56. The Real Reasons to Fall in Love (and the Moments That Take Your Breath Away)

"If my heart had wings, I'd fly to you. A breath away's not far from where you are..."
~Celtic Women, To Where You Are

Jon and I didn't fall in love with each other because we were worried about appearances or because either of us thought the other was "cool." I always knew he must have loved me for who I am as a person because when we started dating, I definitely wasn't looking my best. Among other things, I'd gained the freshman fifteen...at least. And before March 23rd, 2003 - our first "official" date - he'd also seen me in several not-so-attractive situations. Okay, maybe more than several. I'd like to say it was love at first sight, but in reality, it was a little more complicated than that.  Where to even begin? Well, I guess you could start with the fact that when I joined ROTC as a freshman I couldn't run a mile without stopping and gasping for breath. Our first workout on my very first day of Physical Training (PT) was a 1.9-mile run. Jon was in charge, and the instructors told him to "go easy" on the new kids. Turned out that for me, even easy was a challenge. I worked on that - hard - over the next couple of years because I got tired of always being in the slow group and of running sucking so much. I eventually reached a point where, instead of dreading it, I was able to complete the Army Ten Miler, and Jon and I could go for a run together at a good pace. The first draft of our wedding ceremony script included this blurb where Jon said that one of the reasons he loved me was because of my dedication to him, to my friends and family, and to bettering myself in areas where I knew needed improvement - according to him, by that point, I could probably beat him on a two-mile run. I ultimately decided to take that sentence out of the final version of the script because although it made me laugh, I saw no reason to lord it over him during our big day. And he could still kick my ass in combatives or a tickle war any day...as he did on many occasions.

I HATE this picture of me - look at those chubby cheeks!  But Jon thought it was cute - this is us at Ruby Tuesday about a month or so after we started dating (April 2003)

Jon and one of his classmates helped move me into my freshman dorm on the first day of ROTC orientation.  Apparently, he'd told one of the other Cadets to save him a cute girl and I was the lucky one he picked.  Other than that brief interaction, I only had a single one-on-one conversation with Jon the rest of my first semester, and it was at the post office in the basement of the arts and sciences building. I was a bad Cadet and hadn't quite wrapped my head around all the uniform rules and regulations. I was wearing my BDU hat inside - a big no-no - because taking it on and off whenever I went into buildings completely screwed up whatever I'd been able to do to get my hair under control (silly me...I cut it all off before joining ROTC, thinking it would make things easier, but ended up just creating more of a headache for myself). When I saw Jon walking toward me, I thought "damn! I hope he doesn't see me with this thing on!" and quickly removed my cover. He was very polite and respectful, and I never would have guessed that beneath that reserved exterior was a man who would later have me doubled over and gasping for air...but this time, instead of running, the culprit would be me laughing too hard.

Jon when we went to the pistol range (my first time!) at Christmas during our first year together - he was such a goofball...and a damn good shot! (December 2003)

During my second semester, I pledged to the military fraternity in which Jon was the designated First Sergeant and PT Instructor. He had seemed pleasant and very competent as the ROTC Battalion Commander, so I figured he'd be one of the nicer ones during the pledging process. I was one hundred percent wrong. I couldn't stand him - I thought he was so mean and hard to talk to. As it turned out, that was all a big act...and when I finally finished the excruciatingly difficult two-month pledge period and got my life back, I discovered that he was actually an incredibly nice and unassuming guy, as I'd originally suspected. It probably worked out to his advantage that he seemed so mean to me as a pledge - in fact, he even made me cry once. But it made getting to know the "real" Jon much more enlightening...and so much more fun.

What's even better is the fact that, unbeknownst to me, Jon made up a rule prohibiting any of the other guys from trying to date me for at least a month after I became a member of the fraternity...and then he promptly broke that same rule about two weeks after I completed pledge period. As one of the other guys in the group told me, he was definitely staking his territory so that no one else would try to call dibs. Again, I thought it was hilarious when I eventually found out - hilarious and oh-so-cute. It all started after we finished pledging when someone in the group sent out an email with a list of everyone's screen names so we could stay in touch over spring break (this was back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger). The first time I ever sent "grassman18" a message to say hello, he pretended like he was all surprised that I'd contacted him personally (in fact, I think his exact words were "Oh God, how did you find me?"). But that was before he casually mentioned that he'd looked at a map and noticed that we only lived forty-five minutes apart from each other in Massachusetts/New Hampshire and would I maybe like to get together and hang out since he was bored and didn't have any big spring break plans? At first, I didn't think much of our first outing together. I thought we were just spending time together as friends and getting to know one another better. But the conversation I had with one of my other new frat brothers the night I got back from that outing went something like this:

