By Jade Stone

Have you ever gotten news about something that would happen in the future that you weren’t so happy about?  Did you happen to find yourself wishing you could just get it over with already? Well, I think I’m there now! 

Most everyone knows my husband will for sure be going back overseas (as for sure as the Army can be, anyway!), it seems people who realize he will leave in June suddenly become ridiculously positive and emit an immeasurable amount of optimism that seems to seethe into my nerves every time he or she says “Oh, we’ll be out of there by then, maybe he won’t have to go�.  I know they mean well.  I also know that they are some of my biggest supporters and I wouldn’t make it without them, however, there are just some days that I deal with it better than others.

I try to explain that in my mind, there is no room for this sort of optimism because it opens the door for disappointment to drench my life in a dark haze that was not planned for and if you know me, I hate not being prepared! That’s usually when they tell me not to be so pessimistic but, for me, it’s just easier to expect the worst and then I don’t end up being disappointed that it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. The fact that he’s going back, in my mind, is a thought that is set in stone and you can’t convince me right now that he won’t go.  Furthermore, not only do I believe he will go, I think it will end up being earlier than June, especially since the current purpose is to remove troops and part of his job will involve troop transport.  

This may seem strange, but somehow I see my own point of view through a lens of manipulated optimism. I know many of you can’t imagine how expecting a loved one to go off to war could be optimistic (and I would have to agree) but I suppose that I am somewhat thankful for this deployment and what his expected mission will be because I know for a fact that it could be so much worse. He could be in a much more despicable place, with a far more dangerous mission, with a much more incompetent group of people.

Not that what he’s doing is not dangerous. Any place a person learns to identify the actual sound of a bullet rushing marginally close to one’s head on a base lovingly renamed “Mortaritaville� by its soldiers because of the constant bombardment of mortar rounds 24/7  is not exactly a place I am ever going to feel safe in.

My husband told me once “Don’t worry about the mortar rounds. Besides, they have bad aim!� Really, this is supposed to ease my nerves? Somehow this didn’t make me feel better. Now it’s a game of chance! At any rate, this particular place in his MOS is actually much better than so many others. For instance, my brother was with the Army Engineers and their mission involved moving from town to town searching for insurgence. This entailed convoys and where there are convoys, there are roadside bombs, car bombs, and women and children walking the roads strapped with bombs. It’s kind of hard to imagine that anyone could do such horrible things to their own people but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

My brother saw some of the worst things one can imagine and is incredibly lucky to have come back with only a broken back and 100% disability…so, yes, optimistic and thankful am I for this particular deployment! The battle I fight now is that I want to hurry up and send him over before someone higher up the food chain than we are decides he should do something worse. I’m not ready to get rid of him but why prolong the inevitable or take the chance of the inevitable being traded for a much worse fate, right?  So until the day he leaves, in all things concerning this new journey, I will remain pessimistically optimistic!

Jade welcomes your comments here as well as any suggestions you may have for her future posts. You may also e-mail her at akajadestone@yahoo.com. To read previous Military Mama posts, CLICK HERE.

By Jade Stone

Is there ever a good time to break the news of deployment to friends and family?

This is the question we’ve been asking ourselves for the past couple of weeks now. On the one hand, a person may think 11 months is simply too far out to break this kind of news because things can change so rapidly. This was our initial thought as well. After all, what happens if something changes and he doesn’t actually end up having to leave??

Well, our experience tells us that the chance of that happening is pretty slim. However, the chance that he might have to leave sooner than initially thought seems far more likely. On the other hand, one might think that waiting till just a month or two out would be better, that way people don’t spend unnecessary time worrying about it and can move quickly into acceptance.  True, but it seems for some family members that might not have enough time to mentally prepare for the event, leaving them unable to adequately cope.

Certainly extended family and co-workers are not as huge a concern as the children and immediate family involved. With school age children, one must consider the timing of the information as it may have a negative effect on their grades. It seems telling them before school starts or maybe between semesters might give them time to adjust rather than to chance telling them mid semester when grades can so easily drop, assuming that sort of time frame is an option.

I wonder these things because as many of you already know, we recently found out that my husband will be deploying next June for about 12 months or so. We haven’t said much to anyone except our closest friends and family members because they are the ones who are most directly involved and will probably be a tremendous factor in helping out when he’s gone.

