Deployment Information "From Her War Her Voice"

I thought this would help our non-military friends and family understand how it feels to be a military wife during a deployment.
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When he walks out the door to war, you expect to miss him. You expect pain, children to cry. A deployment is a goodbye. In order to mentally get through a deployment, you will go through the 5 stage grieving process.

Denial
This portion will encompass the months before the deployment as well as the farewell. Leading up to a deployment is horrendous because you have to search for a way to prepare yourself for him to possibly never return. You also have to send him off with a smile, make him believe you are okay, that your children will be okay. As well as searching for a way to make memories strong enough to get you through. What you often wind up doing is fighting for most of the time. Not to mention that for security reasons, the deployment dates shift every few days. So, there really is no way at all to prepare yourself. When you think you have done just that, and you are ready for that final kiss, his date will change, and you will have to work through all this again. You want to fight the reality that he will leave. He will leave no matter what.

Anger
This is one of the most shocking aspects of deployments. You expect to be sad, maybe even lonely, but the rage that begins to consume you seems to rear its ugly head out of nowhere. One thing that thoroughly needs to be discussed is that anger with your spouse, or your children, or with civilians, is perfectly natural. Since your fear of his death is what is fueling your emotions, you turn to anger as a source of release.

Bargaining
“If I keep the kids perfectly happy, he will come home.” “If I just stay busy, he will come home.” “If I push my pain and agony to the bottom of my chest and ignore it for a year, he will come home.” “If I never miss a phone call or an instant messenger, he will come home.” “If I am a good army wife, he will come home.” Get the picture?

DepressionThis is the one emotion you fully expect during a deployment. But what knocks you off your feet is that you expect it in the beginning, not at the end. This can be so disheartening because you thought you were “getting better.” You thought that you faced these feelings during and before, and having this overwhelming emotion hit you when he is closer to coming home (or has returned) is heartbreaking.  The other aspect that goes along with this is that many wives have to bury this and not fully explore it because it is the stage that often includes child neglect, self-abuse, substance abuse, and discussion of marital problems. This emotion is also often coupled and timed with his return for R & R. Just when you “found your groove,” he came home and you have to let him go. Again.
Acceptance
This can be very deceiving. It isn’t necessarily acceptance of the fact that he is gone. It is learning to make peace with the fact that he may never come home. This is your “what if” moment. What needs to be discussed here most of all is the final confrontation of what a deployment really means: he is putting his life on the line. Sure, this should have sunken in by now, but your mind and heart are too busy going through the other emotions to fully grasp this. Also, the reunion and reintegration will fall into this category. This is a huge issue as this is the stage where both spouses can/will display PTSD symptoms. This is the place where the wife needs to feel a chance to examine herself as opposed to searching for all his issues or her children’s issues. It is also where we need to accept that life continues at home without him. Children grow, grandparents die, friends get married. We wonder "Where do we fit? How do we still maintain some normalcy when everything is so abnormal?".