Day 79: Thanks CNN

This morning I woke up and started the coffee pot, grabbed the baby for breakfast and didn't check email or Facebook until we'd been up an hour. I had message on Facebook from my MIL asking if Chad was OK. Apparently she was watching the news, and CNN was reporting the following:

Baghdad (CNN) -- Five U.S. servicemembers were killed Monday in central Iraq, the U.S. military said in a written statement.

The deaths are the single largest loss of life among U.S. troops in Iraq since 2009, and they come as Iraq debates whether to request U.S. troops stay beyond a January 1, 2012, deadline that requires 46,000 American forces out of the country.

The U.S. military did not say how or where the five died.

But two Iraqi security officials told CNN Monday that the servicemembers were killed during an early morning mortar attack at a U.S. military base in southeastern Baghdad. You can read the rest by clicking on the link - CNN story.

My heart immediately sank. I know that my husband is near that area, depending on how accurate they are being with location. Although I am not exactly sure where because all the maps of bases and posts that used to be available online have been removed (for obvious reasons). I also know they've been dealing with increased mortars and IEDs.

THIS IS WHY I DON'T WATCH THE NEWS!!! I am not usually one to freak out, but this really has me thrown for a loop. I haven't heard from him today and the news isn't releasing any new information about where or which troops were killed until the families are notified. He called his son yesterday for his birthday and had a terrible connection, I'm told, but other than that I didn't hear from him since lunchtime on Saturday.

I am pinning my hopes on the fact that I am not hard to find, and if they were trying to notify me, I think they would have been here already. But I can't get the sick feeling out of my stomach. In a few hours, I may have an email from my husband and feel very silly for getting so upset, but right now, I hate to admit it, but I am terrified. I hope to feel very ridiculous.

In an effort to find out what is happening, I contacted our FRG leader (family readiness group) to ask what she had heard. She said she hadn't heard anything, which is kind of good news, but would call our Rear D (rear detachment are the troops who maintain operations back home, keep open communications between spouses and troops, etc.) I spent the next three hours checking my email every five seconds. She answered me very quickly about making the call and then nothing. I really got worried then. She might not email me back if it was our troops and/or my husband because they will only notify people in person.

I literally started paying attention to cars outside the house, left my computer open so I could see the second I had an email. Nothing for hours. I was drying my hair watching Lil Bit play in her exer-saucer and my emotions got the better of me. I couldn't imagine her facing the rest of her life without her dad. I couldn't imagine trying to be a mom in the midst of grieving. In my head, I am picturing the complete meltdown I would face and then having to be strong for her.

It was a LONG four hours. I finally saw my husband's roommate online on FB chat. I quickly asked him if they were OK. He answered that they were fine, a little irritated that their internet was down, but otherwise, just fine. I was very relieved. I let my family and friends know that he was OK, but just as quickly realized that five wives were still getting the devastating news that their husbands weren't coming home and five more that their spouses were injured.

My FRG leader still hasn't emailed back which makes me think it might have been some of our group, if not my husband's troop. I spent four hours imagining the worst, which is WHY I DON'T WATCH THE NEWS!!! I still had hope that it wasn't my soldier so I don't exactly know how it would feel, but a glimpse into that horror was more than I ever want to experience again!

My heart aches for those spouses and families. I don't know how you would deal with such earth shattering grief. All I can do is pray for them and for safety for the rest of our forces as the insurgents try to increase the violence to take credit for driving American forces out of the country. My countdown to welcoming him home is more real to me than ever. I am still hopeful that he will be home earlier than a year. In fact, I think he is supposed to be home a week earlier than he left last year, but I am not changing my count. I am counting down until he is home. When he gets on a plane, I will update to one day left. But I refuse to chance jinxing anything. 

Day 200: not a milestone

Somehow, this nice round number should be a milestone, but it really isn't. We are getting close to the six month mark, but it is still a few weeks away. It feels like a lifetime until R&R.

This deployment has been so busy I haven't had a chance to catch my breath, rushing past in a whirlwind of chores and baby time. And yet, tonight it feels like a lifetime since I had my husband home. Somehow being too busy to miss him also makes it feel like forever since he left and maybe with him less on my mind, he feels a little more gone.

I don't know if there is a trick to this stuff. Being married and staying happy is hard enough for other families. It is extra hard to stay in love throughout the separations and deployments. I love him, of that I have no doubt, but I understand how a couple could fall apart. At some point it feels like you're just alone and I could see how easy it would be to start feeling single and acting single.

Part of what makes this so hard is that we have to act single a lot. It is part of losing that dependasaurus I talked about a few entries ago. We have to become independent and our hearts less tender so that we can survive.

When I was going through counseling during my divorce, my counselor told me that it would take a year, living through each holiday, each season without the children I had raised or my now ex-husband before I would be ready to move on. That you have to grieve each milestone before being able to put those feelings away.

And now we have thousands of military spouses on the home front essentially grieving that loss for a year, over and over, each time becoming a little more independent, a little less attached. When your husband is gone a year, home a few months and then gone for training, home and gone, home and gone and then deployed again, it is an emotional roller coaster and human nature protects ourselves from the repeated hurt by growing more callous. The first time he left, I sat with him until they made us separate. The second time he left, I sat with him on post for a few hours until they moved to the main processing area. This time, I hugged and kissed him at the front door when he left with one of his fellow NCO's.

I cried a few tears and went on with the second day of school. I went on with what I had to do. But it gets harder to have my heart in two pieces, the piece reserved for him and the piece pretending I am OK. I know we will survive this deployment because we are crazy about each other, but I would be lying if I said the separations weren't taking a toll. I wish the powers that be could understand the cost and put a cap on deployments or find a way to put soldiers serving fourth, fifth, sixth deployments on stateside duties. They wonder why there is so much suicide, divorce, abuse. People aren't meant to live like this.

It is hard to spend so much of my life missing him. It is hard to have so much of my heart walking around half a world away. They say being a mother is learning to live with your heart walking around outside your body. It is just as true of being an army wife. My heart is where he is. I just wish it were a little closer a whole lot more often. I will keep counting down until he is home, praying everyday we can catch a break and get off this deployment cycle. I don't know what we'd do with two years together, but I am willing to find out.