30. Kind of Amazing

“…[A] part of me – a dark or light part I’m not certain – hungers for death’s sleep, perhaps to wake in the brightness and warmth of [my beloved’s] arms.  This might seem a fool’s hope – to seek love in death – but truthfully I do not know where [he] is but death." 

~Richard Paul Stevens, The Road to Grace

The morning after I published my last blog entry, I was asked if I’d like to share Jon and I’s story in an interview with CBS at Arlington National Cemetery over the Memorial Day weekend.  Having just written about how much it helps me to talk about what made Jon so special, the timing seemed more than a little ironic.  It’s yet another example how I feel like he’s always looking out for me.  I guess I’m pretty lucky to have such an attentive guardian angel husband!  When there are long stretches of time with little to no sign of him and then he suddenly pops up again to remind me he’s still here, it’s like my soul gets a little jump start – enough to last me until the next sign of him, at least.  

What's even crazier (in a good, slightly eerie kind of way) is what happened at Arlington in the middle of the interview.  Over the past several years, I've stood in countless formations at parade rest without issue, jumped out of airplanes in the middle of the summer with 50 pounds of gear, and conducted combat foot patrols in Iraq in 100+ degree heat.  It was a hot day out there in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, though far from the worse I've experienced.  Yet, at the moment the reporter asked me to tell her about Jon died, I literally felt as if I wanted to die too.  The belted dress I was wearing suddenly constricted my airflow.  A sickening nausea washed over me.  I reached out to his headstone to steady myself as my vision started to blur and sweat beaded on my forehead.  I tried to continue with my story but knew that if I didn't take a break, I would probably pass out.  A moment or two after I sat down, a group of Soldiers practicing the 21-gun salute fired their shots in the distance.  A little water and a douse of air conditioning and I felt fine again - more than fine - but the timing of it all still struck me as more than a little odd.  In almost ten years of Army training, I've never been treated for dehydration or anything close to it, and yet when I've been standing in the sun for only 20 minutes by my husband's headstone and get asked a question about how he died, that's when I go down for the count?  Odd doesn't even begin to describe it.  When the reporter and cameraman left and Jon and I were alone again, I felt a wonderful sense of peace as I lay there on the grass above him, separated by only a few feet of earth.  It was as if I was finally at home.  I felt like I could just lie there all day, and if I could have guaranteed that people wouldn't bother me, I very well might have done just that.  Like I said, the whole experience was kind of amazing and kind of eerie all at once.  

As I walked out of Arlington past the hoards of people in matching brightly colored t-shirts, I thought for a moment of how much I wished I was among them.  Oh to be a tourist!  To not have a personal reason to be visiting Arlington over the Memorial Day weekend...how nice would that be?  I thought about the young couple I'd seen at the airport when I'd arrived in Baltimore the night before - they reminded me of Jon and I when we were that age.  The young man pulled his car up to the curb and handed a small but beautiful bouquet of flowers to the girl eagerly awaiting his arrival.  She looked like she couldn't possibly have been happier than she was in that very moment.  I wondered if people could tell as they passed me at Arlington that I was there to visit the man who once made me smile like that.  

Jon visits the grave of General Pershing at Arlington National Cemetery (March, 2002)