Goodbye

I said goodbye to my husband Wednesday. Really, we had six days of goodbye. Greg flew home to NC on Friday and on Monday morning, we dropped him off at the airport to fly back to Louisiana, so he could take a bus to Houston to fly up to Baltimore. The infinite wisdom of the U.S. military is astounding sometimes. (This is a picture of my handsome fellas I took over the weekend.)

On Tuesday, I took the 50 minute flight from RDU up to Baltimore Washington International and waited in the USO for Greg’s flight to arrive a couple of hours later. It’s the same USO where we nervously waited for our flight to Italy when we moved there in 2005, the same USO that welcomed me home countless times over those four years when I’d take what is known in military circles as a “hop,” essentially serving as a seat filler on a military chartered flight that left once a week every week from our base in Italy to Baltimore.  BWI is more familiar to me than any other airport because I’ve spent so much time there over the years and the USO has always been a little haven where I could sit down, have a cup of coffee, watch TV, make phone calls or use the computers. As I sat there waiting for Greg’s flight to arrive, I couldn’t help but think of how many of the biggest transitions of my life have started right there in that room: moving to Italy, flying to the states for IVF treatments, moving back to the states after four years in Italy and now, oddly enough, seeing my husband off for a year-long deployment to Afghanistan. I thought about how every time we have experienced one of these life changing events, we couldn't see what was down the road but we found blessings at every turn. In Italy, we were surrounded by the love of a close circle of friends and we traveled and ate and drank and spent a good part of our four years there in absolute awe. Our failed IVFs tested us, strenghtened us and make us ever so grateful for this sweet sweet life. Louisiana was horrible, but it brought us to Dr. V and now we have our miracle boy. I wondered what blessings this deployment might hold in store for us. In a few years, will we look back and feel grateful for this experience?
 A year flies by. I know this because our precious son will soon be a year old. And, yet, when I think of an entire year without my husband, it feels like an eternity lies before me. Andrew will have his first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, and first birthday. A New Year will begin. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. Our world will change. Our son will change. And all this will happen without Greg here to see it, to feel it, to live it.

My husband was unusually quiet while he was home. Greg is nothing if not boisterous. My mama says he has the happiest face she’s ever seen. But he was not himself. Parts of him were already gone. I’ve seen this from him time and again over the years. When our second IVF failed and we returned to Italy, we had less than a week before he left on a five-month deployment. I grieved mightily while it seemed Greg had flipped a switch somewhere in his brain, turning off his emotions and turning his focus to the job in Kuwait that awaited him.

This time was a bit different. I didn’t need him to grieve with me. We have had a year to come to terms with the reality of this deployment. We have our sweet boy now so the pain of infertility is gone, replaced by this great big love. At this point, tears won’t do us any good. Talking about it, well, we’ve done that. We’ve talked about it until there really was nothing left to say.

On Sunday night, Andrew fell asleep in my arms while drinking his bedtime bottle. I asked Greg if he wanted to hold his son for a while before I put him in his crib. Andrew is so active these days and so curious and so busy that to get him to sit still in your lap for a good cuddle is quite a feat. Those tender moments are usually reserved for those first and last waking minutes of the day. I placed Andrew in his father’s arms and went about the business of washing bottles and getting ready for our pre-dawn drive to the airport. It took a few minutes for me to realize that Greg was crying as he held our snoring son. Just like the night before he left for training and I found him hunched over Andrew’s crib crying, this scene broke my heart.

And so, the uniformed man I met at the Baltimore airport had already said his goodbyes to his son and his thoughts were focused on the days ahead – the travelling, the job, and the danger. He tried hard to be there with me and there were moments when I felt the weight lifted from his shoulders but they were fleeting.

On Tuesday, I awoke early (even though it was the very first morning since Andrew was born when I could have slept as long as I wanted). I watched Greg sleeping, the cool gray light of a rainy morning lit his face. His breath was steady, his face was peaceful. I laid my head on his chest, my hand covering his heart. And I begged God to place a shield around him. I silently pleaded with God to deliver him back to us in a year – whole in body, in mind and in spirit. I tried to push away thoughts that this could be the last time I would ever wake up next to my husband.

We spent the next hours in relative silence. I went over the rules again: no helicopters, no volunteering for dangerous shit, no being the hero and lastly, no worrying about us.

At the airport, we sat in the observation area, which gave us a certain amount of privacy. We held hands and watched the planes take off and land. A steady rain fell outside and the raindrops on the glass reminded me of teardrops – like a Holocaust memorial we once visited in Boston where steam continuously forms condensation on the glass panels so they appear to be crying.

My own tears came later, during our last moments together. I was wrapped tightly in the safest place I’ve ever known – my husband’s arms -- and I felt myself giving way under the weight of the moment. There are moments in a marriage that are so intimate and tender that to try to describe them would be foolish. There simply are no words.