Deployment Ahead

So, it’s coming. Of course we knew there would be deployment. But now it is here. And there is no going back.

It’s like a lot of things in life that once you know, you can’t go back to not knowing and the process of preparing takes on a life of it’s own. I find myself making multiple lists in my head. Soon I’ll need to start transferring them to paper–I’m running out of mental hard-drive to store so many different lists. There is the How to Tailor Our School Year Around Deployment list. There are the List of Jobs I Need to Relearn How to Do That Patrick Normally Does, the Trips the Boys and I Will Take While P is Gone, and the Things That Need to Be Done Before He Leaves lists. I haven’t added much to the Things We Will Need to Buy Patrick Before He Leaves list, because it’s not really my list. But I’ve saved a space for it just the same.

I’ve begun the game of Next Year Patrick Won’t Be Here for This. It’s not a great game, and I’m debating whether or not I should just quit it. It seems somewhat reasonable to think that it will be easier later if I think these things now. But I’m not convinced it’s so. I’m very tempted to leave it alone and focus on other things. There is a very good chance that this game is what led to our first pre-deployment fight yesterday. At least I assume that is what it was. It was pretty non-sensical, overly dramatic, and nearly immediately followed my recognition that, conceivably, this could be Our Very Last Fourth of July Together.

Do you see how that may not be a very productive tally to keep? Let’s face it. Any July 4th could be any family’s last one together. We don’t know what the future holds, right? And if that did turn out to be the case for us, would it really have prepared my heart any to dwell on it now? It seems, at the time you are thinking it, that it will make the moment stick better, be a little closer to perfect, and motivate you to be sunnier and sweeter. I’m going out on that old limb and say, based on my experience yesterday, sunnier and sweeter  is not the temperament you display after thinking about your husband missing the rest of the holidays his children will celebrate.

First deployment lesson: I already acknowledge that combat can kill my husband and that that would stink. Maybe not a hot idea to live in that place.

(Please excuse the obnoxious capitals. That’s how it all presents in my head, everything of annoyingly equal importance. It IS obnoxious, isn’t it?)

~ by zhappyhomemaker on July 5, 2009.