With Us

I write most of my blogs in my head while running.  I need to focus off of the screaming lungs and the aching calves.  So I write in my head. Usually, what I write is never published. A lot of the time, I just disappear into old memories or stories that never come out. This week, it seemed to be the same memory, over and over.

It was of a funeral.  One I was attending, not really knowing if I should, for a 25 year old soldier who had been serving with Dh.  He had been my husband’s comrade, killed by an IED days before they were all coming home.  I felt like I had no business being at that funeral, like I was intruding on their pain, but there I was with 2 other military wives, sitting in the back.

And soldiers brought in the casket, draped in the flag.  And I had it all together.  Even through the bagpipes, the casket, the ceremony. I may have mentioned I am not a crier?  I am not.  And I wasn’t.  Until I saw him.

Every soldier who is killed overseas has an escort home.  A comrade who will travel with him and stay with his fallen friend until he is buried.

Everyone else taking part in the funeral is wearing their best.  Shined, polished, looking strong and formal to lay one of their own to rest.  From the pallbearers to the guests, every military member is in full dress uniform.

Except for the escort.  He’s exhausted, you can tell just by looking at him.  His face is pale and his eyes are red.  His last few days have been made up of sitting next to grieving family, helping with funeral arrangements and making sure his friend’s uniform looks perfect for the open casket.

And he’s not in his DEU’s.  He’s still in the same Desert Camouflage uniform he had been wearing only days before in the fight, when his friend was still alive.  He walks in behind everyone else in the funeral procession, representing every member of that soldier’s Squadron that couldn’t be there because they were still finishing their mission back across the world.

It seems unfair, doesn’t it?  The burden on this 21 year old’s face that we should all be carrying for him.  My heart still hurts sometimes knowing the pain he and everyone like him had to bring home.  It should never have been just their own.  

The grief of those of us at home, cleaned up and dressed up for the ceremony this fallen soldier deserved.  Contrasted with the simple look of the one person in the room who had been there in the mud and the sand and the messy chaos of the war.

The only one who had been both here AND there.

And the tears started as soon as I lay eyes on him.  Once that funeral was over and we were walking by the casket for the final goodbyes, I bent down to this soldier sitting on the bench, who I had barely only met before he left, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and I hugged him for an embarrassingly long time.  I’m sure he was more than a little uncomfortable.  But for a moment, I couldn’t let go.

The truth was my DH was safely on a plane somewhere on his own trip back home from the war.  One that he and his Squadron were making knowing there were those missing from their ranks. But the reality of the funeral crowded out that logic and for that moment, while I cried a little on his shoulder, I could see nothing but pain for this grieving family and the crippling fear of the past 7 months behind me.  For a second, I think I even felt that fear for all three of DH’s deployments, all wrapped into a 30 second hug.

Something about that moment made it one of those ones you never forget.

It was the dusty smell of Desert Combats in a funeral home crowded with hundreds of mourners. 

Thankfully, I am privileged to now call that young soldier friend.   I’m sure he still thinks I’m nuts.  But I’m grateful he’s too nice to point it out.

Halfway through runs and memories, and I can see where it’s brought me.

I think I tend to see my faith as clean and neat and safe in the confines of my life here at home.  This is where faith happens for me, right? In my head, my God is here.  With me.  Doing what I do.  In my safe world.

But if I could see him standing in front of me, he would look like that one soldier, have all the dust and battle scars of the moments he’s shared outside the wire with Dh.  He’s been with both of us, He is a common bond that Dh and I share, the one who has been the strength behind us at every hard moment we have ever experienced, apart or together.

My faith is empty if it is clean and safe and and never gets it’s boots wet.  I need to remember that it is God With Us and our faith carries more than my meager burdens.  More than Dh’s too. He has taken all that have been laid at his feet from those who have suffered much more than can imagine.

And standing at that funeral, more than the pastors, the pallbearers, the family or the speakers, He is the One who is in the room having been both here AND there.

Comments

comments

Related posts:

Ribbons and Remembrance Day Gotta Love A Man Who Can Drink A Juicebox With No Shame Sure. Let’s Go There. Military spouses and rank Why I (attempt to) Run