Never Used to Goodbye

Being a military wife has afforded me the opportunity to partake in many different scenarios focused on bidding my husband a fond adieu. After sending him off to the Hurricane ravaged South last year, I was able to comment on the various ways we Guard Wives typically say goodbye and to offer an assessment on each. Selection of a favorite (a lesser of the evils) has also been made possible. The three most common ways to say goodbye to a husband in the military are as follows: 

1) Husband leaves in the wee hours of the morning from wherever the two of you have shared a night, be it your own home or a hotel room. His alarm goes off while it is still dark, he dresses in the dark, he gathers his things in the dark and you say goodbye in the dark. He leaves and there you are...left with an empty bed. 2) You drop husband off somewhere and the actual departure does not take place at that moment. You are left to say goodbye and drive away knowing he is still there as you make your way home. Knowing that if you turned around, you could probably make time for a few more hugs before someone chases you off. 3) You take husband to or meet husband at a staging area from which an actual departure will take place. You say your goodbyes, he boards a bus or plane and you stand there until that bus is nothing but a speck on the horizon. You make the decision when you will return to your car and leave. 

Scenario one is particularly difficult if you aren't playing on your home turf. Remaning in a hotel room after your husband has gone is a cruel joke. It's VERY dark in there so you should be able to sleep, but it's hard to do when the bed feels so foreign and empty and you're ALONE. I'm not a fan of this scenario even if it takes place when you are at home. Falling asleep in your own bed is easier, but doing so without your husband right there is monumentally difficult. Scenario two is enough to cause anxiety attacks of mammoth proportion. You know he's there, but you aren't allowed to be and you spend the entire drive home calculating how long it would be to reach him if you spun your car around and drove like a madwoman to his location.  Scenario three seems like it would be the most heart-wrenching, but it really is my favorite scenario. I'm doing the leaving, when I'm ready and he's gone so sticking around after a bit is futile. It also creates a "place" where you can drive if you are lonely during his deployment to see where you last said goodbye. It's alot easier for that to be a 40 minute drive than a walk up your home's stairs.

I've also been known to purchase a load of video cassettes on which we tape his favorite programs and organize them for his return. The morning Hubs left for the Gulf was a scenario one morning. Up at 4:00, out at 5:00 so he could report at 6:00. I always make sure he leaves with bits and pieces meant to remind him of home.  Sometimes, it's as simple as a Bounce sheet or two so he can tuck it inside his pillowcase.  Usually, it also includes cards or notes to open while he's away, especially if he won't have a way of receiving mail.  It also wouldn't be a send-off without some sort of homemade baked good.  Chocolate chip cookies are his favorite!

He's a lucky guy. And, I'm a lucky girl. The first few days after he leaves, though, it always seems to be the "tunnel" of goodbye in my brain. There is no other way to describe it and I imagine you've experienced that sensation where after saying goodbye, there is a huge space left behind. A space that seems to suck the oxygen from the room for awhile. I'll be there and I can function, but for the lack of a better word, there is a dull roar in my head that is just a culmination of my whirring thoughts. This subsides in a couple days, but can reoccur at any point during the deployment, especially if we have a particularly long conversation or I happen to have the chance to see him. And, whether it's the weeend, two weeks, two months or over a year, it's strange how the initial goodbye is remarkably the same. 

Although I'm sure we'd rather not say goodbye at all, I bet we all have a preference of one of the three scenarios.  What is yours?

E-mail Guard Wife

Comments

[Molly Pitcher]

Definitely #3. I'd chase the train if they still shipped off in trains. I was tempted to follow the bus.

I handle the actual goodbyes pretty well because they never seem real to me. It is the week leading up to the goodbye that drives me batty.

[dizzylizzie]

