Brothers and Movers: When the military moves you in

posted on : October 20, 2015 posted by : reccewife 0 Comment

After a few months that just seems to grip a choke-hold on the military community that Dh is a part of, I was feeling a little lost and didn’t seem to have anything useful to write.

What I did see, all around me, were soldiers and veterans from Dh’s Regiment banding together. Message groups, phone calls, texts, drop ins. They seemed to track down everyone and touch base with honest messages that may have all said something different but meant the same thing:

“Talk to me. We just can’t go through this again.”

So when Ariel over at PMQ For 2 offered to write something for me while I got my #### together, I loved the memory that the post that she sent invoked.

In 2001, Dh and I were teenagers getting married. We had an offer for a tiny little PMQ right before the wedding and we needed to move all our stuff there. But I had never lived in Edmonton and Dh had only arrived at the unit less than a year before. We were driving in the U-Haul and moving it all ourselves on a weekday afternoon. I was dreading trying to help Dh carry our meager hand me down furniture into our new home.

When we pulled up, there were soldiers there from Dh’s unit, in uniform, sitting on the front step waiting for us.

“Took you long enough! I was starting to think I shouldn’t have bothered getting them all a short day today!” said the Master Corporal of Dh’s troop. And the group of them sauntered over to the back of the truck with hardly a word, waiting to help unload.

Dh hadn’t wanted to ask, being a young and brand new Trooper there were already a bunch who had agreed to come down to Calgary for our wedding to be part of the sword party. He felt guilty asking them for anything else. So he hadn’t. But they knew we were coming. So they showed up, no invitation needed.

Sometimes they just show up, and that’s a beauty that we sometimes lose sight of.

So here’s Ariel. She has a similar story, and it’s lovely. Have a read, then hope over to her page and say hi. Because like an unexpected moving crew right when you need them, she pulled through helping me write something when I just didn’t have anything in me.

_____

My military family is many things: loud, caring, eclectic and colourful – blended from Canada’s patchwork – and most of all – there for me.

Last year we did an intra-base move from one PMQ to another on Halloween. Because it wasn’t a posting related move we had to cover the costs ourselves, but we weren’t in a position to do so given the last-minute nature of the move. We sheepishly called upon our friends and army family to help us move. We figured that if we had enough people, pizza, donuts and beer that it would go quickly. The more the merrier, right? It worked!

Boy oh boy! Did our community ever respond. I was overwhelmed with emotion and gratefulness at the sight of so many long-time friends and people who I had just met, hauling boxes from the basement, taking down our fence and helping with furniture. We had a padre hauling our dinning room table across the lawn, a couple of my friends taking apart furniture and my sister-in-law gathering all the curtains. To complicate the affair, my husband had just had a surgery that rendered him incapable of lifting heave things – super helpful during a move right? I was at the new house receiving boxes and furniture, starting to unpack and keeping the pets wrangled in one spot. DH was at the old house, highly medicated and poorly directing people’s efforts. Luckily one of our friends took control of the situation and managed to get everything running smoothly in time for lunch.

In under a day we had one place emptied and we were sleeping in our beds at the new house. That was honestly the easiest military move I’ve ever had, despite some heart palpitations that morning. Everyone was in a great mood and more than willing to get dirty for us.

I never expected our friends to show up in as big a hoard as they did, or to stay until last bag of trash was squarely placed in the big dumpsters, but they did.

After-the-fact I think I promised to help raise people’s children to make up for the full day of service we got from them. I’m hoping they forgot.

Ariel is a military spouse and blogger over at PMQ for two and writes about accessible home décor and affordable DIY projects for military families and those living in base housing. Check her out online, on facebook, instagram, or twitter.