Chronicles of a Military Wife

Those were the last words I said to Andre before we left him. He said he will, and I’m holding him to it! 

Our goodbye started last Sunday with a Farewell Ceremony held in the gymnasium of my old high school. Now, I’m going to age myself really quickly when I tell you that I haven’t stepped foot in that school in 19 years! There was a heaviness in the air walking up those stairs and into the building. No one said much. There wasn’t much to say. The ceremony was beautiful. The speeches made me feel so proud to be married to this man, this soldier who I love and adore. I’m so thankful for the one percent who swear the oath to protect this country. There with me were Joel and Raina, my parents, and a few other family members. And there were hundreds of other family members and friends supporting their soldiers, too. While I was listening to the speeches, I was also doing the “mom thing” where you pay attention but you’re also playing “mom buffet” with snacks and drinks while shushing the kids. One General started to speak and emotions were getting really high when Raina tapped me on the shoulder and requested a tissue. I turned to look at her and there was blood pouring out of her nose and all over her hand. I quietly whisked her away to the nearest restroom and we got it taken care of. Girlfriend didn’t even get a drop of blood on her white shirt – so amazing! I found myself chuckling in the middle of this super intense and emotional moment because no matter what is going on, no matter how much you are hurting or dealing with hardship, life just keeps on happening. When the ceremony finished, we took a really nice family photo and spent the afternoon just being together.

Monday was brutal.  We dropped Joel off at my parents’ house so he could have lunch and take a nap (he loves his naps!). Then, Raina and I took Andre to his work where we would say our last predeployment goodbye since they were being bussed from there to the airport.  It was the hardest goodbye yet in our history of saying goodbyes.  I did everything in my power to keep it together during the Andre-less drive back to my parents’ house.  I’ve pretty much mastered the ability to hold back tears.  What works best for me is holding my breath… however, with that technique, if you can’t fight them back with the breath hold, then the first breath you take they just come pouring out.  My sweet Raina was absolutely devastated in the back seat.  She sobbed her little eyes out.  We have been talking about this deployment for quite a while and that Daddy would be gone for a very long time, but the concept of time in her world is a three-day range: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  If something isn’t happening within that window, it doesn’t really make much sense.  As we left Andre’s work, I think length of time started setting in for her… that one year is a lot more than today and tomorrow. 

There’s a saying in the military world that goes, “The days are long, but the weeks are short,” because lets face it once you know how long they are going to be gone you start calculating every single way you can to make the deployment seem shorter. I can tell you how many months, weeks, days, how many times our biweekly recycling will be picked up and how many swimming lessons Raina has before Andre will be home. But the saying is true, tomorrow marks one week since we said goodbye. We are one week closer to this deployment being over! We have jumped right in and started crossing things off of our Deployment Bucket List, and we are going to keep chiseling away at it. Thank goodness for FaceTime as we have been able to visit with Andre almost every single day this week. Thank you to everyone who has reached out this past week and especially the day Andre left. We appreciate your messages, prayers and love so much. It means the world to us. Please keep them coming, because we need all of you to help us through this next year!

If only it were as simple as the famous Beatles song:

Help, I need somebody
Help, not just anybody
Help, you know I need someone, help…

Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won’t you please, please help me

Asking for help is a hard thing to do.  I’ll never forget when my friend Megan visited me a couple of weeks after I gave birth to Raina.  She asked me what I needed done.  Being the Type A person that I am, I told her nothing.  She knew very well that there were a million things I needed done, she’s the mom of triplets.  I’m solo parenting a brand-new baby that won’t sleep, cries pretty regularly and is only happy when nursing.  Just then, the dryer buzzed which very obviously meant I had clothes to fold in my near future.  She looked me in the face and said, “Annie, everyone likes to help, but no one likes to ask for help,” and then proceeded to get up and fold all the clean clothes.  I verbally chased her down (because I was stuck under a baby) saying, “You don’t need to do that!” But she wasn’t hearing it.  I have carried her words with me throughout the years.  She gave me a gift that day, the gift of giving myself permission to ask for help.  It’s true, most people want to help. The thing about asking for help is that you won’t always be able to return the “help” to the same person.  And that’s perfectly ok.  That’s why “Thank You” notes exist.   

I will say, the easiest help to ask for is the help already offered – the help that you kind of didn’t even know you needed. The kids and I were in a pretty bad car accident this past February. We walked away from it fairly unscathed, by the grace of God, but my truck was totaled, and I had a few injuries I needed to heal from. On top of this, Andre was on his way home from stateside Temporary Duty (TDY) and would only be home for two weeks before leaving again for three more weeks for overseas TDY, which meant we had an overflowing plate of tasks to accomplish before he left. While he was home, a friend reached out and said she was bringing us a meal. Once again, my Type A surfaced and tried to refuse because Andre was home and I had an extra set of hands. She wasn’t taking “no” for an answer and, Lord have mercy, that meal was soooo appreciated. After Andre left to go overseas, I found out that my arm was a little worse off from the accident than we thought. There was talk of nerve damage and the possibility of needing a cast. I was a hot mess. I had no idea how I was going to solo parent a 2- and 4-year-old with one arm. My neighbor, Emily, who had been checking in on us said, “Let me make some meals for you so you at least don’t have to worry about that part.” She provided a list of 10 choices and told me to pick my top three. Food makes all the difference!!! Those meals fed the kids and me lunch and dinner for a week and a half. I didn’t end up needing a cast (PHEW!), but my arm was pretty worthless for many tasks. I do have some nerve damage in my arm, however it’s not permanent – I’m happy to report – and it should be fully recovered by the end of the year. Nerves are funny little critters. They can heal but VERY slowly.

