Her War, Her Voice!

Every person who has said a goodbye to someone in the military has had the same fear: what if? What if he doesn’t come home? What if he is different? What if he gets hurt? All of these questions were answered in various ways for our guest blogger. Kristle is here with us for a two-part series describing her journey toward “home.”

September 20, 2006, the night before D-Day( Deployment Day.) I will never forget that night;  my world was about to come crashing down around me. I tossed and turned most of that night.The last time I remember looking at the clock was 3:00 am, I must have fallen asleep. I woke suddenly a mere hour and a half later, only to roll over and find he was gone.

I freaked, jumped out of bed, and began to rush down the stairs, but something stopped me dead in my tracks. It was my husband in the baby’s room.I peaked around the corner quietly to ensure he didn’t hear me, and what I overheard broke my heart.

“It’s okay little guy, Daddy will be home soon and I’m not going to let anything happen to me. I’m coming home to you and your Mommy. I’m coming home.” To this day he doesn’t know I saw that. I guess I didn’t really know how to bring it up without losing it, so I went quietly back to bed, and cried. That day seems like a complete blur to me. I have pictures to show what went on but I don’t really remember. The only thing I remember was watching them march off and sobbing as I walked to my car. I still remember exactly what was on the radio that day when I got in my car, and every time I hear it, that exact same knot in my stomach returns and I instantly start the waterworks.
“Good Day” by Jewel.  It fit perfectly, and to this day it still fits; it gives the worst day a bit of optimism!

The next three months flew by, and Nate took an early R&R for our little man’s first birthday. He got there later than we expected so he missed Christmas with us, but we got to ring in the new year together! Things were great, he was the same old Nate that left 3 months before. Our time together was amazing, but I was beginning to dread him going back, and it became apparent that he was dreading it too.

On January 12, we were going to get family pictures, something he had promised we would do before he even left in the first place. He let me sleep in, which was a really sweet gesture, but I was brutally woken up by him stomping through the house, kicking stuff around and slamming his dresser drawers. Not exactly a “breakfast in bed” kind of wake up. When I asked him what the heck his problem was it just made him even more mad. So when he told me ” I have NO clean underwear,” it flew out of his mouth as if I had just done something so awful that he couldn’t stand to look at me.

“Underwear?” I asked. I was still very confused as to why he was flipping out over underwear. I don’t think he knew either. We did end up getting pictures that day, but we both had bags under our eyes and red faces as we spent the rest of that day crying together.

January 13, two days before he was headed back, I decided it would be a good idea to get up and make him breakfast, but an unexpected phone call stopped me before I had the chance. It was a fellow wife from the Unit, someone I had a falling out with a few months before.  Something in the pit of my stomach told me to answer.

The voice on the other end temporarily stopped my heart. The only thing I managed to get from the conversation between sobs was “It’s Dennis. He has no legs!”I still want to throw up remembering that conversation.I threw on a pair of heels with my Sponge Bob pajama pants, and rushed out the door to go to her house. I didn’t even say anything to my husband, she needed me, and regardless of our differences, no one should have to be alone during a time like that.

That was a rough day, but that’s another novel in itself. After returning home that night, I made us dinner, and we realized, that anything could happen, so we vowed to make the best of the time we had together. While we were eating my phone rang again, it was the FRG Leader…..seriously, why, cant we do anything without someone calling to bug us, I was so mad, but I answered anyways expecting something of entirely different nature.

“Kristle, I need to talk to Nate, ” She said. He answered the phone with a mouth full of steak. Wow, I could not believe how rude he was being. I was ten seconds from smacking him upside the head when I realized that something else was wrong…..he dropped the food out of his mouth onto his plate, and the only words that came from his mouth after a long silent pause were, “Ok, thank you.” He turned  to me, and said “Its Sgt Wright, he didn’t make it.” And that was it. Those were the last words he said to me until the morning he flew out.

On Jan. 15th he returned to Iraq. It was going to be a year before I saw him again….and a long year it was, Dec 4, 2007, by far the greatest day of my life! From the moment I walked into the building two hours before he was supposed to get there, until he held me in his arms I had the worst case of butterflies I ever had in my life. I could finally take the sigh of relief I waited 15 months to take. It was over. He was home; we didn’t have a care in the world. Unfortunately for us this was just the beginning.

To read more about Kristle, visit her blog. Kristle will be back to finish the story, so stay tuned and watch for her!

Tags: deployments, injuries, military wife, PTSD, TBI

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Discussions, Re-deployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.