the time feels like a paper cut, a sharp stinging pain that isn’t enough to cry over, but just painful enough I can’t ever forget it is there and a day doesn’t go by without something making it sting just a little more.

I tried to enjoy the day with my mom, sister and her family. It was a nice day, but I definitely empathize with my husband who is just done with being gone. We have been great. We get better and better at surviving apart, but frankly it takes a toll on our surviving together.

We have 8 more months of this crap. Three more until R&R. Some days, it just stinks! Don’t even get me started on New Years’.