Blessed Are The Peacekeepers
"We need a proper bridal party, Robert" I said as I was skimming through our massive guest list, trying to cull it down to something not so massive.
It was early 2008. We were living in Coquitlam in the same apartment complex as Joe and our bagpiper friend, Mike. They were both looking for a place to live after Joe got home from his 2006 tour, and there was a place available in our complex so in they came. We enjoyed having them so near by.
Rob was in the kitchen making coffee, the news was on in the background - something about Prince Harry being in Afghanistan. "Pat & Joe. What's so un-proper about that?" he called out. I was unsurprised by his response.
"How about the fact that my side would be huge and yours would be you three. Try again," I laughed.
"Pat, Joe...Jeff?" he questioned, mentioning one of our old roommates and his mountain climbing partner.
"I have the four ladies, but David is in the wedding party. You either pick two more, or you take David, too," I said.
Rob rolled his eyes. Not because he didn't love David, but because he didn't knew there was no winning. "I'll take Dave."
It was hard planning a wedding when one of your best friends was going to be in Afghanistan. It was equally hard when you had a date set, to find out he wasn't going to be back yet. So you change it, and then the military changes his return date again. At this point we changed it one more time and were sticking to it - November 1, 2008.
Except for our marriage, the marriage of Rob's step-brother, and the birth of a friend's baby, 2008 was a year of little significance to us aside from the fact that we were missing one of the main characters from our life. Rob went off to Wainwright for his summer tasking, but I had become accustomed to not having him around during summers. The internet allowed us to keep in touch with Joe in Afghanistan, which made it seem more like he was just on course and not on the other side of the world in a war zone.
When the guys deployed in 2006, I had to stop watching the news in order to survive. It became quite apparent throughout the tour that that was common behaviour for those of us left at home. We read what we needed to, but stopped watching. The news can glamourize things, so when Joe deployed again there was no exception to that rule. Every time the news broadcasted across the screen that a soldier had died in Afghanistan, panic set in until I realized that it wasn't him and how silly of me - we would know before the news. The day it was reported that a member of 2nd Battalion had died, the chances of it being him were one in 200(ish). The odds didn't sit well with me, but I still tried to comfort myself with the fact that Nadine would know, which would mean we would, too.
I don't entirely recall the happenings of that summer, but I remember the days surrounding August 9th, 2008. I would learn that he was right there with Master Corporal Josh Roberts when he took his last breath after being caught in a firefight. While Josh Roberts left behind a fiancee and an unborn baby, Joe left behind the person he was before that second tour. You don't come out of something like that without it taking a part of who you are.
With the newest casualty of war came another conversation between Rob and I. He made it clear that should anything happen to Joe overseas, there would be no replacement because no one could ever stand where he was supposed to. I agreed, not even giving it another thought because life without Joe was unfathomable.
There are different opinions about which of the two tours changed Joe. In 2006, he showed up on my doorstep as I was getting ready to come meet him at the airport. He'd told me the wrong flight on purpose to surprise me. He stayed with me for almost two months before moving in to the apartment across the courtyard with Mike, so I like to think that I got a good idea of the changes that he had gone through while overseas. He'd grown, he'd matured. He'd become a little darker, but how could seeing the things he'd seen not do that to him? But he was still just...Joe. A lot skinnier, but still just Joe. When he came home in 2008, it was different. He wasn't as open, he wasn't as care free. He was a lot easier to irritate. Rob and I both look back at it and have formed the opinion that that is where we first really started to see those demons. I look at pictures of him before he left, and pictures of him after he came home, and can see the darkness.
I'm not the same person I was ten years ago, but then again not many of us are. When they first came home in 2006, I thought that I had this military spouse thing dialed-in. I thought I knew everything, I thought that they just came back home and everything returned to normal. It was us here at home that had to re-adapt, we had built entire routines without our loved ones and now all of the sudden we had them to work around again. When Joe arrived home in 2008, I expected the Joe that left to be the one that returned. He didn't look at that too kindly, and I didn't understand why.
I sent him an e-mail, detailing how this year I'd gone through hell with anxiety becoming an issue and had finally been diagnosed, and trying to deal with that. I explained that I didn't know how to talk to him, that it felt like he was intentionally trying to make me feel uncomfortable, and because of that I'd acted like a child and I was sorry. My refusal to see the truth put quite the strain on our friendship for his first month home. The e-mail got everything out on the table, and he, in turn, did the same.
"Understand that I promised myself that there were about fifty people I swore to myself that I would see get home safe and sound. I failed one. Understand that I had a bad day that I hope you will never understand, and that is all." [excerpt from actual email, October 3, 2008]
With that, we started over, and the following weekend he came to our house to celebrate my 25th birthday, a bottle of Screech in hand, and the brotherly hug I had been waiting for since he got home.
