In just one week in July, 2016, three soldiers died in training for war and conflict, but not actual war or conflict.
All of them were seemingly physically fit men. The first one was 2nd Lt. Michael Parros. He was 21.
It was three days into Ranger School. Lt Parros had abnormally low sodium levels. This can happen to runners who over-hydrate. But it happened to him.
Another soldier collapsed at Fort Jackson, which was where my daughter Emily was going. The soldier collapsed after a two-mile run, which is a standard part of the physical fitness test. Emily had to run two-miles before she went to basic training as part of her qualifications to enter into the officer program.
Somehow, this does not make me feel any better.
The third death happened at Fort Carson in Colorado. He collapsed, too.
“We take every death seriously and look into the circumstances to determine what may be done to avoid them in the future,” Army Forces Command spokesman John Boyce told military.com
Somehow, this did not make me feel any better either and on this Tuesday morning as I sat in the military entrance processing station in Portland, Maine, all I could think about was death. I sat with a bunch of other family members in a plain white room with a tv mounted high on a wall.
Em was going to boot camp. Em was going into the Army. Em was going . . . away . . . for a long time.
And I wasn’t going to be there for her. And she? She wasn’t going to be there for me either.
Another family there at MEPS was waiting for Grandpa. A young man was pacing. Grandpa was not here and not answering their phone calls or texts. The texting guy has black, snazzy shoes and red nike swish. He was the military recruit and he was all boundless energy, the sort of guy people call tightly wound and he looked kind of like a young Eminem. He had the swagger, too. Six of his relatives were taking up multiple couches. They were all wearing hoodies. A child paced back and forth, also in hoodie — army green — earning Cheetos from the oldest woman for every 25 steps and for being quiet.
A marine came to the door, “Do I have a condone in here?”
The pacer looked up. “Condon?”
“Yeah.”
That’s him. Condon, the pacer, left after finding out Grandpa was just down the street. The rest of his family fiddled with their cell phones. Everyone was on their phones including me. I was typing out notes to use later in case I ever got brave enough to write about this.
Another family and then another came in. All sat awkwardly on couches and large chairs in overstuffed faux black leather. The walls were beige. Ceiling was drop. The tv was on ESPN. There were toys in cardboard boxes in the corner like a doctor’s office with no attention to detail.
I had two and a half hours before Em left.
It was not enough time
“Grandpa is here,” one of the hoodies said.
“Is he out of breath?” another one asked.
“They are scanning him.”
“They are going to have to scan him a couple time.”
“Are they still scanning Grandpa?”
“Yeah.”
MEPS required you to go through a metal detector, kind of like an airport. Apparently, Grampa had a lot of metal inside of him. Before he came in the room a man’s voice commanded from the intercom system, “All Air Force shippers to the front desk.”
Grandpa strolled in and promptly plopped into the couch. He took off his black trucker hat and wiped at his head.
“A new set of legs and a new set of lungs would make a big difference.” He laughed.
There was one woman alone sitting near me. She was older and thin with a working mom haircut and large jewelry tapestry ankle boots. Another woman in a green army style jacket high ponytail winter boots with salt stains over her jeans perched in front of the television, but was staring at her phone, frowning.
There were two women clustered around each other. One was a wife. One was a sister. One cracked her knuckles over and over again. The other wore chunky hipster glasses and had a side ponytail.
They were both chewing gum and sighing a lot.
They talked in whispers.
My stomach growled and it was louder than their whispers, but nobody looked at me except the Cheeto kid and then Condon was back in the room and slumped on the couch yawning and not covering his mouth which was like a big black pit. He was also sniffing.
We were waiting so long because the computer system went down and the army hadn't gone through all the shippers papers to make sure everything is okay. The delay meant that we all sat in there together until our kids and husbands and wives got sworn in.
A man in an Irish beret type hat and dark brown Carhartts old boat shoes comes in and twiddled his thumbs. He popped right up and headed to the desk and he was back again. He brought in a slew of people including a man carrying a helmet. The room was now crowded with people sitting on other people. I couldn't decide if I should get up.
The beret man held the hand of the young man next to him and said, “I am glad I am here for you. Thank you for being so patient and understanding my situation and putting up with me. I love you a lot. I can honestly say I will miss Tommy just like I miss you when you are at work. You are in my heart. You have a place in my heart.”
He was still holding the young guy’s hand.
“I have a wonderful family that will keep me warm, keep my heart open. I will miss you,” he said.
“I will miss you too, Dad.” The guy, Tommy, had a voice rough with emotion. He talked about another MEPS where family wasn’t allowed to mingle with the future soldiers.
