
I met my husband as an active duty military member, and we used to deploy
together. Boy, those were the days. But lately I've been keeping the fires burning on the home front. Here I am thirteen years later, and they haven't gotten any easier. I admit that I have never WATCHED his ships deploy. I have my own system for dealing with the separation, and standing on a pier and watching the ship sail away is not part of it. More power to those with the strength to do this. We were both very content with saying our see you later's on a pier and never looking back. Well, this time he expressed his wish for me and the girls to stay and watch him deploy, and of course I agreed.
So, I had to watch my husband deploy.

Although I've done this many times before, this was definitely the hardest. I was pretty much in denial for the first few hours, as I watched him take his bags out of the trunk. I was desensitized when I watched him load them on the boat.

I was numb as he kissed me good bye.
What is going on?
What is happening?
I don’t think I like this. I’m not used to this. I looked around, everyone is hugging, kissing, crying. Oh god, it’s getting hard to breathe. I watch a mother hugging her son, and holding on to him for dear life. Wives saying good bye as children are just beginning to realize exactly what mommy and daddy meant when they said daddy will be gone for a while. Then there was the hysterically sobbing wife, which had to have three sailors rip her off her husband. All this time, it felt like slow motion, like an out if body experience. Then I see him, he’s waving from the boat.

Wait, did I tell him I loved him?
Did I tell him I’ll miss him?
Oh no. I did not plan for this. I realized why I don’t do this.
You become emotionally attached in some way to everyone on that pier. I used to be the wife that never stuck around, and said it must be hard to have a family with a missing parent. The wife that used to swear she could imagine what it was like. But as I stood on that pier I became the wife that KNEW.
Here it comes; I watched them unmoor the boat. I watched it slowly slip backwards. Three blasts of the horn, I knew those well, I used to drive boats for this Navy these same boats that are now taking away my husband, my friend, the father of my girls.

I didn’t have the strength to watch it go past the horizon, the pain was too unbearable. It was 0806 the exact time I literally felt my heart rip from my chest and float away on a haze grey boat.

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