“I’d been talking with my sister, so I was outside the room while the girls talked to their daddy by his bed. When I stepped into the room, I saw Michael in tears, holding both of their hands . . .”
Again Tonya paused, her voice choking up.
“He told the girls how much he loved them, and how sorry he was. He promised them he was going to do things right this time. And then he saw me and told me to come over. And he said he was going to be the kind of man the three of us could be proud of.”
Now Heather was crying too, wiping the tears off her face as she laughed with surprise.
“Nia and Mia just loved on their daddy, telling him they already were proud of him. It was . . . Heather, it was an answer to prayer.”
“You cannot know how happy this makes me,” Heather said.
2
Darren checks the dead bolt on the front door one more time, just making sure. He’s been forgetting more things lately, with his head still carrying a fog he can’t get rid of, so he just needs to make sure. The house is quiet with all the family asleep.
A car drives down the road in front of them, making Darren rush over to the front window and peek out from inside. Sweat covers him and he’s breathing heavily. He knows there’s nobody out there, surely nothing to worry about. But he still feels like they’re being watched.
“Darren?” Heather asks from behind him.
He doesn’t say anything, just continues to watch and listen.
“Darren. What are you doing . . . ?”
“Shhh!”
Now he’s scanning the entire yard, looking down the street to make sure the car isn’t coming back, focusing on the big oak tree in the front to see if anybody’s hiding behind it.
“Is everything okay?”
“Quiet!” he whisper-shouts.
He’s not the only one here now, the only person in possible danger. Heather’s here along with Sam and Elie and Meribeth.
What if someone sneaks in from another way?
Darren rushes over the carpet to the back door to check the lock, then back to the kitchen window to look out into the backyard.
You just never know who’s out there and what can happen.
“Is there somebody outside?” Heather whispers.
“I said stop talking!”
He can’t believe Heather’s up right now and questioning him and wanting to talk. That’s all she wants to do—talk. Asking questions and wanting to know how he’s feeling and if he needs anything and if she can do anything and how things are going. She just doesn’t get it.
As he turns to head back to the front door, Heather stands in front of him, her face tired and strained. He shoves her as he moves back to the front door.
She just doesn’t get it. The horrors out there and the dangers in this world.
“Darren—you’re scaring me.”
“Go to bed,” he says as he looks out the window again.
“Honey,” she says, approaching him and touching his arm.
“Stop it! Don’t—just don’t touch me. Please—go to bed.”
He doesn’t care how loud he’s being or what he looks like.
They don’t know. They can’t understand this heavy load and I don’t want them to . . . they can’t.
Darren has to protect them. He has to make sure all of them are okay. That’s what he knows. That’s what he’s been learning out there in the wilderness. To protect himself.
Now he has to protect them, even if they don’t get it yet. Even if they never get it.
3
In the bright warmth of morning, Darren is not next to her as she wakes up.
During the morning ritual of cereal and pancakes and television and Cheerios, Darren is not around to laugh or eat what the kids can’t.
As the day begins to turn from warm to hot, Darren isn’t outside jumping on the trampoline or at the park sitting on a bench watching the children.
Another dinner is served for five but only enjoyed by four.
Soldiers come home and are given a chance to take leave and relax. Chaplains, however, remain on duty, active and assisting other families.
In the cool hush of midnight, as Heather reaches out an arm to the other side of the bed, Darren is not there to be found.
Even though he’s right there with them, Darren is missing in action. And the only one who truly knows this is Heather.
4
He stands by the door of his car, weary, the adrenaline beginning to leak out of him. Darren looks up at the moon and envies it, so bright and full. It’s late, far too late for him not to have called home. He knows Heather is probably worried, but he knows he had to stay. He couldn’t leave his friend alone tonight.
Climbing into the car, he feels his body shaking and knows the shield of strength he demonstrated back in the soldier’s house was simply a facade. A disguise he wears, similar to Sam dressing up to play soldiers.
He hasn’t felt strong for a very long time.
You’re afraid and you’re weak, the voice inside of him whispers.
The drive feels long, his frustration riding with him, picking up speed with each mile. He tries to recall Lance’s face, his always-present smile, but he can’t. He can’t see Lance in his mind even though he keeps trying.
I still have to see Amanda. Have to see the family. But I can’t.