Frat brother: What did you do to Jon? He called me all panicked because he said you guys hung out today.
Me: Yeah, we went to get pizza and saw Old School at the movies. So?
Frat brother: Well, he said he already met your dad...
Me: Yes, he picked me up at my house. I thought it was only polite to introduce them.
Frat brother: And he said you showed him two dresses you're thinking of wearing to the military ball and asked him which one he thought you should wear...
Me: Yeah, that's also true. We did a quick tour of the house and they were hanging up in one of the bedrooms.
Frat brother: Well, he's all nervous, so I don't know what's going on. I bet he likes you...

Needless to say, that pizza-and-a-movie outing eventually led to Jon changing his itinerary to be on the same flight back to Baltimore as me. He had my mom and I pick him up at his house in New Hampshire on the way to the airport...only, as it turns out, his house wasn't exactly on our way.  This was a few years before navigating via GPS became standard practice, so it was usually difficult to predict exactly how long a trip would take. The directions Jon emailed me, however, were exact to the tenth of a mile. As my mom pointed out, someone with that kind of precision knows perfectly well that he's adding another 45 minutes to our trip, but these are the things a guy does to impress a girl he likes, right?  When we picked Jon up, he had a week's worth of stubble and a tiny spot of what looked like tomato sauce on his chin.  I pointed it out to him, laughed, and silently made a mental note of how sexy and adorable he looked in that moment. On the plane, he pretended he didn't want to sit next to me because I was sick with a head cold and sniffled throughout the entire flight. Although I could barely breathe, he took the opportunity to jokingly chastise me for infecting everyone else on the plane with my germs...and therein was born a relationship in which making fun of each other led to years of funny stories. After we arrived back at school, it only took another week or so for me to realize, "oh crap, I have feelings for this guy!" After I asked him (via the infamous Instant Messenger) to be my date to the military ball, I think he probably knew he had me hooked. And I'm still hooked to this day. Maybe the better question for my frat brother would have been: "What has he done to me?"

Compare the chubby cheeks picture to this one - when I got to Korea to visit Jon after being apart for a few months, he was surprised by how much I'd changed.  He kept joking around about how my abs were now rock solid (versus before when I'll be the first to admit that they were decidedly squishy!) (December 2004)

I think Jon would have made an amazing father. He used to joke about how I'd have to work extra hard to become an attorney so he could quit his job and stay home to change poopy diapers. It's been one of the hardest things about losing him when we were still so young and just starting out in life - we had this whole plan in place, and it didn't include trying to get pregnant until I was done with law school. Shortly after he died, I remember asking another young widow if she and her late husband had wanted to have kids....and reacting with shock when her answer was no. For me, at least, it's been one of those aspects of this process that I spent a lot of time going over and over again in my head...and then wishing like hell that we hadn't been so careful. I remember when I was a Cadet, Master Sergeant Eversmann (one of my instructors and the lead character in the movie Black Hawk Down) told Jon and I that there's nothing like holding that little bundle of joy in your arms. It was a huge shock to see a guy who was normally a big bad scary NCO melt like butter at the mention of his newborn daughter. It had only been a month or two that we'd been dating at that point, but I remember looking at Jon as MSG Eversmann described how having a baby had changed his life and thinking that I could definitely see myself marrying him one day...and raising a little family with this wonderful man.

Jon and I laughing - this became pretty typical for us as couple.  The closeness and comfort we shared in those moments of pure happiness is something that has never ceased to amaze me and continues, as always, to take my breath away. (July 2006, December 2006)

I still hope to live out that dream of having a little one in my life, however and whenever that might be, but it makes me sad that my baby will never know Jon as his or her father. This is one of the many reasons I've thought seriously about adoption - it's nearly impossible to imagine anyone but Jon being the biological father of my children. As he told me himself, he was so looking forward to the time that we could watch our family grow bigger and grow up together. I wish so very much that we'd had the chance to make that dream a reality. I wish I could tell our baby how their daddy was a good, funny man, and had this beautiful way of saying exactly what I needed to hear at the moment I needed to hear it, like when I was stressed about something at school and he said (via a terrible phone connection from Iraq, no less), "don't worry, baby. As long as we have each other, there will always be something to smile about at the end of the day." So thank you, my sweet husband, for always knowing what to say, for showing me what it really means to fall in love, and for the laughter. I promise, no matter what, I won't let the laughter die. I know you'd be mad if I did...and then you'd probably destroy me in a tickle war. Thank God for the memories and for all the stories...for as long as there are still stories, I'll figure out a way to keep smiling through the tears.

