Salute to Spouses Blog

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Love All, Support All

I watched my friend’s husband return home last week after a year at sea, stationed aboard a carrier.

As I cheered on sailor after sailor as they re-united with their family, I thought, “I could never do that.”

Another friend's Army husband faces bullets whizzing by and land mines when he deploys.

I have said to her before, “I could never do that.”

I know women married to Navy SEALS, officers in the Air Force, pilots in the Navy and Army medics. Every time they tell me what their husband does and how it affects their lives and emotions, I have, at one time or another, thought, “I could never do that.”

Then, last week, as I was talking to the wife of a Navy corpsman and discussing my own husband's job she said, “I could never do that.”

And I stopped, because I truly found it funny.

Some people consider my husband’s job easier than most. He works on a submarine and is only away from home three or four months, consecutively, twice a year. It's a huge bonus since the government mandated sequestration has required some ships and submarines to deploy for six or more months at a time.

The downside though, when he is gone, is that we hear little to nothing from him. I get very short e-mails once in a while, and during a good month, maybe a letter.  I have gone months with neither and never worried.  It’s the nature of the beast.

I wouldn’t say it was easy, but, as I like to remind myself on the bad days, “It could be worse.”

Maybe for a wife who can talk to her husband in some fashion every day, it seems hard. Though perhaps, for someone whose husband is gone for 15 months at a time, it seems like a breeze.

It all depends on your perspective.

What I find ironic is the constant competitiveness I see among military spouses. They compare whose husband has been gone the longest, worked the oddest hours, had the weirdest assignment or missed the most holidays.

These comparisons can be hurtful, sometimes. Especially when you see one spouse discounting another’s experience because her husband didn’t deploy as much this year or had an easier job in a nicer location.

It’s also a shame. This lifestyle is so unique and challenging that support is often the only way to survive.

I do my best to celebrate when other families reunite.  I cry happy tears for friends when their husbands return home.

After all, for every month that goes by that I'm left to wonder how my husband is doing or what he’s thinking, I also find another woman who I’m in awe of as she remains calm knowing her husband is constantly in harm’s way, even if she does get to talk to him every day.

Because no matter how many times we think, “I could never do that,” the fact of the matter is, a bunch of us are doing it. 

And that’s amazing, impressive and inspiring, no matter what the circumstances.
 

Follow Brittany at http://www.brittsbeat.com/

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