He’s been making the rounds, going to see the wives and children and families of the soldiers who have been lost. Visiting the hospitals where the wounded are still recovering, many missing parts of themselves like Michael.
We’re all missing parts of the selves we brought over to Iraq. Some just aren’t as obvious.
Months ago at the base, he was weary. Now Darren is exhausted, his security stripped away, his soul shredded. The night resembles how he feels. Black, draining, silent, with the bright light visible but distant.
The work he’s continuing to do only shaves away a little more of his depleted reserve. Of course he wants to spend time with his kids at the park, or bounce on the trampoline, or stand in front of a grill just waiting for the steaks to be cooked. But there’s so much to do and so little time. And there’s only one of him.
Heather and the kids don’t need to know about the nightmares the soldiers have. They don’t need to hear about the marriages destroyed or the men drinking themselves to death. Heather has seen and heard enough tears herself, so she doesn’t need any more weight wrapped around her. She doesn’t need to know the emptiness inside some of the soldiers who’ve come home. She doesn’t need to carry that burden.
The porch light of his house is still on, and so is the lamp in the living room. Darren climbs out of his car and hesitates, knowing what’s behind the door.
He’s too tired to argue or to explain. Why should he have to explain where he’s been? She should understand by now. He’s explained enough about being a chaplain.
Sure enough, Heather is waiting for him on the couch.
“It’s three in the morning, Darren,” she scolds him in a whisper. “Where have you been?”
Nobody gets it. Nobody. Especially not Heather. And if anybody should understand, it’s my wife.
“One of the guys at the base had a crisis. I still have a job to do, Heather.”
He walks past her and out of the room. He’s too tired to argue and needs sleep, even though he knows it won’t come.
Part of him doesn’t want it to come. He doesn’t want its dreams.
Darren can figure this out on his own. He can wade through these waters alone. He’s been doing it long enough; there’s no reason for him to stop now.
5
It could be worse, Heather thinks as she looks out the kitchen window and sees Darren sitting in the chair facing the set of trees lining the back of the yard. Nearby, Elie and Sam are playing kickball with some neighborhood friends, but Darren doesn’t seem to notice them. Nor does he seem bothered by the heat in the midday sun, even though he’s wearing his University of Georgia sweatshirt
and sweatpants.
He could be missing his legs like Michael.
Then she thinks of Amanda, the single mother of two doing everything she can to survive each day. She shudders. Yes, things could be worse.
All she—all they—can do is get through each day.
Heather fills a glass with ice and lemonade and carries it outside. She approaches with tentative steps, walking over the grass and clearing her throat as loudly as possible so he knows she’s there behind him. He doesn’t look up. His hair is messy and his face unshaven, and his eyes are far, far away.
Heather leans over and gently kisses his forehead. “I brought you something to drink,” she says.
He looks at the glass as if he’s never seen one before, then takes it and nods before resuming his vacant stare into the backyard.
Hours later, Heather finds herself looking out the kitchen window again as the sun has already set. Still Darren sits, as if he’s looking for something in the trees and refusing to move until it finally arrives.
FALL 2008
1
Heather was mad. Actually, she wasn’t just mad. She was confused and concerned and angry all at the same time.
She just doesn’t get it.
For fifteen months Darren had built relationships with the guys in Iraq, bonding with them and weeping with them. Grieving with them in ways nobody else could understand. So naturally it felt right to want to be around them.
I don’t have to say anything around them. They know. They get it.
“You bought a motorcycle?” she said, the afternoon he pulled up on the black bike. “Darren, you’re not a single guy anymore.”
It was true, he’d been living like a single guy for fifteen months, so he was used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it. But he hadn’t been able to just go to the store out in the desert.
Don’t I have a right to just spend some of the money I’ve definitely earned?
It was a Suzuki Intruder, a motorcycle that looked a little like a Harley but didn’t have the Harley price or riding experience. His buddies joked and called it a “Hardly,” but Darren didn’t mind. It was fun riding it. He planned to ride with seven other guys he was deployed with.
“Haven’t you spent enough time with those guys?” she asked.
How could he answer that? Yes, of course he had. They had also managed to live, something most people just couldn’t relate to. Yes, perhaps riding the bikes was a form of escape, but that’s exactly what all of them had done: escaped from Iraq. They’d come back in one piece, at least most of them. They had a reason to celebrate.