The first time I truly laughed again after being notified of Jon's death:  Telling old stories with old friends at dinner the night after we buried him at Arlington (April 2007) 

55. The Little Things

"Every day I spend here on earth is one day closer to being with you in Heaven."
~Anonymous

There's this thing in the Army called the Soldier Fitness Tracker: Strong Minds! Strong Bodies! that I'm required to complete every year. There are about 103.7333 annual online requirements of this aggravating type, and the SFT is just one of them. It's also referred to as the GAT (Global Assessment Tool) and it's a computer program that asks you a bunch of multiple choice questions before categorizing your answers into four areas of overall Soldier fitness: Emotional, Social, Family, and Spiritual. You even get a colored status bar for each category - green is good, amber means you need improvement in that area, and red means you face some significant challenges in that area (i.e. you have a lot of work to do). Guess who got red bars for both emotional and spiritual....oh yeah - this girl! Encouraging, right? And it wasn't like I was trying to "fail." I was just being honest (a novel concept, I know). Maybe I should tell whoever made up that test that getting red-barred makes me even less confident about my well-being than I was before answering their silly questions...

I guess the good news is that my overall scores in social and family health went up a little. Again, not so surprising, however, is the fact that my emotional and spiritual scores either decreased or stayed about the same since I took the test last year. The program also gives you the option of comparing your scores to others in various categories, including gender, component status, rank, marital status, etc. Lo and behold, when it comes to comparing my stats to those in the same marital status category (i.e. widowed), there are only 1,368 of all the hundreds of thousands of people surveyed who fall into the same group as me. Compare that to the number of individuals I'm compared against in any other category (gender - female: 202,602; rank - Captain: 47,515; age - 27: 61,061, etc.) and it's easy to see why it's lonely to be in this teeny tiny little category in which I find myself.

One of many "cute cliches" (though I hope it's true....)

It's the little things like this test that creep up and get you when you let your guard down for a moment. The same day I took that test, I went to a baseball game with some people from work. I watched couples laugh together as they sat with their arms around one another and parents buy their cute little kids snow cones and popcorn. As I drove home, I thought about how I'd do anything to feel Jon's arm around me again. When we walked together, he always used to say how I fit perfectly under his arm. I thought about what I'd do just to hold his hand. His hands were the same size as mine. We discovered this on our second date at the movie The Hunted when we held hands for the first time. As we walked out of the theater, the first thing he said to me was "so, you realize your hands are the same size as mine right?" Yup, that's me - big man hands (and big feet too). And what I wouldn't do to hear him say my name again...I always loved the way it sounded when he'd come in the door at the end of the day and say my name or refer to me as his wife.

One of the many questions on that Army survey asked if I'm afraid or fearful on a daily basis. The honest answer is yes. I'm fearful of the future and what it will hold for me without Jon in it. I'm fearful of finding myself isolated and far from family and friends when big Army makes its decision in a couple of years about where to send me for my first assignment. I'm fearful of living a long life and missing Jon this much until the day I die. I'm fearful of never having the courage to follow through with my plan to adopt a baby and give that child a better life because parenting is scary enough - life as a single parent is downright terrifying. I'm fearful of losing the other people in my life who keep me company and distract me from the loneliness that comes hand-in-hand with the widow territory. And I'm fearful of the fact that people will think I didn't love Jon enough because I tried to find happiness by dating other people too soon after losing my husband. Sometimes I wonder if the things I do and say now are motivated subconsciously by the fact that I think I have something to prove to myself in that regard. Am I trying - without even realizing it - to apologize for the fact that I made some stupid mistakes in how I went about filling the void of Jon's absence? I've asked myself this question many times, though I'm afraid of the answer. I'm even more afraid of someone else giving me an honest-to-goodness, no B.S. answer without worrying about hurting my feelings. Which brings me to yet another thing I fear, silly though I'm sure it seems: Sometimes when I have one of those nights where I sniffle, hate life, and sit alone feeling miserable (and yes, there may be more than a little self-pity involved), I don't have enough energy to pick up the phone because I see all the numbers of people I could call and get overwhelmed by the thought of having to figure out which one to pick. Funny how something that's really a good thing can become so stressful and seem so scary.

