Reality is a hard thing. Some days, it is so hard one can barely catch their breath. It is so much easier to just go through life believing the really bad stuff only happens to other people. This week it did happen to someone else. It did not happen to me, or my family, so why do I keep crying?
I have a lot of titles. I am a mother, a wife, a sunday school teacher, youth leader, and a homemaker. Over the course of my life, past and present, I have and will hold others. But there is a title that makes me part of an elite group. A group of which I am so incredibly proud to be a part. I am a military wife. This particular title influences how I function under every other hat I wear. It determines where I live and whether or not I am doing these things on my own or with the help of my amazing loving husband. It determines whether my friends are neighbors, living in another state or sometimes someone I only have the pleasure of knowing because she also bears this title.
About five years ago, I joined an online group designed to support and bring together this awesome community of military wives. Say what you want about online friends, but this was a thriving community where I met some women I hope to always call my friends. We came from vastly different backgrounds, married men with different jobs in all branches of military service. We did not always agree. Sometimes we even strongly disagreed. But at the end of the day, what really mattered was we understood each others' lives in a way civilians never could. We understand about duty before family, Christmas, birthdays, and even births, without spouses. We got that family did not have to be blood but was often the friend who jumped in to watch your kids in an emergency or gave you the number of a friend of a friend who knew how to fix a faulty car part. Day after day I shared my life with these women, and they shared theirs with me. We knew each others' dreams and shared our good and bad days. We shared everything from the mundane daily tasks to the birth of children. We bragged about our spouses and kids and begged advice for a new duty station. We watched tickers count down to births and absolutely ate up the photos of homecomings. We laughed with, and at, each other and we cried and prayed too. They became a part of my life and some of us just connected the way friends do. When the web site changed and made our beloved board difficult to use, many of us found each other again through other forms of social media. Some bonds just cannot be broken. We continue to share our lives.
This week, the unthinkable happened. The horrible nightmare, feared by all military wives, came knocking. For one of our own there will be no homecoming pictures. The reality of war hit us all in the face. A husband and father will not come home. It did not happen to me. My husband is safe and sound. My girls will continue to have their father. Still I cry. I cry every time one of us posts a picture or story on Facebook. I cried when others passed on that story so as many as possible would know of this hero and his family. I cried at the local high school homecoming game when they sang the National Anthem. This did not happen to me. Why do I keep crying?
I cry because this was not supposed to happen to one of us. I cry because she is my friend, but I am not geographically close enough to help. I cry because I cannot sit and listen to her boys tell stories and share their fears. I cry because I cannot just bring a meal, do a load of laundry, make a phone call or just hold her up when she falls apart. I cry because life just goes on. My girls had their events this weekend, but her boys' world just came to a crashing halt, all plans laid aside. I cry because the others standing with me at that football game don't really understand that they do so because of this hero's sacrifice. I cry because there are thousands of families just like this one, and most days I don't stop to think about them. I cry, even though this did not happen to me, but it did hit home.
