Monday, December 27, 2010, was a day (of very few in the past) that I thought my husband had died.
My husband is currently deployed for the fourth time since 1998, and is stationed in Iraq. He lives and works in the Anbar Province Directorate building in Ramadi. This building houses the police department to which he is a military advisor. He has been in the Army for twenty-one years.
Being an Air Force veteran with my own tours of war, I know that news is often wrong, delayed, and incomplete. I took what I knew with a grain of salt. I couldn’t be typical in this, and I couldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture—rest and relaxation in March 2011.
Monday started for me waking up to my 5:30 a.m. radio show on NPR. Within five minutes I had my head buried in the pillows as I listened to “two suicide bombers,” “Anbar Province,” and “forty police officers dead” (only assuming those were Iraqi police officers, but not confirmed) come in over the airwaves.
I didn’t indulge my emotions, and maintained balance and focus on preparing for my own day ahead as the executive director of a local nonprofit organization. I couldn’t be impacted by this so much that I couldn’t work or be there for my staff. At work, my distraction manifested itself through searches for videos and/or all stories related to that morning’s incident. I don’t usually receive an email from my husband until noon my time, so I didn’t worry about that.
Then my mom emailed me: “WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THAT HE’S OK!?!?!?” Her email commanded me in freaked-out capital letters, as if I was able to tell her something through my direct line and/or crystal ball. I wrote, “Settle down, Nervous Nellie,” and went off on my day.
