All the emotions come rushing back to me when I remember dropping him off that morning. Tears are welling up in my eyes just thinking about it. I can't recall how many tearful hugs and kisses we exchanged before he finally told me that I should go because he needed to be able to put on his Marine face and do his job. That's not the way he said it, but I knew what he meant. It was breaking his heart to have me standing there crying, and it wasn't going to change the fact that he had to leave. So, I got in his car, and I drove myself home. It's probably a miracle that I made it home because I know that I sobbed the whole way back to our tower.
The emptiness of our apartment hit me like a ton of bricks as soon as I walked through the door. I doubled over on the couch and just cried. Not the pretty eyes misting kind of crying. I ugly cried. I feel like I cried that whole day. If you've ever sent your husband off to war, you know what I mean. If you haven't, it's just as bad as you imagine.
I had my day to cry, then pulled myself together, and got on with life. I flew to mainland Japan with a friend. We had planned the trip in conjunction with our husbands leaving so we had a distraction to get through the first few days alone. I got a few calls and emails from Bruce that he had arrived and was getting settled. I got back to work as a substitute teacher and tried to keep myself busy with my friends who were also newlyweds now finding themselves alone on an island in the Pacific.
The squadron had only been gone about 2 weeks. I was getting ready for bed one night, doing one last check of my email. When your husband is deployed, you check your email a few hundred times a day, waiting for any word from him. I pulled up Yahoo (because I'm old school like that), and before I could click on my inbox, I saw the headline that all air wing spouses dread. "Helicopter Crash in Iraq." I immediately clicked the link, thinking to myself that it wouldn't be his aircraft. I scanned the article to see that I was wrong. It was a CH-46 that had crashed.
My heart sunk, and I immediately got that pit in the bottom of stomach. I cried. I called a friend who offered to come over, but her husband was getting ready to deploy as well, and I didn't want take take her away from him. I called our FRO (Family Readiness Officer) who of course couldn't tell me anything yet. I called my Daddy, who I'm sure felt helpless half a world away. And, I just cried. I prayed, and I cried. I literally cried myself to sleep that night.
I woke after a few hours of restless sleep, and I realized that I was supposed to work that day. I knew that if I stayed home, I would just sit and worry so I went to school. I talked to the secretary and other teachers and let them know what had happened. They knew that I would be checking email and keeping my phone on me at all times waiting to hear word.
I went through the motions with my students. I just drifted through the morning. During a library visit, I snuck over to a computer to check my email. I had an email from a reliable source. All it said was, "I can't say anything else, but Bruce is okay." That's all I needed to hear. I felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off my chest. I could finally breathe again.
It was another couple of days before I heard from Bruce and before we got official word on what had happened. What I remember the most though, is that any relief I felt that Bruce was safe, was immediately replaced with guilt. I was guilty to be relieved because my relief meant that other families were realizing their worst nightmares. My Marine was okay, but theirs wasn't.
Today is the eight year anniversary of that crash. Each year I relive the pain that I felt and still feel the guilt of having my Marine with me while others are missing theirs. Tonight I will hold my Marine a little tighter and hold those families up in my prayers. And, I will choose to remember the crew of Morphine 1-2 so that their sacrifices will not be forgotten.
This was a CNN Special, Chopper Down, about the crew of Morphine 1-2.
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