We of course haven’t told our little one who will be 5 in October or our nieces and nephews because we just want to pick the best time to tell them. Like I said, I suppose there really is no good time for news like this but I think we’ve decided that in light of our time frame, maybe keeping everyone in the loop of information might be better than blindsiding them with it a month out…it may not be the easiest thing but it will certainly give everyone time to adjust right along with us.

Jay and I have always believed that families should be honest with each other about everything, even the hard stuff. After all, the strongest families pray together, cry together, and laugh together. They hold each other’s hands through the toughest times and are there to celebrate the little victories along the highway of life. I wouldn’t have made it through the first deployment without their love, strength and support. While it may be difficult to see their sadness and dismay, somehow keeping this from them feels wrong in so many ways.    

As for our little one, I think that will be the most difficult to explain. How do you explain an absence like this to a 5-year-old child whose sun rises and sets with his daddy? This will most certainly be more difficult for him than the last deployment since now he’s old enough to fully know, understand, and love having his daddy around as an integral part of his day.

I must say, though, I believe the deployment will be tough, it will no doubt be as difficult to endure as seeing the pain and sadness in my baby boy’s eyes every time he cries for the daddy who cannot kiss away the boo-boos, hold him in his arms, or kiss him goodnight. Somehow the lump in my throat tells me that no amount of “daddy loves you� will be enough to make that type of ache go away.

So, all I can do right now is make certain they spend plenty of time together, take lots of pictures, and then gently break the news a few weeks prior to Jay’s departure that “daddy has to go away for a while and work on helicopters but will be back soon�, and hope that the constant reassurance and visual imagery of their memories on film are enough to hold his heart together until Jay’s safe return. What else can anyone do?

Jade welcomes your comments here as well as any suggestions you may have for her future posts. You may also e-mail her at akajadestone@yahoo.com. To read previous Military Mama posts, CLICK HERE.

 By Jade Stone

If you’ve been following along you’ve probably learned quite a bit about the way I grew up and already know that my upbringing has greatly influenced the filter through which I view all things military.

You also know that the military played and continues to play a huge role in my life. That in mind, it goes without saying that I love the show Army wives. The problems are real and are dealt with realistically. This particular week really struck me, though.

At this point in the story line, orders have been given to the soldiers on this particular post and everyone is beginning to prepare for the deployment. The father of one family is leaving behind two children so he charged the oldest with being the man of the house. Of course, their mom feared that the oldest (being only 10) was simply too young.

As the drama unfolded, the soldier tried to explain that children raised in a military home have to grow up faster, take on more responsibility earlier, and be an active part of the deployment in an effort to come through it as a family. I had never given that idea much thought but realized how much truth there really is in it.

Children in an active military family, no matter the age, will have to endure the hardships and sacrifices that inevitably go along with deployment. Everyone has to help do their part whether it’s taking out the trash or simply learning to understand and cope when things don’t go exactly as planned, a concept that even some adults struggle with.

As the show closed, new orders came down the line from Washington declaring that the entire command post would also be deploying within 2 weeks, which was not originally part of the plan. 

The sobering scenes of families receiving the “not-so-great news” played out before my eyes. I believe the look in a person’s eyes can truly betray them by openly declaring the emotion that they’re trying to hide. We’ve all experienced it from one side or another for various reasons.

Regardless of the reason for the disappointment, little can hide the hollowness of dismay that pools in a person’s eyes, no matter how much encouragement leaks from his or her mouth. It’s simply un-maskable. And so I watched with sympathy for each family, thinking quietly, “I know what that feels like”. I know how incredibly horrible it is to be filled with such inevitability. And yet I viewed it from a distance with little thought of my own future.

Little did I know that scene was about to unfold in my living room not 20 minutes later when my husband arrived home from drill this past weekend. He handed me a list of drill dates which also included the dates for the illusive deployment that has been looming over our heads. I knew in my heart as soon as his boots hit the dirt after the first deployment that there would be another and part of me is happy to finally have some dates in hand. But the other part of me is a little hollow, simply because what has been just an  unpleasant possibility in the future is now an imminent part of our rapidly approaching present.

We have fewer than 45 weeks left to do whatever it is we need or want to do before we lose him for a year and God willing no more. 

Someone asked “So what do you do?� Well, honestly, what can I do? It is simply a proclamation of what will come and thankfully we have time to process the information and prepare our lives for a long period without him. Obviously we will celebrate the upcoming anniversary, birthdays, and other holidays with added fervor. We will certainly relish all of those “little moments� in life that God grants us from time to time and we will work to make sure our little boy spends as much time with Daddy as possible between now and then.