So yes, there are a lot of things that I fear, which is why it makes me laugh even more when people comment on how "strong" I seem on the outside. If I weren't so squeamish, maybe I should have gone into medicine instead of law? Being around death and sickness on a daily basis might make this all seem a little less traumatic. When I visited with an old college friend who I hadn't seen in a while the other day, he made a good point about Jon's loss in relation to time - he said that perhaps it actually gets harder, if anything, as time goes on and people drift away. People tend to forget that just because Jon didn't die two months ago and I handle things differently now than I did at his funeral doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt like hell. He told me it's okay to be sad...and to always be sad about all of this, especially since, in his words, our friends agreed when they heard the news of Jon's death that it could not have happened to a worse person. 


I think, in a way, it helped to hear him say these things; his straight-forward honesty made much more of an impression than when I try to feed myself happy go-lucky thoughts in an effort to change my mood. Every morning before I get out of bed, I read inspiring messages like "follow your dreams - dream big" and "what's meant to be will always find a way," but the cynic in me can't help but snicker a little at some of these sentiments. Sometimes it's the blunt and less sugar-coated messages that speak far louder volumes than the cute cliches. And it's the old stories and the happy memories that make me laugh, not the overly optimistic phrases about having faith and looking forward to the future, blah blah blah. So bring on the stories and the memories. The people who come into my life now and never had the opportunity to meet Jon may think it's weird that I still talk about "my husband" so much, but like my old friend said, who cares what they think? I may even lose friends over it because it makes people uncomfortable (as has been the case in the past), but I guess that's just another casualty of this whole process. It's the little things, like the funny Jon-isms, that keep me going...and make me who I am. So, to borrow from one of the cute cliches for a moment, "dream as big as you want to - and don't let the limited thinking of others stop you, for love has a way of lifting us up."

Jon and I being silly a few months after we started dating back in 2003 - God, how I miss those times and that sweet, funny face...I love you so much, baby.

54. Winning a Battle, Losing the War

"Grief is not an illness.  I will not 'get over it.'  I will learn to live with the pain.  Don't change the subject when I talk about my loved one.  If you don't know what to say, just hug me and shed a tear, for the ones that cry with me I will hold close to my heart forever."
~Anonymous

If we knew exactly when our lives would end, would it change the way we live from day to day?  Like, if you knew you only had three months left to live, would you quit your entire daily routine, sell all your possessions, and embark on a whirlwind world tour?  What would Jon have done if he'd known he only had twenty-six years to make a difference?

I'm not an angry person.  I don't think anyone has ever heard me yell and scream or raise hell over this whole crappy widow thing.  And I really haven't.  Well, not in front of anyone at least.  But dragging my heavy heart around is...well, if you'll forgive the pun, getting to be a bit of a drag.  I really feel like yelling right now.  Maybe if I go beat up a punch bag at the gym, the desire to throw a temper tantrum will burn a little less?  Or perhaps if I take out my frustration on a target at the pistol range I'll finally gain some peace of mind?  To say that these times hit me like a ton of bricks doesn't quite do justice to the extent of it.  I literally dreamed about Jon last night, woke myself up to make a mental note of what happened in the dream, remembered the details, and then fell back asleep and forgot them all.  I keep a private journal of every dream I have about him - both good and bad - because my dreams are the only place where I know I can see him again...and touch him.  Recently, I've been going to bed almost every night at 9pm (if not earlier) because I'm tired of being awake and killing time until I have to wake up and do it all over again the next day.  I didn't know it was possible to sleep so much and still be so exhausted.  Sometimes I might as well be living a double life with the effort it takes to keep it together on the outside.  Every day I make it through is a battle won...and yet, it also feels as if I've taken a few steps back in the overall scheme of things.  I guess you could say it's like winning a battle while losing the war.


