Military Bereavement Policy
Unfortunately, I have been researching the military's bereavement policy this week. We had a loss in the family and were lucky enough to be able to travel (which meant booking last-minute flights, hotels, and rental cars) to be there for the wake and funeral. Quite frankly, it's because we are in Georgia now that we had the ability to do that relatively easily.
We were with family when the loss happened, so we were there in the heat of the moment as arrangements were being made. Most of the family drove up the following day because the service would be ten-plus hours away. My sister-in-law, who was scheduled to work for those days, was talking with her supervisor to get the time off. The supervisor said that bereavement time off didn't apply to grandparents, but my sister-in-law was fine with using some of her PTO to cover it.
My husband had already been in contact with his supervisor to see if leave was even an option, and when we found out it was, we began making the arrangements to get our family there. Luckily, we had enough leave, and my husband wasn't scheduled for anything significant over the next week. There was a massive TDY that he was pulled from a few months back. And while that was frustrating at the time, it was definitely a blessing in disguise.
All this got me wondering what the military's policy for bereavement is. I assumed they must have something in place, but I knew nothing about it. In my research, though, I discovered that this policy was only issued on June 30th of last year. No wonder I hadn't heard about it! It isn't even a year old. While I appreciate the military making more strides to put family first and actually live out the mission statement, this policy definitely leaves something to be desired. This policy aimed to prevent servicemembers from having to use any of the 30 days of given leave to attend a funeral or make arrangements for a loved one.
In theory, this accomplished that goal. Any service member who experiences the loss of a spouse or child is given the option to take up to 14 days of nonchargeable leave. But there are a few caveats to that. We only get 14 days if we have less than 30 days of leave available to take. If someone has 15 days of leave, then they get the full 14 days. If someone has 34 days of leave, then they get to take ten days. And if someone has 45 days of leave, then they don't get any extra days.
So, by that metric alone, the new policy meets the objective. Service members will not have to take their annual leave to cover time for grieving. The real kicker of this policy, though, is who it applies to. Service members can only access this leave after the loss of a spouse or child, and miscarriages or stillbirths do not count.
I have two significant problems with this. First, it largely ignores the fact that our service members are people with a full collection of loved ones. The majority of people have parents, grandparents, and siblings. Most people have at least one person in that group that they are incredibly close to and dependent on for some sort of emotional support.
Extending a policy to just immediate family isn't a solution because it ignores people who never had a connection with their parents and were instead raised by their grandparents. Capping it at siblings excludes any only child with a cousin or best friend that fits that definition. I understand we have to draw the boundary line somewhere, but does it really have to be in a service member's home?
My second problem with this is the delineation that the loss of a child through miscarriage or stillbirth does not count. I do understand that there are all sorts of arguments about how much a miscarriage counts as a loss. There are a lot of people who would expect a mother to grieve and not a father. I have also never experienced such a loss, so I have no words to add to the conversation. But I do know that if someone says something hurts, then it hurts. We should acknowledge the pain that our service members are facing when they go through an unexpected loss.
Even more infuriating to me, though, is that a stillbirth would not qualify for this leave. This is a family that went through an entire pregnancy expecting to bring home a bundle of joy and then leaves the hospital with just themselves. That is a gut-wrenching, agonizing type of pain that I can't even imagine. But the military wants to say that since that kid never made it to Little League, then no one needs time off to grieve. That is absolutely appalling, in my opinion.
The point of this policy is to acknowledge that loss hurts people. When people experience this level of loss, they need time to process and grieve. Being able to do that without work pressure allows people to go through what they need to more thoroughly. The military is no stranger to loss, but I would argue it is a stranger to helping people cope with it.
I want to give credit where it is due, that this is a place where people are trying to support their people. But it falls short of the people who need it. We had leave, money, and no pressing repsobilities when this loss happened. But had any of those things not been the case, we would have missed this celebration of life. Death is inevitable, and we will lose people. How we choose to support people going through one of the most difficult things we can experience as humans says a lot about what we truly value. In that sense, I think the military has a long way to go.