In Canada, when a soldier serves 12 years of Service (you know, without getting in too much trouble or breaking any laws….) they get a medal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Forces_Decoration It is called the CD. Canadian Forces Decoration. You don’t have to do anything beside be a soldier for 12 years to get it (which, don’t get me wrong, is a pretty important!). Once you recieve it, you even get to put a C.D. after your name on important documents. Pretty fancy shmancy. Needless to say (or this post would have no point but to bore you with military medal trivia), DH reached his 12 years last weekend. That doesn’t mean he has the medal now, that will take however many months of paperwork and the like. But, it means he is eligible. 12 years ago he walked into the Recruiting Center with his mom and dad, having completed his enlistment process while he was still in highschool and stood there just after his 18th birthday to make the final step… Swearing his Oath to the Queen and Country before shipping off to Basic Training. October 8, 1999 And I remember it then, because I remember him then. I didn’t get to go to the Swearing In. It was for family only and I was just a girlfriend. A highschool girlfriend, no less, I am sure that it was assumed the relationship would be short lived once he was actually out the door. But I was there for everything else. I was there the night before he got on the plane, sitting in a park by ourselves when he asked if I was going to wait for him and I cried. Oh, how long 12 weeks…
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…
When going through the MOUNDS of paper my son brought home from school from this year, I found this. It’s priceless. And it made me think what he thinks my husband does all day at work! Now I am not a keeper of stuff. I keep a few things each year per kid. I’m not going to keep it all. What will he do with boxes of old colouring pages and math equations? But this, this is a keeper. What I want to be when I Grow Up When I grow up I want to be in the army. I want to be in the military because my dad is in the military. I also want to blow stuff up so I can keep our country free. I will train hard to rank up. I will listen to my boss, do parades and shoot from a tank. I will be still at attention. I will have to know to be sneaky. I will have to listen to commands to know what to do. I’ll shoot at targets and exercise. When I’m a sargent I will have a stick. I’ll yell at my men. By (Freckles) So this made me want to write a reply. One I will keep with it. And if in fact this is the choice my son makes when he grows up, I will remind myself the kind of mom I wanted to be when I grew up. Because the older he gets the harder I feel like it will be to do this army thing from the Mom’s perspective, and not the wives. What will happen when I have to let…
My husband grew up a military brat in the PMQ’s all over Canada. From Calgary to Kingston to Bordon to Petawawa and then Germany before landing back in Calgary where his dad retired, he saw a lot of army life. And he saw a lot of army wives. So when we married, he had an image in his head. Either we lived off base and pretended that he had ‘just another job’ and I never involved myself in any way with military life, or I became one of ‘those wives’. And apparently, ‘those’ wives sit their front porch of their PMQ gossiping and smoking, wearing their hubby’s PT gear and yelling in a raspy voice to their 6 kids that they let run around dirty in the neighborhood before drinking the night away with other men while their husbands are away. In dh’s eyes, there was no middle ground between those two extremes. It’s funny, my mother in law was nothing like this, and we know plenty of really fabulous military wives, but he just didn’t shake this one misconception. So after a year of living in the PMQ’s (base housing), we moved as quick as we could afford it to a town off base. He had his life at work and very rarely did we make any effort to be a part of that life as a family. Slowly, all that has changed. I realized this once when we were laying together on the couch talking after he had got home from work. He had taken off his uniform and thrown some jeans on, but he had left on the green t-shirt from work. And…
A friend posted something on facebook this week calling out a pop-celebrity for her lack of positive influence in the lives of young girls. When I agreed, he encouraged me to dedicate much blog space to calling her out too. But, as I stated before, I don’t write to argue or call down others, and I only tell my own stories. But that doesn’t mean I can’t point out something different, but the same. Which brings me to the story I’ve promised myself I would write for almost 2 months now but couldn’t bring myself to type. About the Loops for Troops Run in Calgary on Father’s Day. And the story starts at a weird beginning, in 2007 when I was 5 months pregnant and Dh was heading out on deployment again. Knowing that Dh has a strong faith, as he was preparing to leave on his last tour his OC asked him if he would take on a very different job than that normally required of an armoured crewman. They would be spending this tour living away from the main base outside the wire and because of this, there would be no padre serving alongside them. His OC wanted to know if Dh would be willing to stand in and lead a memorial service if, heaven forbid, one became necessary during the tour. Dh agreed. This was his 3rd time to Afghanistan and he wasn’t going to pretend the reality wasn’t there. He spent some time talking with our Pastor before he left and tried to prepare as best he could while praying it would not be needed. But less than a month into the deployment, it was. Cpl. Nathan Hornburg…
This week is my 10 year anniversary. And, not suprisingly, my dh is where he usually is during ‘major’ life events… off saving the world somewhere while I stay home and look after the kids. He was a little upset to miss it. I reminded him he wasen’t home for our first anniversary, or most of the anniversaries in between, and so why ruin the whole trend we have going? It’s just a day. And him not being home doesn’t make us less married. In fact, it makes it the perfect anniversary. Because, in fact, if he were home, I would have EXPECTATIONS. And, invariably, those expectations would not be reached. There would be disapointment. I would be thinking “but it wasen’t as perfect as I pictured.” When a husband deploys what you have, in essence, is the perfect husband for however long he is gone. Because really, how can you fault him for anything while he’s away? He doesn’t leave the toilet seat up, mess up the kitchen, hog the bathroom or fill the laundry room with his crap and make it impossible to do anyone elses laundry but his own. He’s off being all heroic. And your memories of him soon become perfect memories of a perfect life together. It’s total fiction, but it’s wonderful. So while he’s away this anniversary, I will remember those perfect moments and how he’s the perfect husband while I have the chance. Before he get’s home and my front room looks like the army came and threw up in it…
