I must have been the goofiest looking soldier there is as I stepped off the plane into Denver International Airport. After several hours of delays, exposure to drastic climate changes, and over 32 hours without sleep or real food, I can only imagine that my wild smile and constantly wandering gaze made me look hilariously bewildered. Luckily I'd been trained to deal with worse and was in tip top shape to strategize my way through the endless crowds of people at the airport. In actuality though, I was indeed quite bewildered. To be breathing in air with much less oxygen in a place that looked the same but felt very much like an old dream was difficult to absorb.
This was home. I'd dreamt about it on stressful nights in the barracks. I'd pulled images of it to the forefront of my mind while waiting my turn to crawl head first into courses of mud and barbed wire. I'd talked about it to the poor soldiers who didn't know what they were missing by not having experienced the Rocky Mountains. I'd written letters that would travel many miles from a land with no mountains to this familiar geography of rigid faces and elevation. The last time I'd been in this airport I had just walked away from a sobbing mother and a happy recruiter who saw me all the way to the security line (mostly because he had to ensure I wasn't going to regret my decision and bolt, but it was all the same to me). Now there I was, looking around thinking about how much worse this feeling must be for my comrades who have been on long term assignments or deployments overseas... how strange it was to be home. Wonderful, but strange.
Anyway, by the time I made it up my first flight of stairs I noticed I was out of breath. That was a first. It used to be that I would tease my out-of-state relatives about their lack of breath when they visited. I began counting how many days I had to exercise my Colorado lungs back into elevation shape. I was approached by a few kind souls who offered their gratitude for my service. That was also a first, and I was humbled to shake their hands. When I arrived at the top of the final escalator I lost my breath again but this time at the sight of a familiar stranger waiting for me with roses. I had already had a talk with myself about not crying when I saw him. I was convinced that I could maintain my composure until I got out of the airport. That conviction crumbled as I came within a few strides of a hug. A wonderful lady and her family that I'd conversed with on the plane caught it all on camera... there would be no hiding my ugly cry because now there was photographic evidence of it. Oh well. They were some of the kindest people I'd met. I was overjoyed to swap numbers and send them off with hugs to their Christmas vacation in the Rockies.
Finally the day lead up to the surprise I'd been planning for months. With my neighbors and a local restaurant in conspiracy, I was thrilled to sneak up on my parents as they enjoyed what they thought to be just a night out with friends. When my father realized what was going on as he blinked at me in shock he jumped up to hug me with the most sincere sobs. A few months before he'd hugged me the same way at my graduation crying "Oh my gosh! Look at my soldier! My soldier!" I can never describe the way it melted my heart. My sweet mother did what she always does, cries quietly but fervently while she takes every opportunity to hold my hand or kiss me on the cheek. I felt her love pouring out of her almost violently that night. I'd find out later that that was for more than one reason.
While the night drew to a close and we moseyed home I was confused to find that the tears did not stop. Instead they took on a different nature, and I found my breath being drawn out of me yet again as confession of bad news came quietly from my now sorrowful parents. In two short sentences I learned that my dog had passed away in their laps just that morning on our living room floor. They explained that he hadn't been doing well and that about two hours before I landed in Denver he stopped breathing and they held him and cried together. In the next few sentences I learned that I'd be attending a funeral for a dear mentor and friend of mine who had also passed before I'd returned home. A veteran himself, he'd been one of my inspirations for joining the military and I would be adorning my uniform to salute him goodbye before Christmas came around.
While the Army had taught me new things about dealing with death, it hadn't prepared me for the overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity that followed the news I'd just received. I did not cry and I did not express the full strength of my anger at having been kept unaware of things going downhill at home. I can understand that parents want to shelter their children. I took a deep breath, talked to my parents about the need to keep me informed, bid my neighbors goodnight, gave hugs and reassurance and went to bed. I listened for my dog's familiar jingle of his collar and paws on hardwood floor. I thought about the last conversation I'd had with my dear friend Ernie; his ranting about being excited to see me in uniform when I came home for Christmas. Finally, late into the night tears woke me out of sleep and all I could say was "I just want my dog back. I just want my dog back."
