Saying Goodbye

Sunday, 11:15 pm

The silence is loud. We just closed the door as Brad took the final van-full of soldiers back to post, to pick up their bags and head to the Hall of Champions, the last place they will be on post, where they get their smallpox shot, check their id's and dogtags, and get on the bus. Fifteen months before they'll be back. And we pray to God that they will all be back.

I can't help crying as I think of this. This was the last weekend. Now it's just Brad and Debbie and the guys on Rear D. Even I'm leaving - but I'm going home. Back to the States. I will miss this place, but I have no complaints. I get to go home, back to familiar sights and voices and foods and hugs. But these guys - and girls - my friends - are going downrange. Some of them are already gone. The house has been filled, every single bed and several couches, for the last four weekends, and now it's empty. And in that reality, the silence is loud. You can hear every clock tick, every footstep. Every deep breath, and whispered prayer. Oh God, why them? Is there a reason for this? Will they come back?

My heart breaks for the women who have to stand outside the gym, wishing they could follow their husbands inside as they check out. I cry for the children who are too little to understand where Daddy is going, and for the ones who have already been without their mother or father, who've had to stay in the States and adjust early to living on phone calls and letters. Now the soldiers are off to the heat of battle, where they will serve and fight and sacrifice for the rest of us.

They've laughed and joked about it, but when you stand in the doorway and say those goobyes, you catch a glimpse of what's behind their strength. You walk by an open door and hear it in the choked words on a last phone call home for who knows how long. You see it as they all sit and listen to the same songs over and over. If You're Reading This, by Tim McGraw. Letters from Home, John Michael Montogmery. They know where they're going and what it is they're going to be facing. Some of them have been there before, some as many as 4 times. They're gone. It's been talked about for months, but until now, when I've seen them walk out the door for the last time. When I know that I won't get another chance for goodbye. When I know some of them are gone already. When I know that in a few hours, they'll be on a bus with their bags, headed for a plane to take them to Iraq. To war.

Please, pray for our soldiers. For my friends. For these heroes.