His dad listened and then announced to the woman near them, the mom, “I am proud of him.”
“I am too,” she answered. She stood next to Tommy’s dad, holding his hand tightly.
The dad asked Tommy, “Do you want to sit down, honey?”
“No, I am fine.”
“I just worry about you because you are my inside you are my special heart.” He switched topics. “I am glad we came. I wish I had breakfast.” And then he went back to his original thought and said again,” You have a special place in my heart.”
“You too,” Tommy said.
“It is in the left ventricle,” snarked Tommy’s sister’s boyfriend. Nobody laughed, but then Tommy smiled at him.
Tommy focused on his dad. “Thank you for everything you taught me.”
“We will see you in two months.” Tommy’s dad didn’t sound convinced. He sounded broken in his heart and it broke me. My eyes started watering.
Tommy’s mom started to worry because everything is running late. “I have to be back in N.H. by one o'clock at the latest because I have to change his bag.”
Tommy’s dad was not worried about this. He decided to stand up. “I am going to talk to that man and tell him who I am. Who I am. I am a survivor.”
I’m not sure what man he was talking about.
His wife distracted him. “Do you want me to clean your glasses so you can see?”
She looked for a tissue.
She asked, kindly. “You want to sit with Thomas?”
He sat again and started reminiscing about riding his motorcycle through the streets of Randolph. He coughed. Thomas jumped up to look for water. The men at the control desk said someone can run down to CVS, but then they realized that Tommy’s dad is the man with the helmet, the man whose body is broken, the man whose heart was breaking right in front of them. They find Tommy a water bottle.
“Will I get to sit next to you? Because to be honest I miss your close contact,” Tommy’s dad asked his mom, voice hitching and slow.
She grabbed his hand
“Oh! Your hand is warm again,” she said. “It was so cold before.”
She rubbed his hand with hers. They held onto each other and I had to close my eyes really hard to keep the emotion inside of me.
Tommy handed his dad a water bottle. His dad didn't drink from it. It didn’t matter. The dad takes a picture of his son.
Tommy’s parents looked too old to be his parents but I think that is because whatever happened to the dad has aged them both.
Thomas said to his dad who had now stood up, “You just need to relax a little bit.”
Tommy’s dad showed him all the stuff in his pocket. He wrapped a wire around itself explaining how this means he’ll never lose it. Thomas watched with all this love and patience
Love and patience and worry. Those three things filled that beige room.
On Sunday, before we left for Portland and MEPS, Em and I were sitting on the couch in the living room. The dogs were all on the couches, too. I looked up from my work and the absolute realization that she is going, really going, hit me. It hit me pretty hard. Em noticed my slightly crumpling face immediately and said, all deadpan, “Let me finish my post and then you can have your breakdown.”
“I’m not having a breakdown. Everything is fine.” It was. I had pressed the palms of my hands super hard into my eyes and swallowed the massive gulp of sadness that had made it all the way up from my gut to the back of my throat.
Emily finished her post.
I started writing.
Writing was, and is, the only way I make it through things.
I had been looking at a Facebook group for Fort Jackson Basic Training. Moms and wives are all over it, talking about how they want so badly to hear from their soldiers. They run to the phone and then—it’s like a sales call. They run to the phone and all they hear is their husband say, “I’m here. I’m good. I love you.” Thirty seconds and he hangs up.
And I am so lucky because I have always been able to talk to Emily. I’ve always been able to know if she’s safe or good or sad or anything. And now? Now I couldn’t. Now, I was going to be obsessed with my telephone, waiting to hear, begging to hear. And then I was going to have to hope that she’s okay when I don’t hear. Hope for weeks.
Here’s the truth: I am not good at letting go.
Shaun and I broke up about 1,000 times before we ended up together for good. Each time, I thought, “This is going to happen. I am not letting go.”
But the thing is that life forces you to let go. You can’t control it. I can’t control anything, honestly, and that realization kills me and I start to lose it again.
“Bring it in,” Em said, post done, and ready for the breakdown, leaning forward on the couch, motioning for me to hug her. I did.
THE SWEARING IN
The swearing in happened in a small wood-walled room. They lined up in two rows of three in front of a man with an AIRBORN patch on his right shoulder. They raised their hands. The parents like Tommy’s dad and girlfriends and wives pulled out their cameras from their positions behind the officer. They practiced this once all together, and they said the words perfectly and in unison.
I do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Honestly, I was barely listening. I was just trying to get a picture of Emily where her eyes were not closed or she didn’t look like a Russian spy. Despite how beautiful she was, this turned out to be a difficult task. Panic started to well up inside me. The palms of my hands tingled. I had become the sort of people who silently murmured to herself, “It will be fine. It will be fine. It will be fine.”
But I hadn’t yet become the kind of person who believed it.
Another mother of an officer candidate took a picture of Emily and me standing in front of a whole bunch of flags.
“I hope one of the pictures turns out,” the other mom said.
“We don’t photograph well,” Em tod her. “It’s okay.”
And it was. All that mattered was this moment. All that mattered was every moment. All that matters iwa love and forward motion, but even as I write this, tears come up because is it all that matters?
What mattered had always been supporting Emily, keeping her safe so that she could explore her own life, reach her best potential.
Where did that leave me? As a mom? As an Army mom of all things?
It left me walking around Portland Maine’s downtown district for thirty minutes before she had to go back inside the MEPS building without me. They ran late, but the soldiers-in-training had time with their families to wander around. There were rules. They couldn’t go in a car. They had to come back. We had laminated emergency contact cards that they dispersed in case, as the marine in charge said, “They get hit by a bus or have a heart attack or a large anvil that says ACME across it falls down on their head. Then you call that number there on the card.”
Nothing fell on her head.
She did not get hit by a bus in Portland while we waited.
“I could gently push you in front of a slow moving car and you could break your leg,” I said.
“I could show you how to break my leg,” Em answered. “You just kick right here at the knee … and … “
“No! I can not break your leg.”
“Damn.”
She smiled at me and I was not sure if she was kidding or not. We walked down the brick sidewalks, the concrete sidewalks, past little dress shops that we would normally go into. We passed a taco place. She checked the time. She checked the time again.
“Ten minutes,” she announced.
“That’s not enough,” I told her.
“I know. It’s not.”
We had stashed her winter jacket in the back of the Subaru. I wouldn’t take it out for a week. Her laptop was in there too. I put it in the night before.
As we walked back toward the front of the MEPS building, a kind-looking forty=ish woman took our photo.
“You just look so nice,” she said. “So perfect. I hope you don’t mind.”
We didn’t mind.
I went inside the building with Emily. The first floor was a corridor. On one side was a Rite Aid. The other was store fronts and a bridal shop. We walked by all of this to the back wall. There was a long ramp to the right and an alcove. Once people entered the alcove, they had to talk to the elevator wall and say who they were. Then they are allowed up to the MEPS section of the building. The light for level three lights up without anyone pressing it.
But I didn’t go into the alcove.
Em turned and opened her arms. I could tell she was scared and trying to be brave by the way her mouth was set, by the way her eyes seemed a little too bright. She grabbed me and folded me into a hug and it reminded me of all the times I hugged my mom before she died and how she never wanted to let go. She was the longest hugger. Everyone always teased her about it, but I understood that now because I didn’t ever want to let go of Emily. I wanted to hug her forever.
But I couldn’t.
We never can.
“You are going to be amazing. You can do this. You are a warrior. And you are so strong and so smart and I love you so much,” I whispered into her new dark hair.
“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered back.
“Of course you can,” I told her. “You can do anything. I love you and I’m so proud of you.”
“I love you too.” She pulled away. She smiled a tiny bit and said goodbye.
She disappeared into the alcove. She said something to the wall. Wiping my cheeks, I rushed towards the ramp so that I could see her get into the elevator. She was already gone.
All my sorrow rushed up into my mouth, all my fear and worry and missing and loss, and I pivoted hard and fast like a soldier, back toward the hallway.
Other families were coming in. A teenage girl looked at me with sorrow in her own eyes. I wiped at my face again and tried to smile reassuringly. I think I failed.
Thomas’ family was stationed by the bridal shop. His dad was hugging him, arms wrapped around his back. I swear Thomas was holding all of his father’s weight, keeping him standing. They were both sobbing.
I wanted to sob with them, but I kept walking, fast walking. I don’t remember going out the door. I don’t remember going down the sidewalk. I got to the car. There was no parking ticket. I found my keys and slam myself in behind the steering wheel and it as there, only there, that I let myself sob.
Note: Piece of this have appeared in similar forms. I hope that you’re okay with pieces of it appearing again here.
Welcome to the club. It's okay to be proud and cry at the same time. It comes with your membership. You already feel the weight of history on your daughter's shoulders and share that burden. Every homecoming, every visit, every phone call is precious. Take care...you are not alone.
As a Navy Brat turned Navy Wife turned Navy Aunt turned Navy Mother-in-law , I Totally understand. Hugs to you and salute to Officer Emily.