One of the worst aspects of all this is that I usually think of myself as a pretty self-sufficient and independent person - after these last several years on my own, I've had to learn how to take care of myself and do the things Jon used to do for me.  I've had a lot of help from family and friends along the way, of course.  But lately I've felt very needy and more dependent than ever on others to keep me company and fill the silence.  In fact, as soon as I'm alone again, I can tell that there's a noticeable shift in my mood.  I go from distracting myself with work or socializing with friends to walking around with a scowl on my face, and not because I'm mad at anyone; it's just become my natural tendency to frown more than I smile as I get lost in my thoughts of Jon and how I still can't believe that he's really gone.  I swear, I've been telling myself every day for the past five plus years that dead means dead, but my idiotic brain still keeps trying to figure out a way around the bottom line.  Is that pathetic or is it just another a sign of how much I miss him?  I know everyone feels broken sometimes, but I worry that my brokenness is becoming more like a personal epidemic.

Sorry, I know this is all rather depressing.  Please forgive me if it sounds like I'm spending my time complaining instead of dealing with the problem.  I'll be the first to admit to that this won't be among my most enlightening or popular of entries.  I guess that's just it, though - this is my way of trying to deal with it.  It's taken me years to realize that this process is not a nice linear progression from bad to better where each day is a little easier than the last.  I think people want to believe that - both for my sake and for their own - but the truth is it's just not that simple.  No one likes to come out and say it, but that's the reality, depressing or not.  I just hope it's okay that I'm not the epitome of strength and optimism at the moment.  As anyone who's lost someone who meant everything knows, it's hard to be strong and pretend it's okay when deep down, it really isn't okay at all. 


In a few days, it will have been six years since I told Jon goodbye in a parking lot on Fort Bragg before he deployed to Iraq.  We couldn't possibly have known then that he would never return to Fort Bragg alive, but hindsight is always 20-20, right?  I often wish he hadn't been so brave and determined when it came to doing what's right, but I guess if he hadn't been that way, he wouldn't have been the Jon I knew.  To quote one of the best war movies ever made (and one which Jon held near and dear to his heart), no one asks to be a hero - it just sometimes works out that way (SSG Eversmann, Black Hawk Down).  I love you, my husband and my hero.  In that parking lot six years ago, you told me that I gave you so much to live for and to look forward to when you got home; well, the same goes for me, babe.  Only this time, it's you who's already home and me who has to wait.  Each day is one day closer.  I just have to wait...

July 31st, 2006 - Many tears were shed the day I said goodbye to my sweetheart at Ft. Bragg, NC

53. Mistakes: Proof You Are Trying

"People say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Truth is, you knew what you had; you just never thought you would lose it."
~Unknown

Why did this happen to us? To Jon? I know I'm not supposed to ask that question - it's a recipe for disaster - but sometimes I get tired of there being no good answer. Maybe the real question is why can't I stop asking why when I know the response will always be the same.

Last week was one of those weeks for me - a "widow week," as one of my friends calls it. They take so much out of you, both mentally and physically. I couldn't look at a picture of Jon or say his name without getting all teary eyed. I ran for miles and miles at the gym, hoping the happy endorphins would kick in. That seemed to work for a little while...until I started walking back to my car in the parking lot and crumbled all over again. And while I was wandering around an outdoor shopping mall and saw a car with "Just Married" written on the window, I literally told myself out loud to look away. I knew if I allowed myself to linger on it that the tears would come. The whole point of the shopping trip was not really to buy anything but, rather, to distract myself and try to keep my emotions at bay.

Usually it helps with the tears when I go to work, but my latest project made we wonder if there's anywhere I can go to escape the constant reminders of Jon's death.  The assignment dealt with suicide - it was as if my work was taunting me.  All of the regulations and programs referred to in the context of my research - The Army Casualty Program, the Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Office, The Army Fatal Incident Family Brief Program - are entities with which I'm familiar on an overtly personal level. I also read about changes to the requirements for earning the Purple Heart Commendation, which is now being awarded to Soldiers for Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in recognition of the fact that serious head trauma leads to conditions like these. In legitimate cases of brain injury, it's no joke - head trauma is ultimately what caused Jon's death. This recent development made me wonder what my old Commander would have to say the changing nature of the Army's wartime valor system - he once said he thought it was "B.S." that the Combat Action Badge is awarded to Soldiers who get blown up by IEDs. He said that in order for them to have truly been "in action," they would have had to fire back at the enemy after being attacked. I told him - with all due respect, of course - that it's hard to fire back after being blown up if you're already dead.

