Nobody ever said love was easy. In fact, I believe the one piece of advice my mother gave me before I walked down that infamous aisle was, “Never go to bed angry…just stay up all night plotting your revenge.” Marriage IS work, and contains equal amounts of blessings and heartbreak. Heck, I sometimes wish Cupid would just shoot himself in his own damn butt—at least then he would know how much it hurts! But for Army Wives, the situation is a little more complicated. We have a ten hour time difference, only twenty minutes to air out our dirty laundry, and probably enough skeletons in our closets that it would require a Human Rights Team from the United Nations to sort through it all. Maybe it’s the lack of sex that makes Army Wives so cranky, or maybe it’s due to some free radical chemical reaction resulting from frozen pizza mixing with cheap gas-station coffee (you need something to help keep you awake through the tenth soccer practice of the week), but the outcome is the same: there are those moments where your mouth comes completely unhinged and you hear yourself yelling hurtful words that are designed to sting the soul.
Unfortunately, Karma (and I am talking about fate here, not my pet goat) uses these situations to her advantage. It’s called the communication blackout, and it almost always occurs directly following a couple’s most heartbreaking conversations. I am talking about those phone calls where you hear yourself hissing, “Fine” in response to every question, and the call ends with a you chucking your cell phone with all of your strength against the wall (fyi: If Verizon is reading this, this is purely a hypothetical example). I am absolutely certain that Karma is a Navy fan, and loves to stir up sand storms just to make irritable Army Wives suffer in silence, but sometimes—in fact, many times—communication is interrupted due to the unthinkable. Days can go by without so much as a single email, and you find yourself scanning though all the news sites for any tidbit of information regarding a deployed unit. Is he not calling because you finally managed to permanently annoy him or is it because he is currently going through Hell and doesn’t have the time or patience to deal with any more mama drama? You find yourself sitting on the edge of the bed retracing every single moment of your last conversation, and hoping with every ounce of your soul that you remembered to say ‘I love you’ before you lobbed your phone out the window.
That was my last Saturday. That was my last phone call with my husband. I had spent the night in the city to celebrate a dear friend’s birthday, and to be honest had totally forgotten about the war by the time I finished my first Hurricane. We had decided to mark the occasion with San Antonio’s monthly pub run, and all of us were merrily drinking, running, writing totally immature catch-phrases all over each other’s arms, and doing rounds of birthday-shots. To be honest, it was a great time. I laughed for hours, salsa danced in running shoes (which means I sucked even more than usual), and came to the realization that I have some of the best friends on the planet. Unfortunately, what I failed to notice was that somewhere in my crazy evening, I had managed to drop my phone (nothing unusual there) and consequently turn off the skype app. Fast forward to morning, and by the time my slightly hung over eyes opened, I had already received several WTH emails from my husband in reference to my non-skypable status. Now, common sense should have kicked in and warned me that any conversation with a deployed spouse under these circumstances was going to end BAD, but when does an Army Wife EVER listen to common sense? The pearly angel on the shoulder went MIA about three days after Jim arrived in a war zone, and I haven’t heard the sounds of that heavenly harp since.
As expected, I answered the phone call, and all the bitterness, jealousy, and darkness from both sides of the connection came spilling out. Jim was infuriated that he couldn’t reach any member of the family when he finally had a few moments to talk (and also…. that his wife was out with friends having a fantastic time while he was stuck in Iraq), and I was enraged for taking the verbal beat-down over a situation that was out of my control (and also… felt tremendous guilt for having a fantastic time while he was stuck in Iraq). Both of us were right, and both of us were wrong. Once again, Iraq has presented us the perfect nuance, and neither one of us was willing to put on our sun glasses to help blend the two shades of the argument. The call ended horribly, with resentment boiling over on both sides. Anger had once again melted all aspects of joy, and as usual, I slammed down the phone, buried my head in a pillow, and screamed every four-lettered word I could muster.
I wish I could say that a few hours later Jim called, we both apologized, and spent the remainder of our twenty minute conversation blowing kisses towards each other, but that would be a lie. Over fifty hours crawled by as I waited to hear from Jim, and with each hour my heart sunk a little deeper into despair. I can’t tell you when it dawned on me that the 3d ACR was in the middle of another communication blackout, but I can tell you that when I did finally accept this, I held my breath and prayed that it was just a sandstorm or that some meathead had accidentally spilled his coffee down a transformer. I found myself wishing on every star that night that fate could find a way to obliterate that horrible phone conversation and that I could swallow back every wounding word.
But as we all know, the world as yet to create a do-over button, and we are simply stuck living and dealing with the crap we create. Anger had blinded us both, and it took over fifty hours for the fog to finally lift. When my husband did finally call, it came with the unimaginable news that two soldiers, Sergeant Christian Garcia and Sergeant Quadi Hudgins, were killed by enemy action. Both men were husbands. Both men were fathers. Both men are gone forever.
As I solemnly took in this news, I came to the epiphany that life may not come with a convenient do-over button, but it does offer brief moments of clarity—even when you are in the middle of a storm. Karma could not help me take back my biting words, but rather taught me that the fragile heart is the one true Achilles heel of the army wife. Sometimes, Karma needs to hit you over the head with a 2x4 for you to realize that life can change in an instant. The world may shift, and your heart may temporarily fall to pieces, but as long as you still have each other there is still hope that those pieces can find their way home. I learned a valuable lesson that day: that life is more than a brief candle that flickers and goes out, but rather a vivid torch that helps illuminate the path for those you love. It is bright enough to navigate you through the storm, strong enough to keep you together even when you are 7000 miles apart, and gentle enough to allow you to find forgiveness within. Life may threaten to drown us, but it is also warm, bold, and bright enough to drive out the darkness. I wish Cupid’s arrow led to a love filled with sunshine and unicorns, but unfortunately people are going to continue to make hideous and painful mistakes. Just don’t give up on yourself. Quitting is not an option. After all, I can promise you this: I would rather walk a few moments in the darkness with Jim, then spend a lifetime in the light alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment