37. Dating - It's Everywhere!

"As long as there is someone in heaven to protect me, there is no one on earth who can break me." 

~ Unknown

Everyone in the Army gets married so young.  I forgot how prevalent that trend is until I started working on a military installation for the summer.  Being enmeshed in this culture again makes me realize that it's almost easier than not to wear my weddings rings since no one bothers me (or tries to hit on me), though they do sometimes make the assumption that I'm what's called "dual military."  Just the other day, for example, I had to tell another officer that I was dual military...until my husband was killed in action.  Oh, hello!!  The elephant in the room has now been revealed!  From my perspective, it doesn't bother me to talk about it, but most people usually react with that horrified look, like "oh, my God, why did I bring it up?"  I don't think they realize how much it means to me to be able to talk about Jon, even if it means going into the more painful aspects of our story.  Talking about my husband is how I remember him on a day-to-day basis in the absence of some special memorial event or meaningful date on which everyone's attention is focused on the magnitude of his loss.  


Since I lost Jon, the guys I've dated I should not have dated....and for a wide variety of reasons.  A mutual friend once told my latest ex, DS (before I made the mistake of going down that road with him), that he thought "it would take a really special guy to win [my] heart again after what [I've] been through."  At one point, I fooled myself into thinking DS was that guy...and that he was comparable in some ways to Jon.  Oh, how wrong I was.  When I think about the fact that I dared to suggest DS was a good man like my husband, I literally feel sick to my stomach.  That's not a comparison I make lightly and it's one I clearly wasn't warranted in making in reference to someone so incapable of telling the truth or doing the right thing in general.  I'm sorry to sound so harsh, but what an absolutely worthless piece of crap that guy is.  Seriously, who does what he did, knowing all too well what I've already endured?  And if it was the thrill or attention he sought, why not pick someone who doesn't suffer from permanent-broken-heart syndrome?  Perhaps he ought to heed the words of Jeckov Kanani, a wise man who once said:  "A real man is measured not only by the respect he gives himself but also by the respect he gives his woman."

Dating.  UGH.  It's all around me.  The catch-22 I keep coming back to is that I don't want to be alone forever.  I long for the comfort and security of having that special person I can collapse on the couch with at the end of the day and talk to about anything in the world.  But the only person I want to spend the rest of my life is Jon.  It never ceases to amaze me when family and friends offer their advice in response to this impossible dilemma - they tell me to focus on being happy just being me...but, when I feel ready, to get out there and date because Jon would want me to have companionship...but not to expect too much right off the bat...oh, and not to settle for anything less than the best.  My brain goes into a tailspin just trying to follow the logic - or lack thereof - of what they think I "should" do. 


It's hard to escape the fact that dating and the military's tendency to jump the gun on marriage are all around me.  I try to focus on the future, but my connections to the past keep pulling me right back into it.  To say that the military community is a small world is an understatement.  I constantly run into people I've worked with or who knew my husband - at the airport, at training events, through mutual friends, on Facebook, and, of course, at Arlington National Cemetery.  Just today, I ran into Jon's first commander from Korea at a will-signing session here on post.  His name immediately struck a familiar chord and I racked my mind to remember where I'd seen it before.  Then I knew - that was the name on Jon's old Officer Evaluation Reports from Korea.  It was the same name printed on the legal documents in front of me, and I figured it was worth asking.  Sure enough, when I made the connection, he said he was about to ask me the very same question.  I consciously had to fight back the tears as I realized how I knew him...and how he knew me.  There aren't too many Grassbaughs in the Army.  In fact, there used to be three.  Now there are just two - myself and my brother-in-law.  As it turns out, my husband's old commander was also a classmate of Jon's brother at West Point.  Small world indeed.


Speaking of will signings, that's a real fun one for me.  On a daily basis, I'm now bombarded with people asking each other what they would want if their worst case scenario were to become a reality.  They can usually joke about it because it's such a remote possibility.  They'll discuss without any emotion how they want their assets handled.  Or who their beneficiaries should be.  Or who should have the ability to "pull the plug" in the event that they're no longer capable of making decisions independently.  Or - my all-time personal favorite - if they have any specific burial and funeral arrangement requests.  Jon didn't have a will when he died.  All of his other military paperwork was in order, but he left on such short notice that he didn't have time to take care of this particular item of personal business.  He was too busy procuring last-minute supplies to make sure his unit would be ready for the upcoming deployment.  Thank God he told his dad that he wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery if anything should ever happen to him.  He never had that conversation with me, most likely because he didn't believe it would truly be necessary.  It was probably his way of protecting me from the grim reality of his job.  But when his unit couldn't locate the papers we needed to make time-sensitive decisions regarding funeral arrangements, we had to rely on our best judgment and limited knowledge of what he would have wanted.  I guess we knew him pretty well because, in the end, our best guesses were almost 100% accurate.  


I also recently sat in on a meeting with a widow who had just lost her husband in Afghanistan last month.  She seemed so calm and collected as she handled her affairs, but, as I tried to explain to one of the other attorneys at my office, it's a whole hell of a lot easier to appear to have it all together when you have a long to-do list you're working your way through.  It's the silence at the end of the day that's the hardest.  It's when you have nothing to occupy the interminable minutes without the love of your life that makes you wonder how much longer you can keep up the outer facade of strength that everyone knows and comes to expect.  To provide guidance and support to the families of fallen Soldiers, the program the Army has developed (and that I helped contribute to at a special planning session in Washington, D.C.)  is called Survivor Outreach Services.  As I observed that widow answer the questions I knew she was realistically of no sufficiently sound mind to even consider, I thought about how appropriate that title really is...Survivor Outreach Services.  S.O.S - a call for help.  It's the only response I've been able to come up that makes any sense with when people offer their customary greeting:  
The question:  "How are you?"  
My response  "Oh, I'm fine- I'm here.  I'm surviving."
Surviving.  That's all it is.  What more can I do?  Dating and marriage may be all around me, but they're not a part of my new normal.  When I see other couples kiss and hug and say "I love you," I have to turn away.   I whisper "I love you, Jon," to myself and hope against hope that those couples never have to know how it feels to no longer hear the sweet sound of their loved one's response:  "I love you too, baby - so much."