When he is away…
I miss his jokes.
I miss seeing him make coffee.
I miss being able to talk to him about all the silly stuff.
I miss watching movies together after the boys go to bed.
I miss him laughing at the silly stuff our boys say.
I miss the joy I feel when I come home and see he is home from work early…especially on a Friday afternoon.
I miss hogging all the covers.
I miss being able to run to Target for an hour all by myself on a Sunday afternoon.
I miss driving through a Starbucks and getting coffee together.
I miss hearing the garage door open knowing that means he must be home.
I miss asking him what he wants for dinner.
I miss going to church all together.
I miss watching the kids play together.
Whenever he is gone there is just a part of me that is never 100% okay with it, even if each day doesn’t seem too bad. Sometimes it is the little things, the everyday things that I miss the most. The memories I get from a coffee cup or a pair of shoes. It’s the daily chit-chat that seems the hardest to do without.
This time he won’t be gone too long and I have more than enough to keep me busy but it reminds me that a deployment is coming. It reminds me that before too long I will have to get used to this for months and months. That I will have to get back into deployment mode and that makes me sad. That I will not only miss all this stuff but he will also be in a dangerous place. That he won’t just be in a different state, that he will be on the other side of the world from us.
I try not to think about that. The deployment hasn’t started yet but the pre-deployment period has started and I need to accept it. I need to prepare myself for the rest of this year.
I tell myself that 9 months isn’t too long. It seems like we just got back from our California trip and that was 6 months ago. But still, it is knowing how much I will miss that makes me sad.
On the other hand, knowing that being apart will make us stronger is comforting. Knowing that at the end of it all we will have another wonderful homecoming is a nice thought. Knowing that we have been through much worse makes me feel better.
But how does one really prepare for such a long time without the person they love the most? How do you get used to the idea that you have to say goodbye? A lot of people say that deployments don’t get any easier, and they don’t. They are all different and we are at different stages when we go through them.
I just hope and pray that this deployment isn’t too horrible. That it goes by quickly and that before we know it, he will be home with us again. Standing on this side of the deployment isn’t very fun but time moves on and no deployment lasts forever.