It was early 2008. We were living in Coquitlam in the same apartment complex as Joe and our bagpiper friend, Mike. They were both looking for a place to live after Joe got home from his 2006 tour, and there was a place available in our complex so in they came. We enjoyed having them so near by.
Rob was in the kitchen making coffee, the news was on in the background - something about Prince Harry being in Afghanistan. "Pat & Joe. What's so un-proper about that?" he called out. I was unsurprised by his response.
"How about the fact that my side would be huge and yours would be you three. Try again," I laughed.
"Pat, Joe...Jeff?" he questioned, mentioning one of our old roommates and his mountain climbing partner.
"I have the four ladies, but David is in the wedding party. You either pick two more, or you take David, too," I said.
Rob rolled his eyes. Not because he didn't love David, but because he didn't knew there was no winning. "I'll take Dave."
It was hard planning a wedding when one of your best friends was going to be in Afghanistan. It was equally hard when you had a date set, to find out he wasn't going to be back yet. So you change it, and then the military changes his return date again. At this point we changed it one more time and were sticking to it - November 1, 2008.
Except for our marriage, the marriage of Rob's step-brother, and the birth of a friend's baby, 2008 was a year of little significance to us aside from the fact that we were missing one of the main characters from our life. Rob went off to Wainwright for his summer tasking, but I had become accustomed to not having him around during summers. The internet allowed us to keep in touch with Joe in Afghanistan, which made it seem more like he was just on course and not on the other side of the world in a war zone.
When the guys deployed in 2006, I had to stop watching the news in order to survive. It became quite apparent throughout the tour that that was common behaviour for those of us left at home. We read what we needed to, but stopped watching. The news can glamourize things, so when Joe deployed again there was no exception to that rule. Every time the news broadcasted across the screen that a soldier had died in Afghanistan, panic set in until I realized that it wasn't him and how silly of me - we would know before the news. The day it was reported that a member of 2nd Battalion had died, the chances of it being him were one in 200(ish). The odds didn't sit well with me, but I still tried to comfort myself with the fact that Nadine would know, which would mean we would, too.
I don't entirely recall the happenings of that summer, but I remember the days surrounding August 9th, 2008. I would learn that he was right there with Master Corporal Josh Roberts when he took his last breath after being caught in a firefight. While Josh Roberts left behind a fiancee and an unborn baby, Joe left behind the person he was before that second tour. You don't come out of something like that without it taking a part of who you are.
With the newest casualty of war came another conversation between Rob and I. He made it clear that should anything happen to Joe overseas, there would be no replacement because no one could ever stand where he was supposed to. I agreed, not even giving it another thought because life without Joe was unfathomable.
There are different opinions about which of the two tours changed Joe. In 2006, he showed up on my doorstep as I was getting ready to come meet him at the airport. He'd told me the wrong flight on purpose to surprise me. He stayed with me for almost two months before moving in to the apartment across the courtyard with Mike, so I like to think that I got a good idea of the changes that he had gone through while overseas. He'd grown, he'd matured. He'd become a little darker, but how could seeing the things he'd seen not do that to him? But he was still just...Joe. A lot skinnier, but still just Joe. When he came home in 2008, it was different. He wasn't as open, he wasn't as care free. He was a lot easier to irritate. Rob and I both look back at it and have formed the opinion that that is where we first really started to see those demons. I look at pictures of him before he left, and pictures of him after he came home, and can see the darkness.
I'm not the same person I was ten years ago, but then again not many of us are. When they first came home in 2006, I thought that I had this military spouse thing dialed-in. I thought I knew everything, I thought that they just came back home and everything returned to normal. It was us here at home that had to re-adapt, we had built entire routines without our loved ones and now all of the sudden we had them to work around again. When Joe arrived home in 2008, I expected the Joe that left to be the one that returned. He didn't look at that too kindly, and I didn't understand why.
I sent him an e-mail, detailing how this year I'd gone through hell with anxiety becoming an issue and had finally been diagnosed, and trying to deal with that. I explained that I didn't know how to talk to him, that it felt like he was intentionally trying to make me feel uncomfortable, and because of that I'd acted like a child and I was sorry. My refusal to see the truth put quite the strain on our friendship for his first month home. The e-mail got everything out on the table, and he, in turn, did the same.
"Understand that I promised myself that there were about fifty people I swore to myself that I would see get home safe and sound. I failed one. Understand that I had a bad day that I hope you will never understand, and that is all." [excerpt from actual email, October 3, 2008]
With that, we started over, and the following weekend he came to our house to celebrate my 25th birthday, a bottle of Screech in hand, and the brotherly hug I had been waiting for since he got home.
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