He is home but he is never home. He is supposed to be taking a knee. This duty assignment is supposed to be an assignment that allows him to be home and get to know us again after being deployed every other year for the past five years. I never see him. I understand that there are schools that he needs for his career and that we can’t help but be apart for that time. There is also training that needs to be done so that they can be safe and do their jobs. I get this. I understand this. I still miss him. We have only had about 25 days together in the last 6 months and now he is going again.
I hate saying “Goodbye” over and over again. I hate not knowing if he will be home for dinner or not, especially when he has already missed so many dinners. I hate when people say “I bet you are glad he is home,” when he will be leaving for months at a time between deployments. I hate trying to explain to my kids why he is leaving and them asking if he is going to Iraq or Afghanistan again. A six-year-old should not know about Afghanistan or Iraq let alone be able to point it out on a map. I hate that I can say it is only three months apart.
I will prepare my kids to say goodbye again and I will send him off with postcards to send back to them. I will feel guilty that I am sad because he could be at war, again. I should be glad that it is just a school. He is supposed to be home but he is never really home. We are just a safe place to lay his head before he is gone again. We live in between goodbyes.
As military spouses the goodbyes are always lingering. We cry our tears and we go to our empty houses. However, we cherish the “Welcome Homes.” We become extremely aware of our love for our spouses during these separations. We are faced with how much they mean to us and what we would do for them. We respect their place in our lives and we cherish the times that they can fill that space. We also get to experience those long “I’m back” kisses that tell us so much. They tell us that we are whole again. They remind us that our relationships are going to survive. They remind us that what we have is more then just time apart. We have each other.
