Didn't you Hear?

They are coming home, didn't you hear?

No more war.

Didn't you know?

No more deployments.

They are coming home. The war is over.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

God, give me grace.

Part of me wants to think that hearing this hurts a little less after hearing it for so long. Part of me wants to think that I "know" how to not let this get to me - when strangers ask how I didn't know! When strangers tell me that my husband isn't deploying. Part of me wants to believe that I can just shut this out. 

That it doesn't affect me. That it doesn't make me angry. That it doesn't make me want to show whoever is saying it how wrong they are to speak such words.

I so want to be at that point that just has to happen somewhere down the road where such words don't make me cringe. Where such completely ignorant statements won't hit me like pings to my ears. 

Didn't you hear? No more War.

No, no I didn't. 

During the day-and-a-half that I saw C between his month-long-"adventure" to the desert of California and his three-day-joy-ride in the field he must have neglected to tell me. 

I'm sure he meant to.

It somehow must have slipped his mind while scheduling training-after-training, and field-exercise-after-field-exercise, sitting in meeting-after-meeting talking about a deployment that some stranger says isn't happening. Because if a stranger knows surely C has been informed.

No more deployments! Didn't you hear?

No, I hadn't heard.

Somehow someone must have forgotten to tell the instructors that teach us how to care for the families of the fallen, how to support them, how to speak to them, how to honor them. How to hide our tears, how to stay strong while their world crumbles before them. Someone must have forgotten to tell them to cancel those. Someone must have forgotten to tell them we no longer have soldiers fighting. That we no longer have soldiers dying. That there is no reason to fear the doorbell. That the loves of our lives are safe. 

Someone should tell them. They must have not heard.

Somehow someone still feels a need to train these men and women. Someone still finds it necessary to take them from their families, to have them miss lives while they are still at "home", to take them for months and weeks at a time to prepare for something that apparently isn't happening anymore. Someone should tell them because I miss my husband. If there is no more war, surely there is no more training. Surely he can be home every night. Surely he will not miss anymore of his children's lives. Surely there is no longer a reason. 

Someone must have forgotten to tell my friends whose husbands are in a war zone ... oh wait, what is it called then? Someone should tell our friend who just watched his girlfriend leave to go to ... um ... the desert for a nine-month-vacation. I'm sure she is just there for those awesome tan lines the helmet and chin strap give. Someone should tell those soldiers. Maybe I should knock on my five neighbors' doors whose husbands just left on twelve-month orders. Surely they haven't heard yet. Surely not. Someone should let them know.

Didn't you hear? No more war.

No, no I didn't.

Someone should tell them.

They must not have heard.