The Bittersweet Anniversary
Yesterday marked exactly four years since we moved to Oklahoma. My husband got home from SERE on December 6th, 2019, and as soon as the weekend was over, he did the last of his out-processing from Tyndall Air Force Base. We hit the road and started the 14.5-hour drive to Oklahoma City.
Just a reminder when moving out of an apartment to double-check the porch, especially in Florida. We never used it and lived on the third floor, so I didn’t think anything of it until the very end of my final clean-up. However, I discovered about 50 tiny dead frogs when I went out there. We have absolutely no idea how that happened, but our best guess is that they shimmied through a hole in the floor and ate too much, so they couldn’t get back down. And then the sun dried them out. All this is to say, check your porch because I was unprepared for that last- minute clean-up.
This was a big time for me. It really marked the beginning of our marriage and living together in a sense. We’d only been married about a month when he left for SERE. This was the longest separation we had done since getting married, rivaling two other separations we did during our time dating. It was also the longest we went without any communication since my husband went on radio silence for a week while in the woods.
He had just gotten home, which was exciting, and we were off to our new apartment. We would get to start building our home together from scratch, and I would officially unpack. Moving to Oklahoma was scary since it was so far from everything I knew but also very exciting.
On the other hand, though, that date also marked an important occasion for my family. While my husband was at SERE, I learned that my Grandmama had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was lucky in so many ways. They caught it very early, and she was over 65 when diagnosed, which usually makes the disease much easier to fight. It had not yet spread to her lymph nodes, so she just had to do surgery and some radiation. She was negative for the BRC-A gene, which meant my mom and aunt didn’t have to get tested, as well as my sisters and I. Although I am currently waiting on results for testing since I just found out being Ashkenazi Jewish is also a qualifier.
Her surgery was scheduled for the morning of December 10th, 2019. I wanted to be there. And given any other circumstances, I probably would have been. But my husband just got home, we had to report to the new assignment (not that I had to be physically present for that, but I still felt like it was something I wanted to be around for), we were signing for our new apartment, and honestly, we were not in a financial position for me to fly home with Christmas right around the corner.
I still thoroughly enjoyed that day. I appreciated being with my husband and thinking about our new life in Oklahoma. I got consistent updates from my mom and talked to my Grandmama at the end of the day. This date was simply an obvious marker that something had changed. I was suddenly part of a new family, and that didn’t change the connection to my birth family, but it did change how things would, could, and should be prioritized.
Anyone getting married goes through this transition point. Military spouses probably go through it a lot quicker than others. But we all come to recognize that our family is the one we’ve built, and the one we were born into exists alongside (or in front of for a lot of people) that. I’ve been lucky to make it back home for many important things, but I’ve also missed a lot of things I would have loved to be a part of.
This PCS to Georgia means I will be part of a lot more. I can drive the 6 hours to my parents at the drop of a hat rather than going home involving multiple plane flights and a couple hundred bucks. But I know there are still things I will miss. I have obligations to my family and the community I build in Georgia.
December 10th is always a reminder of this. It reminds me of the choices I’ve made and the choices I was forced to make. I wouldn’t change anything. Living with regret over the things we’ve missed does no good. The only thing we can do is try to make better choices next time if we aren’t happy with the ones we’ve made before. And we also just have to accept that some things are out of our hands. The military has a big say in our lives, and the decisions it makes affect a lot more than where we sleep at night and if we’ll be alone when we do.
If you don’t have a December 10th in your life, just know that it is coming. And I hope when it does, you are ready to embrace that moment for everything it has to give. And I hope when the anniversary of that day comes back around, we can all look back and say that we are proud of the choices we’ve made. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” I think that’s something we, as military spouses, can all hold close.