Missing my Battle Buddy
I’m mourning the loss of my Battle Buddy. She’s not really gone, but our husbands are home safely from Afghanistan, and the “battle” that bonded us is over. We still talk every couple of weeks, but gone are the twice-daily phone calls that got us through the long weeks of last year’s deployment. Gone is the shared set of emotions – anger, fear, loneliness, depression, pride, love – that we weathered together.
And I miss her.
Kelly and I spent twelve months of our lives in identical situations, as our husbands were paired up overseas to mentor the Afghan National Army. We met during the pre-deployment briefings a few days before our soldiers left. We experienced every stage of our first deployment together. Though we live three hours apart, we managed several dinners at a halfway point on the highway. She took me to the spa for my birthday weekend. We made the 5-hour rode trip together to attend the funeral of one of our husbands’ fallen comrades, sobbing our way through the service with my head on her shoulder and her hands clasped tightly around mine. We were each other’s source of strength and understanding. There were daily emails, 3-hour phone calls, and countless messages passed between the two of us and our husbands, when one of the guys was able to call before the other. The four of us were linked in a way that is hard to explain. My husband, Paul, wrote Kelly’s number in sharpie inside his uniform so that if anything happened to her husband, she would hear it first from his best friend. Kelly’s husband, Mark, took Paul’s goodbye letter to me, keeping it safe in case it was ever needed.
Paul and I were on R&R in Australia when we learned of the death of a soldier in his unit. We called Kelly in the middle of the night. I needed her.
“How’s Mark?” I asked.
“He needs Paul,” she answered.
Paul needed Mark, too, so he returned to Afghanistan on the next flight.
Paul needed Mark more than he needed me.
And I needed Kelly.
The deployment took my husband away for a year, but it didn’t take my need for a best friend, a confidante, someone to lean on. Kelly became that person. And now that our soldiers are home, it seems like we should release our death-grip on each other, and bond with our husbands again.
But my husband didn’t know me during this deployment the way Kelly did. And Mark and Paul don’t understand the bond Kelly and I share anymore than we can comprehend the new ‘brotherhood’ they claim.
And to be honest, as we both try to navigate marriages in which both partners have changed so much, I’m not sure Kelly and I have ever needed each other more. So why does our closeness seem like a betrayal now when it was essential to our survival just a few months ago?
When the guys came home from the war, Kelly and I rode to the airport together. The four of us headed for the bar and spent the night immersed in karaoke and pitchers of Bud Light. We laughed and told stories of our time apart. Kelly met Paul and I met Mark face to face for the first time. And I had visions of shared vacations and lifetimes of barbeques in each other’s backyards. But in the first glorious days of homecoming, no one tells you how difficult the next few months will be. No one tells you that the man you married will seem like a stranger, and the world he shares with fellow soldiers will always seem foreign and just out of reach. All the prayers and wishes you sent into the universe during the deployment have been granted – he’s home safely and you’re supposed to have everything you’ve ever wanted. He’s your best friend again, and the one person who might be able to understand why you still feel so lonely won’t be able to pick up the phone on a Sunday afternoon – because now her husband is home, too.
Read more from Katie Dyer at Heroes At Home
