What’s 3432.87 kilometers between friends?…

Just like to put it out there – Some days I am very sure that Posting Season was sent to make me miserable.

I mean, I guess there’s some upsides.

I’m not in the mood to see upsides.

Most military postings happen in the spring, thus the term “Posting Season”.  It is when you start wondering ‘Will I get sent to some random place this year at the whim of the Canadian Armed Forces?”.  Well, I suppose you only wonder that if you are a military family.  The army doesn’t post many civilians, or so I hear.

Now, this is a fair idea.  When you enlist, you know that you will move when you are told.  Fact of life in the military.  And I can’t even say a word on the subject, with 10+ years in the army, my dh hasn’t been posted since he was sent here after training.  We are an enigma.  He hasn’t been home from Afghanistan long enough to be posted.  And I’m okay with that, we are in no hurry to go anywhere.  But we wait, every year, wondering if it’s our turn.  And when that day comes, I just pray it’s somewhere with a Starbucks.

But today, today I’m not as accepting of the whole idea as I’d like to think I am.

Because today I said goodbye to a friend. 

Not the first or last friend to be posted.  Being here this long has meant we have seen more than a few of our military friends come and go.  Some are here longer than others.  One family we’ve seen go, come back and go again!  Many of them, through the magic of facebook, I can keep in touch with. Social Media has to be good for something.

But this friend has been here since the very beginning.  Our husbands have the same job, in the same Regiment, and in fact, Betsy and I have been through 2 tours together and another tour each after that. 
We have both been pregnant over deployments.  We have both had Christmas-time HLTA babies.  We’ve met each other’s parents, cried together, brought comfort food to each other and sat in silence when we had nothing to say but didn’t want to be in an empty house.  When I think of it, I’ve never done “army” without Betsy.

Sometimes months would go by when we wouldn’t be in contact.  Our husbands were home, we were spending family time, life gets hectic.  But then one of us would call when we needed a friend and it didn’t matter the time it had been. 

That first tour when we met, I was pregnant, our husbands has just left for war, 9/11 had just happened and we had no idea when they would be home.  Nothing bonds people like processing something like that. 

Then they both head back to Kabul a couple years later.  This time Betsey’s pregnant and I get to do fun things like help her clean out her fridge and make sure she monitors her blood pressure.  And help look after her babe when she is born and her dh heads back.

My extra super help meant that I did things like cut her nails for her and made her bleed and probably traumatized her for life.

Then a couple years later it gets hard for Betsy’s hubby, he is stuck home for DH’s next tour and has to put up with me.  Worse even, he is put in Family Support.  And has to listen to this from me all deployment:

“Neeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllllll, I don’t know how to fix my dryer vent and it’s venting into my house…”

“Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll, my car is making funny noises and I kicked it and it didn’t help...”

Or if I was REALLY in trouble:

“Saaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnttttttttttt….I lost my wallet at a sex toy party at the WO&Sgt’s mess last night and I can’t get back on the base to get it without my ID………”

And then I had to listen to:

“Kim! Have you seriously not got an oil change since he left?”

“Kim! Your car is disgusting.  Seriously.” 

The best part, after that he spent the next hour in his garage cleaning it out for me.

And I am pretty sure by this point, he is thinking the Taliban would have been easier to deal with.

But the next year, he was back in Afghanistan and DH was back home.  I must admit Betsy was much less whiny than I was.  But that’s one great thing about the army, you get the chance to repay kindness and return favors.  Though Betsy  never left her wallet anywhere strange.

And her little girl, it has been great to watch her grow up.  And for my kids to have a friend who understands that sometimes Dad is home and sometimes he is not.  Military life has changed a lot over the years, most families live off base now and there is less ‘togetherness’ of military families than there used to be.  I don’t look at it as good or bad, but I think sometimes, army brats need other brats to hang out with and understand each other.

So it’s been a great 10 years.  When you’ve shared that much together, it’s not something you forget.

Regimental pizza party’s with just the 2 of us, MFRC carnivals, doctors visits, bitchy pregnancy hormones, projectile vomiting, see-you-laters, reunions, and more Chinese take-out than should be healthy for anyone.

That’s what friendships are made of.


When your Dh is in and out, a friend who is a constant is something special. 
 And I’m going to miss this one.

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