Ironically, an hour or two after writing that last sentence, I ran into my old Commander here at Fort Leavenworth. After a long discussion with him, I'm happy to say I think we've both grown up a lot and moved onto a better time in our lives over the past few years. But I did want him to know that I'm sorry for the fact that I was such a mess back then; when we parted back at Fort Bragg, we weren't exactly on the best of terms. As a young junior officer, I was angry at the world, pissed at the Army for taking my husband away, and thought I didn't need anyone else's help in dealing with my issues. To say that I wasn't handling my grief well is an understatement, and I think I've done a better job in recent months when it comes to making healthier decisions (side note to family and friends: please don't hestitate tell me if you ever do think I'm losing it or taking things too far. That was another startling revelation I had at work after reading the case file of a guy who wants to be exempted from every tasking under the sun due to his major depressive disorder diagnosis...despite the difficulties grief has brought with it, I still don't want to be "that guy," i.e. the one who's perceived by others as the recipient of special treatment).

Anyway, the point is that I don't have the same lingering feelings of anger that used to fester whenever I'd think back on my relationship with my old Commander. I was in denial about the reality of Jon's death then and, again, I know it now. I just hope that what I've been told about mistakes is true: Mistakes are proof that you are trying. I'm not sure if making more mistakes means you're trying that much harder, but on the bad days, I keep telling myself to try and forgive what I cannot change. I'm well aware that I'm often my own worst enemy and harshest critic. It's been that way since I was a kid; as my younger sister (who has somehow acquired an impressive amount of wisdom over the past few years) likes to say, people don't change - they just become more of who they are. I guess that's something I could stand to remind myself of more often...and that being who I am doesn't mean being perfect all the time.

So. I know I'm not supposed to ask why...but why? Why is my sweet Jon gone? And why am I still here without him? I don't know. I didn't know five years ago and I still don't know now. I just know I wasn't ready to say goodbye. I know I miss him with a deep, aching sense of longing that never seems to subside. And I hope tomorrow is a little easier than yesterday because the thought of another "widow week" is exhausting...

52. The 1% of the 1%

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed to so many by so few."
~Winston Churchfield

There's a well known saying in the Army that pain is weakness leaving the body.  When it comes to the pain of losing a loved one, however, the pain never seems to cease.  There are times when it's a sharp, relentless force that gnaws at you and practically eats you alive.  That's the kind of pain I woke up to just a couple of days ago without warning.  And then there's other times when it's more like a dull, sobering ache that penetrates deep in your bones and leaves you feeling sluggish and unfocused.  For something to physically hurt so much, you would think there would have to be some sort of a external gaping wound.  But the mere thought of my husband being caught unaware by an explosion that literally ripped his world apart and led to what would be his last moments on earth is enough to break my heart.  I have this mental image of him riding along nonchalantly in his truck, perhaps thinking about what he might eat for dinner that night, and then there's a sudden deafening roar...followed by nothingness.  Having seen all the pictures and studied all the reports, I have a pretty clear mental image of the way the scene played out that day, but no mental image, no matter how graphic, quite compares to the image of my husband lying motionless on the ground, moaning and mumbling incoherently, and made completely vulnerable by a force that was beyond his power to control.

For some reason, people have thought it helpful over the years to tell me things like "if we'd arrived on scene just a minute earlier, we could have saved him" or "he didn't have to go out there on patrol that day." Despite wanting to know everything that happened on 7 April 2007, these kind of statements have caused me to take pause and wonder if perhaps I'm getting more than I bargained for when I ask too many questions. They've also led to a lot of emotional anguish as I try to wrap my mind around the fact that Jon might have lived - I've clung to that notion at times, and mentally tortured myself over why, if it were possible, it didn't work out that way. I now know from speaking with other eye witnesses that the fact Jon lived long enough to make it onto the MEDEVAC bird is a miracle in itself; the blast from the IED was catastrophic and should have caused everyone in that truck to perish on impact. Human nature, however, seems to work against us sometimes, and I'll probably never stop questioning why the Staff Sergeant who was sitting in the TC seat about six inches in front of my husband somehow survived the incident and Jon did not. Admittedly, although he lived to see another day, Staff Sergeant Henline's life will never be the same; people will always stare when he walks into a room since the third-degree burns and injuries he sustained have left him looking very different from his former self. However, no matter what the condition of his body or his external appearance, I'd rather have Jon here with me in some form today than none at all. Would he ever have been the same person I knew and loved after a life-altering experience like that? Who can say...all I would have hoped is for Jon to have been able to take the horror and trauma of that day and turn it around into a reason to live life to the fullest, as SSG Henline has done along his route to recovery.


