There is a list many of us keep, a mental tally of pain and loneliness, fear and uncertainty, anger and frustration. Me? I add to mine every time I watch him grow smaller and fade into a crowd of uniforms, disappearing from sight and touch and smell for indeterminate lengths of time. Every time first steps are taken or first teeth are lost or first goals are scored, and he’s not there to share it. Every birthday and anniversary and holiday celebrated with a care package mailed or an intermittent video chat or a static-filled phone call. Every emotional and mental upheaval that fails to ebb when his boots suddenly reappear by the door. It is a catalogue of the chaos, a manifest of the misery.
And as I account for all the time and tears and irreversible changes, I suddenly forget why we signed up for this. In fact, if I am completely honest with myself, I sometimes like to omit that we did sign up for this.
My list is full of valid suffering, and yet it is flawed. It overlooks our carefully made choice of a lifestyle that delivers these itemized hardships; it ignores the benefits and advantages that we hesitate to declare as loudly as we do our grievances; it gives more weight to our pain than to our joy.
I can’t remember ever keeping track of all the time, the precious time, my family has been together. I’ve never made an inventory of the special days and ordinary days and terrible, very bad, no-good days that we’ve spent together. Of dinners eaten across the table from one another, sideline cheers shouted in unison, milestones witnessed and memories made together, pictures taken with him instead of for him.
Why don’t I have two lists? And if I’m only going to have one list, why should it be a list of lament? There was a reason we chose this, even if I can’t remember it so clearly when I most need to. And with the risks come, too, the rewards – even when they seem to pale in comparison.
We signed up for this, again and again, until it was for good. And it is for good – for the good of our family. So, I think, I hope, that I will crumple up my list, ball it up in my fist and throw it as far as I can. And then I will make a new list, a complete list. A list that tracks all of our experiences, that registers the trials and the triumphs. A list that remembers not only the sacrifices, but also the hard-earned gains we’ve made as a result.
And the first item on my list, no matter what follows, will be: He came home.