So, how to ask for help?  It can be very overwhelming when you need help, but you don’t know exactly what you need, or you feel like you can’t ask people to do the task you need help with.  My sister gave me a wonderful piece of advice right after Raina was born.  She told me to make a list of things that need to be done and hang it on my fridge.  That way, when people visited and asked, “What do you need help with,” I could simply send them to the list. Then, they could decide if they wanted to do something that was on it.  I don’t know if I could ever ask someone to scrub my toilets, but toilets certainly need to be cleaned.  Having a list gives the helper the gratification of helping while also providing that person the choice of how they can help.  During this deployment, I definitely won’t be stuck under a baby for hours at a time (that ship has sailed!), but I will still be making lists of things I need to do.  These lists will help me decide what I truly need help with.  The help I will likely need will be, “Please take my kid/kids for a playdate so I can do all the things for the next two hours,” or “Come have a glass of wine with me and tell me I can do this.”  There are times when you have to come right out and ask though.  For those times, you just have to put yourself out there.  After the accident in February, while Andre was gone for three weeks overseas, nothing was going right.  We were down to only his vehicle and one thing after the next started going wrong with it.  I broke down and asked him to reach out to a soldier he works with to see if she could help.  She has a mechanic background.  She couldn’t fix it without a proper garage and tools, but she helped me get the vehicle to a trustworthy garage and recommended I rent a car until Andre returned.  Of course, that was the obvious thing to do when I no longer had a vehicle to drive, but sometimes we all need to be reminded that we’re not helpless nor without options. 

 

“How can I help you?”  “Let me know how I can help!”  Those words are greatly appreciated, but they can also be overwhelming because in the moment we don’t always know what we need help with besides EVERYTHING.  I try not to use those lines when I offer help to others, but sometimes I do.  I suppose it’s just how my brain was trained…. because everyone wants to help.  Typically, I try to say things like, “Can I make a meal for you and your family,” or “Could I take the kids for a few hours so you can get your tasks accomplished?”  Those two areas of help seem to be my forte.  Questions like those open the door for a person in need of help to simply accept it – the help you sort of didn’t know you needed.  Specific help already offered. 

My parents live close and I know they will help out as much as they can during this deployment.  We have several friends, too, who I know will reach out and help when my parents aren’t available. It means the world to me and my family.  When you find yourself in need of help, try to remember that you are giving someone a gift by asking.  You have permission (not that you need it) to ask for help because most people want to help.  The worst thing to do is isolate and try to tackle everything alone.  We’re made to do life together.  When it comes down to it, needing help makes us vulnerable and it’s hard to feel exposed. But the beauty of opening up in this way is how humbling it can be especially when we see and feel the outpouring of support.  When times are brighter and we are in the position to be the helper, we never forget the help we have received. In fact, we may even find ourselves grateful for all of those hard moments because those are the moments that shaped who we are now.      

The compliment I have the hardest time accepting right before Andre leaves and pretty much the first half of him being away is, “You’re so strong.”  It’s usually followed with “I could never do it.”  What I can tell you is that it has nothing to do with being strong and everything to do with survival.  Before he leaves, I am a mess.  The day he leaves, I put on a really strong game face and then I completely lose it.  Right after he leaves and depending on how hard the “deployment curse” hits (which also happens to be a thing when they are away for temporary duty), I’m probably sobbing in a pillow.  None of those reactions are typical characteristics of being strong, but they are a gateway to the strength that eventually does come.

“I could never do it!”  You actually could.  We are all born with survival skills and, in the moment, you do what you have to do in order to survive.  Do I want to?  Nope, not at all.  What ends up happening along the way though is that you get through things – things you never in your wildest dreams thought you could do.  I never thought in a million years I could give birth to a baby without my husband.  I did it.  And I sort of felt like a superhero.  I also had an amazing team helping me, for sure, but at the end of the day, I did it.  By the time he came home after that year away, I thought for sure I would walk around for at least a month with a superhero cape.  I didn’t.  Probably because I didn’t have one, but I did have superhero long socks with a cape attached and I wore those quite often. Lol…

That brings me to the next line I sometimes get – “You knew what you were getting yourself into.”  That is a tough one.  You don’t really know something until you KNOW.  That’s like seeing a struggling runner at mile 17 of a marathon and telling them, “well, you knew what you were getting yourself into,” or telling an exhausted new mom whose infant won’t sleep, nurse, stop crying…”you knew what you were getting yourself into.”  You only know what you know.

Experience makes us strong.  Going into this deployment with some experience makes me feel much more capable.  I’m still in survival mode, and I’ll likely be there for months to come.  I’m guessing once we get past the holidays, I’ll be finding myself more solidly in the “strong” territory.  Until then, I’m just going to carry Kleenex with me because all. of. the. Feelings (and snot).

I’m a survivor.  You’re a survivor.  And we are all capable of so much more than most of us give ourselves credit for.  People want to help and make darn sure you let them – and have the courage to ask for it – because giving and receiving help build strength. And once we’re through whatever we’re surviving, we find out how strong and capable we are.