As for the other suggestion that Jon was out there needlessly on patrol that day: I've had a lot of time to mull that one over, and after a few years of my own Army experience, I'd have to disagree. Yes, he did have to be there. It was his job. Sure, he could have taken the easy way out and sat in his office on the FOB for the entire deployment without ever checking up on his Soldiers. But when it came to fufilling his responsibilities to his troops, he was the definition of a leader who burned the midnight oil. As strange as it may sound coming from his wife, I looked up to him as an Soldier. I admired his unwavering commitment to others and that fact that he'd always ensure his subordinates had everything they needed before taking care of himself. He even gained the respect and admiration of other units that he didn't have to do anything for, but which he supported by providing logistical resources and comfort items. For Soldiers living in an austere, dangerous environment many miles from home, these are the things that matter most on an interminable fifteen-month deployment. And when they talk about Jon, these are the things the guys who worked alongside him and who supervised him have wanted me to know. They've sought me out one, two, and even five years after the fact to tell me that Jon was an outstanding officer and a rare human being - they didn't have to say anything at all, but they've wanted to make sure I know just how dedicated he was in going above and beyond the call of duty. What made him even more special was his humility; you'd never know he had an impact on so many people because he was always so modest about all his accomplishments. I get nervous that as time goes on, people will stop talking about the ways he impacted their lives and the funny things he did that made him who he was. As I continue to nurture the invisible wound that is my grief, I depend on these stories and memories to sustain me more than ever.

Every year on Memorial Day, a veteran of 4th ID places this card at Jon's grave in Arlington to thank him for the logistical support he provided to their unit in Iraq

It's interesting how conspicuous and self-conscious you can feel about the one thing you don't have that's way more important than all the things people probably look at you and think you do have. I'm sure people who meet me for the first time think, "oh, she's doing fine. She's successful - she's got a good job, financial security, friends and family who love her, and the support of the American people. If I had all those things, I'd be happy!" And I'm sure on the outside, this is exactly how I appear. However, these people fail to understand how oversimplified it is to think this way; yes, I do have these things, and I appreciate their value. But if given the option to live in a cardboard box and have Jon back, I'd take it in an instant over the best job and all the financial security in the world. Don't get me wrong - it never ceases to amaze me when people approach me to thank me for my husband's sacrifice, but at the end of the day, I want to be one of those observers who shows up to a memorial event and then gets to go home to my family instead of going home to an empty house and my thoughts of Jon. In reminding me of all I still have to be grateful for, people often encourage me to live my life to the fullest because it's what Jon would have wanted. I understand (and appreciate) the sentiment, but I'm yet to figure out how I'm supposed to keep living every day to the fullest the way he'd "want" me to when he's not here to share it with me. This seems like an oxy moron and it perplexes me to no end - how can I live my life to the fullest when it was fullest with him in it? To suggest otherwise is simply unfair...and wrong. For some reason, it's okay for an elderly widow or widower to admit that they're just biding time until they can be reunited with their spouse in the next life, but for me to say the same is looked upon with discouragement and even dismay. Perplexing indeed...

When I hear about kids dying in Afghanistan who were literally still in elementary school while I was graduating from high school, it makes me incredibly sad.  They're so young - too young.  Those of us left behind are also far too young.  We're the 1% of the 1%.  I wish I didn't find myself in this teeny tiny minority, but like a wise man told me the other day, we must encourage each other; we are, after all, all we have.  We have to be there for each other on the bad days...and all the ones in between.  Because every day without the heroes we've lost is a bad one, and anything we can do for each other to bring a little light into this dark place is golden.  The invisible wounds that never heal will be with us for a lifetime.  So remember that the next time you look at one of us and think we have just about everything we could ever want and then some.  Death ends a life, not a relationship.  And you don't get over it, you just get through it.  You don't get by it because you can't get around it.  It doesn't "get better," it just gets different.  Every day, grief puts on a new face.  For those of us in the 1% of the 1%, we just have to hope that, on most days, that face allows us to smile at the happy memories and live for the good times we have left with those we love.