well i gotta say our first goodbye was at an airport and were pretty bad due to the Mother in Law effect. just how am i supposed to give him a good kiss goodbye with her standing a foot away staring at us?
another time i watched him get on the bus but by far this last time was THE WORST. i mean i think someone actually sat around thinking really hard about how they could make it THE most painful way possible. seriously. someone actually must have sat around for a long time to think up all this crap.
this is pretty much how it went:
we get the orders. yay. now its for real. (which is actually better than the previous times when he didnt get his orders until the DAY HE LEFT!) and one time we said our goodbyes only to have him come back home for a week because the orders hadnt been STILL hadnt been cut!)
so the date is set. and get this. its Sept 11th. no joke. he's set for his deployment on freakin 9/11. was I a REALLY horrid person in a previous life? what gives? anyway so then about two weeks before 9/11 he gets new orders. they've bumped it up early. now its 9/8. ok phew! but damn, couldnt they have pushed it back 3 days instead of ahead 3 days?? ok now we find out our "family time" is from 4-425am presicley. and after that their little ceremony thing. then we find out he has to be at the unit for formation at 0330. a week later its changed to 0100. well now i'm no dummy. i'm not about to bring the kids to an all nighter. so we get a babysitter. neither one of us slept that night. i mean why bother? we woulda had to get up at 1130 to load all his crap into the truck, shower, dress, eat, etc etc...so we just stayed up holding each other and...well you know...anyway. so now its 0100 and we're in this big ole field thing. its pitch black and there's 250+ people there. just a handful of family members and a couple kids running around. they do their formations blah blah blah...get in line for weapons draw...after about an hour they finally come back to us where we've been waiting in the dark in a gazeebo. platoon sgt says to toss all rucksacks and seabags onto the cargo hold of the buses. ok so we go and do that. then we sit around doing nothing for about 2 hours. then pltoon sgt realizes "duh...all our craps not gonna fit, i better get a 519 truck.." so here comes the 519. now he says for everyone to grab their stuff OFF the buses and into the 519. well there was only 2 guys on the 519 loading bags so everyone (200+guys) just dropped all their stuff on the ground and were all like "ok well that was stupid. now what" another 30mins or so goes by and plt sgt realizes we have family time in about 30 mins and almost no bags have been loaded. now he says "listen up! everybody grab a bag and start loading NOW!" so NOOOOW we've got 200+ guys all trying to get 500 or so bags of gear onto ONE TRUCK AT THE SAME TIME. talk about mass chaos. at this time my DH says i should go to the gym place they were holding the ceremony at for family time and they'd be there in a few minutes.
i got to the gym at 0345. family time was to start at 0400 until 0425. well guess what folks? they got there LATE! it was 0418 (i was watching that clock like a hawk) everyone just assumed we'd still get our 25minutes of family time. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH NOT! we got from 0418-0425. precisley. they were having that stupid stupid stupid ceremony at 0425 come hell or high water. i know for a FACT that the families would much rather have had their full 25mins of family time than stand there on the bleachers with their loved ones standing in line marching off. when they called everyone to fall out for final formation at 0425 i lost it. my legs wouldnt even hold me anymore and i fell flat on my butt in the dirt. my hands, arms, and face covered in tears, snot and slobber. it was SO CRUEL. they just snatched him away. i had to follow the other family members back inside for their fing ceremony and i knew my legs wouldnt hold me to climb up on the bleachers so i just flopped down on the floor at the first empty spot. now i couldnt see too well because my contacts were all fogged up from crying, and coming in from pitch black outside to a bright gym. turns out my flopping spot was about 4 steps behind and to the left of the guy at the podium speaking. i didnt realize this until i looked up from my female-hyperventalating-crying spasm thinking he sounded really loud. so there i am in a crumbled heap on the floor and here's the guy at the podium "..And i want to thank all you brave soldiers and SPOUSES for your support..." i was so embarrased i just put my head back into my lap and cried some more. i looked up for my soldier a few times but my crappy ole contacts everything looked like a big blob of acu's. after a few more minutes i kept hearing the door opening behind me and i thought to myself inbetween sobs that i had to move or i was gonna get trampled by the mass exiting of family members wanting to return home totheir warm beds. well no, when i looked up they were going BACK outside to where we said our goodbyes. i LEAPED to my feet thinking maybe they decided to let us have the rest of our family time and i ran out the building bumping into people and pushing my way to the front. someone had now put ROPES up so we couldnt rush our loved ones. we could see them getting on the buses. they werent but 20 ft away. but we just couldnt go to them. i cried so hard i threw up. just before it happened i remember thinking "oh god i cant possibly embarrase myself and him anymore" so i pinched my nose and swallowed it back down. *CLICK CLICK* a newspaper reporter took our picture. with me choking back my own puke. (you can check it out online just do a google search for "the wheel fort eustis sept 8, headline 169th deploys" i'm the purple faced blonde)
like ive said, we've been through many many deployments. this one was by far the worst. we'd just had a baby. the baby girl he's wanted since i was pregnant with our son 8 years ago. and now he was going to miss the first year of her life. the year when all the cool stuff happens. he even named her giving her name the female version of his own so they'd have the same initals. the frequent deployments and TDYs made getting pregnant damn near impossible but now we had her and he was gone. again.
it doesnt get any easier. it gets harder. you just get used to it. kinda.

[Guard Wife]

Oh, Lizzie, that takes me back! All the ceremonial mumbo jumbo when all you really want is just to sit and be still for a bit. And, you never really get used to it.
We had M2's 1st b-day party a week early so Hubs could be there. I took more photos and video and audio tapes that year than I can truly believe. She learned to really talk and walk and all kinds of cool stuff while he was away. It IS hard.
Hope you'll stick around & keep sharing. I think it's helpful for everyone, including those who do the sharing!

[armybrat af wife]

Your tales of deployment goodbyes have been breaking my heart. After many years watching my dad deploy with the Army and now 18 years watching my DH deploy, well, our goodbyes usually go like this... spouse picks fights with me all week (it's easier for him to go when he's mad at me), I try hard to keep my cool knowing he WILL fall apart once he must say goodbye to little people. The AF deployments are usually a "take spouse to airport moment" so we do the whole family thing and walk daddy to the gate, usually wait long hours until he can enter security and then say our goodbyes & watch daddy walk the concourse to "the big plane" (my boys like to watch plane take off)...there daddy goes to protect the world! I smile and comfort everyone, I do not cry, it's not what I do, I sometimes wish I could but I "need to get this over with", eventhough he has picked fights with me for days and said some really hurtful things in order to separate himself from said situation...I will not falter, I am the strong one, I was raised in a military family...this is what we do. And inevitably, the call comes once he is in place..."you couldn't wait to get out of the airport, could you? ... I bet you are glad I am gone"

I love my husband to death, I really do, but I just don't understand this whole senario. I always hear him say "I never have to worry, I know she can handle anything that arises while I am gone" (it's almost like a badge of honor) but after 18 years of marriage, he still longs for "the waterworks" when he deploys and returns.

I swear next time I will take his mother to the airport (no fail solution to waterworks)!

Any DH's out there with crazy coping mechanism's?

[LizzyJ]

my name is Lizzy too and my fiance always calls me lizzy when hes being sweet. I've never had a departure that horrific because he hasn't been deployed yet. we've just had bootcamp and corps school. I can't even imagine.I just know that when it comes to any branch of the military, they dont give a crap how the people who are left behind feel.
By the way, I know I'm not technically a military spouse yet, but I could use some advice on how to deal witht he first year. i'm having trouble staying close to him and yet keeping my own life. Being apart while i'm at school isn't helping either.Thanks everyone. I love the support you give each other.