I am the wife of a first responder.
Our marriage has been swamped by every flood and hurricane and hit by every tornado, for more than 20 years. It is hanging on by a thread. The time we're going to be together is always just beyond the next crisis.
We were on a pontoon boat in Oklahoma the morning of the 4th of July. On board: a distant man working on vacation, a teenage boy who speaks little (and with sarcasm when he does), and a woman's heart throbbing with hope and wild expectation that the time had finally come.
But no.
There are details and conversations that don't change this one-time-too-many, and she broke.
I broke.
My sons, Dad and stepmom, brothers and sister, in-laws, nieces and nephews, and their boyfriends and girlfriends all saw it.
I sobbed off and on for hours and was unapproachable in between.
What is wrong with her?!?!
They suspect grief from losing my mom and mother-in-law in the past year, my son being away in the Marine Corps when he was supposed to be home on leave, hormones, or maybe an undiagnosed medical problem??????
They cannot see that hope deferred makes a heart sick, the way the conversation goes round-and-round, and where a woman's feelings find no place to go or land.
Logic stands opposed to any such display of feelings. It spreads its arms wide to keep us apart. Like a referee in a boxing ring.
Not to keep us from killing each other. Just to make sure we don't get tangled up in any form of understanding or intimacy that lasts too long.
My husband and others are tempted to believe if I just had less feelings, more love, and more logic, my marriage would be thriving, instead of on the rocks.
Sensibility could politely excuse unnecessary (and embarrassing) spiraling and command every situation with great composure, dignity, and self-respect.
Of course "he can't help it." Look at all of the good they're doing. This can't possibly be the time to think about yourself.
And of course it can't. How barbaric and selfish can a woman be?
I wish my overwheming pride around their exhaustive training, courage, and honorable work, and in the people who are doing it, and horror and grief at the suffering and mind-numbing loss of life would displace the newness and the oldness of 20 years of going it alone.
I wish it did.
It reminds me of a hospice patient we had once. She felt so bad and ashamed she couldn't stop wondering if those ugly bumps on her hands were cancer after the war in the Ukraine broke out.
So we move forward, in silence. Separately bewildered, bemoaning, and grieving what has happened to the innocent, and grateful he has to go to work as soon as we get home.
The time apart seems to be the only way we can stay together.
And so I pray. For me. My husband. All first responders, their spouses and families, and all whom they are serving - where the real problems are.
(Pic taken after spontaneous visit to church to pray for all of the above)
