In Their Words

Jennifer Burress

Army vet. I married him right after his first return from Iraq, and I've been married to him through his second deployment to Iraq, including his getting medevaced home with combat damage--thankfully not as severe as some.

Being a spouse of a deployed soldier isn't easy. Having had someone else to help with things, learning to do absolutely everything on my own took a whole new field of experience--one I hadn't had to use for a lot of years. Then there's the constant worrying, the stress, the thought that this next phone call could be the worst one I'll ever hear...you spend the whole duration of their deployment in a high-stress state.

On top of that, once they come home, you can't just hug them, kiss them, and then everything go back to normal. Hell, no. For one, you've gotten so used to being the only voice of authority for things that just learning to let someone else do things can be the hardest thing you do. Not to mention their own demons and nightmares--we can't forget that what they tell us happened is only the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more they didn't--they CAN'T--tell us about, whether for opsec or for mental reasons. Hell, I know if I went over there, I sure as hell wouldn't want to relive it, even just to tell someone else about it.

On top of that, if your soldier comes back wounded...that's another added dimension. You fret constantly about whether the Army will decide he (or she) isn't worth the time it'll take for them to recover. You worry about how their wounds could've been so much worse--trust me, people. Whenever someone tells me 'it could've been worse!' I want to smack the crap out of them, because I KNOW it could've bee worse--I've IMAGINED it. I've PICTURED it. I've built up a whole year-long scenario in my mind about what I would've done if it HAD been a lot worse! One of the worst things you can tell a combat veteran's spouse is 'it could've been a lot worse'. A lot of us will just haul off and deck you one.

Added onto all that is the care you have to exercise, in both word and deed, to not remind your vet of things they did or saw over there...and the times when the best thing you can do for them is to just leave them completely alone, and knowing when being alone is the worst thing for them at that time. It's a fine balancing act, and it's almost as stressful as your soldier being over there, out of your reach. I swear, half the time, I wanted him home just so I could wrap him up in cotton, store him on a high shelf, and keep him from all harm...and the hardest thing I could do was know that I couldn't.