Nothing to Fear

Sometime in the next week or two, very specific forms are going to be pulled out. I've seen them before. I know them well. But every time they leave, we must process them all again.

Sometime in the next week or two, my husband will review his will. He will check back at names and details, remake decisions, decide again who would carry him home if the unthinkable became real.

Details none of us want to know but somehow can never forget.

Those papers will be held, filed, kept still.

Kept still.

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This deployment will be different for us. We've never experienced something quite like it. He isn't going anywhere he's ever been. Isn't doing anything he's ever done. He won't be kicking down doors in Baghdad or living beside Afghans in Kandahar.

By all accounts and experiences, he is going to be safe. We joke that this is a long vacation rather than deployment. Hard work but "safe" work.

But then you look at that part of the world and you don't know if you can call any of it "safe".

I don't know if my heart will stop if the news shares that something happens somewhere over there. It will mourn, it will hurt, but that gut-wrenching, stomach-twisting fear ...

Because he will be "safe". I "know" he's coming home.

But in a week or two, someone is going to file those papers.

I won't freeze when someone rings my doorbell unexpectedly early in the morning or after the sun has gone down. I won't stand in my hallway and forget to breathe. I won't stand in silence while my son tells me there are people waiting outside.

I won't wonder if our life is changing in that moment.

I won't.

But in a week or two, those forms will be filled out again.

One more time, he will write his will. One more time, it will be filed and kept still.

One more time.

He's coming home to me. Always comes home to me.
How much I hate the waiting.