Melissa's Birthday

There are times when no amount of money or public recognition can compensate for the sacrifices our families make while young men and women like me deploy around the world with our nation’s military. As I sit and write this brief missive, my wife is celebrating her 25^th birthday at home with her parents and our dog. Her sisters will be coming in this weekend, not because it is Melissa’s birthday, but because their grandmother passed away after a forty year battle with lupus. She died two days before my wife’s birthday and one day after our two-year anniversary. In the space of a week then, my wife has celebrated another year of a deeply intimate friendship and marriage, mourned the passing of a beloved grandmother and marked the quarter-century milestone of her own life. Where have I been during all of this? Where do I wish I could have been during all of this? We all know the answer…

My wife is a real hero to be able to bravely face a week like she has without me present. As her husband and friend it pains me that I cannot be there to comfort her and celebrate with her these past few days. Phone calls, emails and instant messages all seem so inadequate in the face of love, life and death. Poets passionately compose epic odes to love, playwrights fuss over line after line as they confront the passage of time and novelists rage against death for hundreds of pages only to have their protagonist collapse exhausted and spent—the end. What then could my few words offer to Melissa? I need to be present for her during these sacred moments and yet I cannot be so.

I have not seen much death and violence out here in Iraq. I am not a combat veteran by any stretch of the imagination. I will not be one of those who returns home unable to face the horrors that I have seen here. I will not develop post-traumatic syndrome, nor will I be missing a leg or a hand due to an IED. I have spent most of this deployment (relatively) safely tucked behind the protective berms of my base as the war goes on around it.

And yet…and yet I think this deployment has changed me, like it has changed so many others who have gone before me. The separation from family, friends and other loved ones, the inability to be present when one’s presence is needed most; these are the hidden emotional scars that so deeply wound and so frequently destroy friendships and marriages that break under the burden of seven, twelve, fifteen months apart. I thank God that my wife understands why I am out here and supports my efforts to be a voice of peace in an angry world. I know that when I return home she will be there to help me readjust to life in the States again, will be patient with me as I heal. My wife truly is my hero, one who gives me strength to make it through another day, one who reminds me of my calling…she is my hero, but better yet, she is my friend. Happy birthday, Melissa! How I wish I could be with you…