Fuck this. I'm tired of saying goodbye to friends.
On Thursday my friend Brian is deploying for a year, ten months of which will be spent in Iraq. Brian's an active duty member of the regular Army who is assigned to the command of a local Wisconsin Army National Guard unit. He and his wife Charisse have three kids, ages 6, 3, and 5 months. Last Friday one of the local VFW posts held an event at a local business which hosts birthday parties for kids in honor of the soldiers and their families. Brian and his family went, and while the article in the newspaper made it sound like they had a good time, I just about lost it when I read the following:
The party served two purposes, Charisse said. It was a good time for her kids, but also a chance for them to meet and play with other kids like them.
"It's a little isolating sometimes," she said. "Their dad misses holidays, misses the start of school. It's nice for them to know there are other families like us, too."
When I was in the Corps I saw a number of families fall apart, not always because of the war, but many because of the lifestyle military service demands. I helped Lamby, one of my buddies from my Iraq tour, write a letter to the commanding general of our division requesting a humanitarian transfer to a non-deployable unit because his marriage was destroyed by the deployment and he had to take exclusive custody of his son. Lamby transferred to a unit closer to his family in Arizona, and I haven't seen him since 2006. Luckily, his son was too young to know what was going on.
Of course, Brian doesn't fall into that same category. He's been deployed before, and he and his wife already know what that kind of separation is like. But his kids, particularly the 5 year old, don't have that same frame of reference, and the way they're learning that their family isn't "normal" because Daddy's job takes him away for a year at a time really tears me up inside. I know there's nothing that can be done to change that reality right now, but the fact that the ones who may ultimately be hurt the most by Brian's deployment had no say in the matter and know nothing else really upsets me. Husbands and wives understand the rules of the game, but the children don't understand and never asked to play it in the first place. There's gotta be something we can do to better take care of these families, and to ensure that we don't send away their loved ones for so long.
The party served two purposes, Charisse said. It was a good time for her kids, but also a chance for them to meet and play with other kids like them.
"It's a little isolating sometimes," she said. "Their dad misses holidays, misses the start of school. It's nice for them to know there are other families like us, too."
When I was in the Corps I saw a number of families fall apart, not always because of the war, but many because of the lifestyle military service demands. I helped Lamby, one of my buddies from my Iraq tour, write a letter to the commanding general of our division requesting a humanitarian transfer to a non-deployable unit because his marriage was destroyed by the deployment and he had to take exclusive custody of his son. Lamby transferred to a unit closer to his family in Arizona, and I haven't seen him since 2006. Luckily, his son was too young to know what was going on.
Of course, Brian doesn't fall into that same category. He's been deployed before, and he and his wife already know what that kind of separation is like. But his kids, particularly the 5 year old, don't have that same frame of reference, and the way they're learning that their family isn't "normal" because Daddy's job takes him away for a year at a time really tears me up inside. I know there's nothing that can be done to change that reality right now, but the fact that the ones who may ultimately be hurt the most by Brian's deployment had no say in the matter and know nothing else really upsets me. Husbands and wives understand the rules of the game, but the children don't understand and never asked to play it in the first place. There's gotta be something we can do to better take care of these families, and to ensure that we don't send away their loved ones for so long.