disintegration and difficult conversations

I'm pretty sure that I've shared on here before some of the most useful marriage/welcome-to-the-military advice I received was this:  after he has been away, you will have 24, maybe 36, hours that feel like a dream.  And then you will fight. It's inevitable.  I've lost track of the number of times we've been though "reintegration sickness" because it happens even when he's on "short" trips.  There's been something really useful for us to be able to name what is happening as it is happening and be able to laugh about it either as it is unfolding or shortly thereafter.  Reintegration challenges are inevitable when two people have had no choice but to learn to function very independently for an extended period of time.  There is no other good option than for each of you to become adept at doing life well without anyone else.  It's adaptive but complicated when you no longer can/should/need to fly solo. 

This trip we figured out that there's a different but similar phenomenon that happens leading up to at least an extended trip.  Disintegration.  For us it started with a heated exchange as we were boarding our flight to Minneapolis. Seriously, I felt/looked like a crazy person.  Of this I am certain.  Not at all the way I was hoping to start that trip.  But it happened.  And thankfully we were able to cycle through the "rupture/repair" process quickly and effectively.   It became clear that what I was reacting to was a fairly innocuous "thing" that was very much tangled up in dynamics related to the deployment.  Remember when I mentioned before that the reality of the deployment hit me in stages? (I'm getting to this in the "October" part of this post just through a bit of a circuitous route. . .) The truth was that coming out of the gate from the summer of training, an implicit process occurred where Philip's head and heart had to start transitioning out of our home into AFG.  I got it.  Completely.  But there were moments where it was a struggle for each of us.  We realized that we were not alone in this one day in October when Philip and I were on a date and he was like "man, EVERYONE is fighting with their wives!"  And then we smiled, looked at each other knowingly, and said, "ohhh. . . . it's like reverse reintegration sickness."  And that is how the diagnosis "disintegration sickness" came to be.

In October we spent an amazing weekend in CO.  When I got home I remember describing the trip to someone as wonderful but really emotional.  We went into the trip knowing that it'd be the final time we'd be traveling together before he left for the year.  It was relaxing, restorative time recharging in the mountains and connecting with family.  It was also the space in which the reality of what was looming finally fully hit me.  I can pinpoint the moment.  We were driving away from the cemetery at the Air Force Academy, and I turned and looked at Philip and pleaded through tear-filled eyes, "I need you to make damn sure that the next time we are back here together that it is not for me to bury your body.  I cannot live without you."  I felt the weight on the trip not of "is this the last time we will be in this place together for another year" but "is this the last time we will be together in this place."  And that is suffocating.  And I know that a person can't stay in that space.  And I don't.  But those are the realities that I don't have as much distance from in my consciousness as most 30 year-old wives.  As we took in the intoxicatingly beautiful Colorado autumn landscape we started to have the conversations that we've had before but in the months previous we had not been quite ready to have aloud.  The "if something happens" and the "I need you to know" conversations.  The conversations that are sharp reminders of how easy it is to parse out "what matters" and "what doesn't matter at all" when things are stripped down to life and death.

October was a beautiful month.  Beautiful and complex and filled with days in which I was acutely aware of how fortunate I was to be walking within arms' length of the man who makes me a better version of myself.  

It was entirely unplanned that this post happened to fall on the day that marks the two year anniversary of Dave's death.  Perhaps the residual emotion of today bled into my writing this Act/Scene of the story of our year, but the truth is that event placed so many things into sharper focus for Philip and me.  Today Philip reminded me of words that he holds close as he continues to try to sort through what happened and didn't happen that day.

"We cannot fill his shoes, nor replace him, be we can do things that he did.  We can remember and honor him by being good officers, good husbands and fathers, and good friends.  We can take seriously our life’s work and be faithful servants." –Officer Greg Pashley