Not the Homecoming I Imagined

In an instant, everything changed.

Several weeks ago I got a phone call from Afghanistan – unusual, but not unheard of. It was a busy day at work and I was filling K in on my week ahead.

"How are you?" I asked, almost as an aside as I glanced down at my To Do list.

"Well, I'm in the hospital."

Time stopped. Seconds stretched into days, then raced forward as if to catch up.

(Lest your own heart drop, he is OK and all in one piece.)

K passed out in the middle of a run, part of a regular physical fitness test the Army conducts. He was feeling great, he said, then darkness. He collapsed and hit his head.

They rushed him to a medical facility in Afghanistan, where it was determined he should be sent to another facility – in Germany – so he'd have access to proper tests and care. From there it was determined that he should head back to the states.

Those first few days are a blur of bewilderment, worry and fear.

Is he OK? What happened? What does this mean for his career? How will this affect our future?

Our holiday card had a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke: "Now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been."

I was suddenly reminded of another Rilke quote: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

Live the questions now. It sounds nice in theory – enlightened, but when actually faced with nothing but questions – and questions upon questions – it's terrifying.

That first week my eye twitched from the stress. I tried to remain composed on the outside and continue my normal affairs, but all week that little twitch reared its head to serve as a reminder that nothing was normal.

K was a bear. That first week his phone calls brimmed with anger, sadness, sometimes even acceptance… the stages of grief robustly unfurled, in no particular order, back and forth, whipping in the wind.

He did not want to leave his fellow soldiers, his unit behind. He had more work to do. He wanted to make a difference.

K is on US soil now, but he's still not home. For nearly three weeks he's been in limbo at a medical facility in Maryland, being poked and prodded, awaiting results and next courses of action. He feels helpless, bored and ashamed.

"This isn't the homecoming I imagined," he said the other day. "I wanted to return a hero."

After K deployed, I fantasized about his homecoming: holding a sign to welcome him home, craning my neck to spot him in formation, rushing along with all those other families for that first hug, hopefully having someone snap a photo of that first moment when I bury my face in his neck.

Now when I think about his homecoming, none of that matters.

He doesn't see it, but he's done things that most people his age – or any age even – could never hope to do: enlisted at 39, survived basic training, deployed.

He joined the Army late in life, but he unearthed the heart of a soldier.

And strangely I have unearthed in my own heart the strength of a military spouse.

"It's not the homecoming I imagined either," I told him. "But all that matters is that moment I see your face again."

We still don't know when he's coming home. We still don't know what happened. We still don't know what any of this means for his career.

I no longer think it's about living the questions. I think it's about living in the face of the questions.

In the meantime, I just want him back.