It’s more important than ever to show my husband that I support him and that we will be okay.  Army Strong for a spouse in our home means stepping up and putting one foot in front of the other every day with a smile on your face no matter how tough it gets, because the soldier needs to know you’re okay and that there is nothing to worry about on the home front.

It is my job to ensure that his only concern is his mission and protecting my most valuable asset — his life.  Nothing else matters.

Jade welcomes your comments here as well as any suggestions you may have for her future posts. You may also e-mail her at akajadestone [AT] yahoo [DOT] com. To read previous Military Mama posts, CLICK HERE.

 By Jade Stone

If you have a Facebook account, you know how easy it is to be sucked into reading the news feeds of your friends and family members, as well as the random individual you barely know now but vaguely remember sitting next to in 3rd grade and felt obligated to accept the friend request any way.

Well, I am no different.

Once in a while I catch myself reading the random facts about other people’s lives. However, something caught me off guard this past week. I realized I was reading a negative post about our military and then after a second look, I realized that it came from a fellow educator.

His comment was: “I think that applauding the military passengers on a civilian flight is a little silly”. And worse yet, this individual’s friends agreed and went on to discuss the negative “crimesâ€� that select members of our military have committed against others and therefore applauding simply condones that sort of behavior. Stunned… I suppose that there are a few members who do not deserve to wear the uniform, certainly the 4 star general that was recently dismissed for conduct unbecoming of a soldier is one of them. However, I don’t think that is the point or the message conveyed by civilians when they applaud service members on a plane. 

I believe that applause is the simplest, easiest way to convey the message of “thanks� to the soldiers who represent the idea of sacrifice and commitment to something greater than themselves.

When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, they were treated horribly, spat upon and called baby killers by civilians. Ironically, those soldiers were fighting so that the very individuals who hurled insults at them had the freedom to do so. In light of that fact, many people may be trying to make up for not thanking the Vietnam veterans in the first place and are committed to not allowing our Iraq veterans to endure feeling as though they had sacrificed everything for a country who hated them.

Furthermore, Civilians are not necessarily applauding those specific soldiers for things they have done, but rather all soldiers for the vigilance and unwavering bravery in an ever changing time of conflict. They don’t know if those soldiers are returning from a deployment, coming home for R&R, or are serving as escorts for a fallen soldier and are guiding that soul home with the honor and dignity only a true soldier can understand, never leaving his or her side until they reach their final destination. 

That’s what I think, but I passed the comment on to another friend who is serving in Afghanistan now. The following are his remarks:

“It really shows how small his world is. I would imagine that he has never been to a third world country, has never been thirsty without a water fountain, faucet or refrigerator with bottled water nearby. We are not over here for him. We are over here for our children and our families’ children. We are here for each other so we can all come home together. We are here to make sure there is never a suicide vest at your school, and that car bombs are not a daily threat at the mall.

“I personally get embarrassed when I have to walk through the airport and have people applaud me. I prefer to be the quiet professional. I think he is embarrassed that he has nothing to show for his life and that to show support to the military lets him see how little he has sacrificed for his country. We appreciate the gratitude when it’s expressed. In short, I think he is silly. It just goes to show how simple his world view is, which is sad, considering he is educating our childrenâ€�.

He makes a great point. While we may or may not agree with war, our soldiers carry out the orders given without question because it’s the way it has to be. While no one wants to lose a single life to war, these brave individuals who make up only 1% of our nation’s population signed up freely, willing to sacrifice everything for the greater good. And quite frankly, without people willing to do just that, we wouldn’t have a military, and worse yet, we would no longer be the America that so many of us love and call home, and our first language would certainly not be English but rather the language of the first country to come along and decide to take over.

There would be no one to stop them. So the next time you are in a place where you find those around you applauding and you are faced with the decision on whether or not to follow suit, think about the family that soldier left behind to do a job you would not, so that you may fly freely about the country, eat and drink anything you choose as you see fit, and go wherever you wish without fear of suicide or car bombers. Then decide: do they deserve a simple thank you?

Special note from Jade: A tremendous thank you goes out to LTC Lutsky and his soldiers who are currently serving in a faraway place taking care of business. My heart goes out to you and your families. I pray for your safe return every day. Thank you for allowing me to use your comment. Please know your words do not fall on deaf ears!

Jade welcomes your comments here as well as any suggestions you may have for her future posts. You may also e-mail her at akajadestone [AT] yahoo [DOT] com. To read previous Military Mama posts, CLICK HERE.