Goodbyes...

Army Guy left for his latest Action Adventure Destination Vacation (aka Deployment) about about week ago. And I have so many things to say about it that I literally don't know where to start. :) Kids handled the event fairly well. Thing 1 was very concerned that saying goodbye to Army Guy would make him late to his End of School class party. Thing 2 just couldn't (and still can't) wrap her brain around what was going down. I'm eternally grateful for that. Sam-I-Am was just hanging out as well. So after a few hours of gathering weapons and just standing around trying to figure out what to say to the man who is your bestest friend, who is half of you, and who gave you the 3 best gifts EVER, it was time to say goodbye.


When Army Guy left for First Deployment, I had no idea what to expect and Army Guy was all tough and not being the least bit emotional, so I didn't want to appear like the basket case to his calm demeanor. Plus I had a very logical reason for not crying--I had to drive home. I knew from previous experience (and if you know my dad ask him about his sniffle sniffle IHOP experience) that if I started crying I wouldn't be able to stop and I couldn't very well drive home like that. So that was my mentality for our first deployment related goodbye. When he had to go back after R&R we were in the airport gate (luckily we got to go all the way back to the gate) surrounded by non-military people watching our very private family moment. There were tons of hushed glances and "oh you poor thing" smiles. I hate pity. HATE it. And so my rational for not completely losing it then was I didn't want the airport people to see me weak. I'm strong. My kids are strong. We weren't going to sob in the airport. The Airport People would not win! So as Army Guy is headed to gate I decide that we need to do a big wave--a HUGE wave. A floor to ceiling, goofy wave. I needed to wave. I needed to send my husband back to his hell with a smile and a laugh. I needed that to be the memory that he had of us...laughing and smiling. So we waved, the kids and I in the middle of the El Paso, Texas airport were doing waves in the biggest silliest way imaginable. And the memory I have of sending my husband back to his personal hell was that he smiled and laughed as he walked away.

That moment defined EVERY goodbye that we've had since and EVERY goodbye that we'll have in the future. It was an epiphany for me. I found what worked for us...smiles and laughter in the moment...crying later. :)

So there we were, a week ago, watching the boys load up on buses. Watching them all try to sneak one last goodbye from their wife, mom, girlfriend, or buddy. We followed Army Guy to his bus, watched him wait to load it, and then eventually he disappeared into the back of the bus. And even though we couldn't see him through the excessively tinted windows, we spent 30 mins while they loaded up all of the other buses waving at our Army Guy. We waved as Army Guy's bus pulled away and we waved at the next 10 buses as they pulled away. And then that night at bedtime, in our house, in our quietness, in our pjs, we cried because waving doesn't take away the pain.