Only a month earlier than my return home my parents had notified me of recent suicides in our family. In putting all of these events into perspective the best I could truly come up with to express my grief and confusion was that I wanted my dog back. The reality has been that I want my dog back certainly, but what I am craving is familiarity. In the midst of death, creating absence, the images and sense of home that I'd dreamt about for months had changed. What I had looked forward to was no longer in existence like I'd expected it to be when I returned.
In the last few days I learned that another dear friend besides darling Ernie passed while I was away, and just yesterday my "uncle" passed away. In counting five funerals and a canine compacted into a few short months, my reality of what it would be like to come home has been drastically different than what I had hoped. Tomorrow will be the first time in my entire life that Christmas day does not follow a tradition of slow morning coffee, presents, and Biblical movies on television with my parents. I will wake up again in a room that doesn't even have the same wall paint color as it did when I left. I guess it seems obvious that time rolls forward and brings change with it. I asked for change and welcomed it tenfold when I stepped onto a plane headed for Basic Combat Training. I myself have changed. It would be incredible to think that the rest of the world would not continue changing while I was away. Death is natural. It is not death, although it is a striking season of it for myself and my family, that has brought me to my knees in tears this Christmas Eve, it is change. It is the sense of nothing being at all the same that makes me compile all the confusion, stress, sorrow, and anger into just murmuring to myself that "I just want my dog back". I want that familiarity back.
However, as I have expressed to my friends and family, that is not the end of the story. In a recent Facebook post I tried to sum up what I have been learning in the process of coming home to such striking levels of change:
"Yet for all their suffering their lives are so full.
For all the tears I've seen my mother shed over the years as she lost her mother and so many others, and my father who is burdened with the sorrow of no family we've ever known, they turn back to show me that time does heal, God does heal, and that joy and sorrow can coexist powerfully.
Nothing about this Christmas feels familiar. I came home in combat boots when I left in tennis shoes, there are new buildings and unfamiliar shops , there is sorrow, I don't hear my dog's familiar pit pat across hard wood floors at night, there will not be the same people at our Christmas celebration, our celebration itself has changed from its tradition for the first time since I have been alive, I see everything differently, and even my room was painted a different color by the time I returned.
It brings pain because nothing is the same, but it also brings a joy that I've never had before because I am just so grateful to be sleeping in my home and to have healthy safe parents to greet me when I wake up. I am overjoyed to see that while funerals have been weighing her down my mother fights back with community service and Christmas cookie baking like never before. The house has been decorated with lights despite our wardrobe consisting of a lot of black lately. It is my joy to serve as a soldier and be welcomed home as a daughter and friend.
Nothing about this Christmas feels familiar. I came home in combat boots when I left in tennis shoes, there are new buildings and unfamiliar shops , there is sorrow, I don't hear my dog's familiar pit pat across hard wood floors at night, there will not be the same people at our Christmas celebration, our celebration itself has changed from its tradition for the first time since I have been alive, I see everything differently, and even my room was painted a different color by the time I returned.
It brings pain because nothing is the same, but it also brings a joy that I've never had before because I am just so grateful to be sleeping in my home and to have healthy safe parents to greet me when I wake up. I am overjoyed to see that while funerals have been weighing her down my mother fights back with community service and Christmas cookie baking like never before. The house has been decorated with lights despite our wardrobe consisting of a lot of black lately. It is my joy to serve as a soldier and be welcomed home as a daughter and friend.
It is my joy that nothing may be familiar anymore but the Lord Jesus still became flesh to suffer and die and conquer the grave for my sins. His love is always familiar. I realize that since life does change and I can't stop it, this lesson came at a perfect time because the army will offer many more challenges than this. Nothing may ever be the same, but "weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." - Psalm 30:5"
This is truly the most intense Christmas season I have ever experienced.
When I lived full time in the modeling and pageant world my life was all about face. When I joined the military my life made an "about face". As of late my life has made yet another 180 degree turn. Luckily the Army taught me that an about face is performed sharply,with eyes looking straight forward, a proud lifted chest, and quiet strength. That is exactly how I will carry on into the new year because life isn't going to stop moving but it is with great sorrow, great joy, quiet strength, and eyes looking forward that we will celebrate Christmas for its true meaning and move into the new year with hope.
"And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'"
-Revelation 21: 5
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