Army Wife Shares True Feelings
This was published in our local base newspaper and I think it paints a great picture of what our spouses put up with when we’re deployed. It’s from a wife named Nikki and was written to her mother. Her mom says she talks with her several times a week to see “how she is doing,” and of course always gets the same answer: “Oh, I’m doing OK, and so are the kids.” Then, the other day, Nikki sent her mom this letter and told her “’Just a little something I would share with you all…’– Love, Nikki.”
“I’m the one you walk past in Wal-Mart smelling a man’s brand of deodorant and buying the same brand of shower gel. I’m trying to remember his smell. I’m the one that sprays his cologne on his pillow so it seems like he is by me when I go to sleep.
“I’m the one you see in the back of the church, a tear running down my face as the congregation prays for our country and our troops. He’s one of them. “I’m the one you beep at for sitting at a green light. I was looking at the flag blowing in the breeze at the corner gas station and thinking of all it means to me, to him, and to our life together.
“I’m the one with a trunk full of flat rate boxes and customs forms, I know my local postal workers by name. The package I send him makes him seem close to me.
“I’m the one that has silly superstitions like wearing the same necklace throughout the deployment because he gave it to me and I will not take it off or change it. I’ll wear it every day until he comes back home.
“I’m the one you walk past as I completely fall apart and lose it because I left my cell phone at home. You might think ‘it’s just a phone,’ but it’s the life line of my marriage and it was his day to call.
“I’m the one you have labeled as quiet or reserved, the one who is never really part of anything, you don’t know I wear the faraway look because my heart boarded the plane with his.
“I’m the one that hears ‘tell him I say thanks, that I’m praying for him’ at least once a day, and I always tell him for you, but I can’t help but think, who prays for me as I continue to do my best to serve him.
“I’m the one that nods right along as you say that you understand or that it’s better now with the Internet. I know that it is, but what you don’t know is that nothing will ever replace the joy of receiving a letter or that the webcams and instant messenger just remind me of all the million little things about him that I love and miss.
“I’m the one that is so used to saying I’m fine, to being numb, to missing him, that I can’t remember any other way to be. I wonder at times if the ‘fine’ he tells me is the same ‘fine’ that I seem to be these days.
“I’m the one that hates Friday and Saturday nights because if he was home we would have the option to go do something… whether it was a movie or dinner or even just stay home and have family night and watch a good movie with the kids.
“I’m the one that eats out more often because it’s just not the same to cook for me and the kids…. He enjoyed home cooked meals…. And I enjoyed how much we enjoyed dinner and sitting at the table all together.
“I’m the one that is as strong and patriotic as the hero I married, not because I stand on the frontlines but because I stay behind stoking the homefires for months on end with a quiet resolve not unlike the one that personifies him.
“I’m the one that tells an ACU teddy bear or the moon good night, that I love you, because it makes me feel less lonely and because I hope he somehow hears or feels it.
“I’m the one that turns the porch light on at sunset to light his way back home, to me, to our life together, to the love and the good times we once shared.
“I’m the one that will see a white bus full of Soldiers or empty and start to cry… because it’s that same bus that took him away from me and I wish he was on there to come home to me.
“I’m the wife of an American Soldier; I’m the hope that lives within him after storm clouded days. The freedom from war that gives wings to his heart, may they reach across the miles and bind our hearts together against all that we must face in this world.”
Susan K. Edmunds
Proud mother/mother-in-law
and retired staff sergeant
jason pisaneschi
May 21st, 2008 at 5:49 ami just read this letter and it hit home for me. i was active for only four years but ive know some of the men and women who deployed as well as their families ive heared the stories, and some people have forgotten about them, and a letter like this brings tears to your eyes and puts reason behined the ones left behined for their actions. for they have sacerficed more then some will ever know.