“I’m not getting loaded or high or anything like that,” he argued.
“But do you think a bike is a good idea for a man with three kids? And what do you think it says to our children when you’re gone on the weekends?”
Daren knew he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was having fun and spending time with some kindred souls who knew. They got it.
They understand the fears that keep us up at night.
Everything felt confusing and overwhelming. Was he dealing with stress? Absolutely. Was he being selfish? Sure. But what Heather and the kids couldn’t see, and what he didn’t want them to see, was the scary stuff he carried around deep inside of himself.
He kept trying to grab onto the man he was before leaving. But even picking up his favorite books and reading through them didn’t seem to bring encouragement. In fact, oftentimes they left him empty. Even the pages of one of his favorite books by C. S. Lewis didn’t offer Darren encouragement, though he thought this description of grief was accurate: No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
Every day he looked at himself and tried to hold it together, telling himself he wasn’t afraid of anything. Yet those fluttering, restless feelings inside never left.
2
“So how are things going? Really going?”
Heather looked at Tonya and knew she couldn’t keep anything from her, not anymore. She wasn’t simply her neighbor or a fellow soldier’s wife; over the past year and a half, Tonya had become one of her dearest friends. She took a sip of her coffee, then looked around the Starbucks to see if there was anybody who might overhear.
“Nothing like I thought they’d be going,” Heather said. “It’s just—everything’s different these last few months. And it’s not because I’m not homeschooling anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m giving him time, but he just won’t give me anything back. He’s there, physically, but that’s all. And even that’s not always true. He spends a lot of time jogging.”
“He should feel lucky he’s able to do that.” Tonya looked away for a moment, then realized how her comment sounded. “I’m sorry—I don’t mean to sound so harsh.”
“I understand. I think Darren realizes that too. He made it back to his family. But we never spoke about expectations after he came back. We spoke so much about his decision to join the army, and about which battalion to be in, and about the deployment . . . Since he’s come back, we haven’t talked about anything.”
Tonya nodded, understanding all too well. “Michael was lost, honestly, when he came back the first time. The girls had grown and they weren’t his babies anymore. I would try to talk, but he wouldn’t let me in. His solution, unfortunately, was to drink away the pain. But the rest of the family started to drift downstream as well.”
“But things have gotten better, right?” Heather realized the terrible irony of her comment. “At least, in some ways.”
“It’s all perspective, right? People talk about these seasons of life, but I don’t see seasons. You fall in love but have to figure out how to pay for a wedding. You can’t get pregnant and then are blessed with twins. Your husband is a hero and yet privately he’s a ghost. The one thing you’ve helped teach me is never to give up.”
Heather gave a wry chuckle. “Are you sure that was me?”
“Darren is a good man. This is typical. He’ll come back around. Trust me—he will.”
3
He walked through one aisle after another of costumes, everything from comic book heroes to Revolutionary War outfits. This wasn’t any ordinary costume shop, but the sort that was open year-round and rented to people for plays and probably even movies. The racks of clothes were endless and overwhelming.
All he wanted was something he could wear for fun on Halloween. The kids were going to be all dressed up for trick-or-treating, and they had already been asking him to go with them. He didn’t want to, but he knew he needed to get his act together and try. He had to start trying sometime.
Ten minutes after entering the store, Darren felt numb. All the colors of the clothes seeming to blur into one gray streak. Suddenly the whole idea seemed silly.
He turned and saw a rack of modern-day military clothes. He stopped for a moment, scanning the hanging outfits, until he came to a jacket and read its name.
Specialist Lance Bradley.
He blinked and stepped away, then looked at it again. There were no words on the jacket. Once again, he was just imagining something.
What am I doing here?
He didn’t want to pick out a stupid outfit and he wasn’t going to go trick-or-treating. He felt too tired and overwhelmed. The kids simply had to learn to be okay with being told no.
He climbed back into his car, turned on the engine. Then he slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand and let out an exasperated shout. He was angry, but he wasn’t exactly sure what he was angry about. It wasn’t about a costume. But something inside of him held a fury that never went away.
Sometimes Heather didn’t give him space in the kitchen in the morning, made him feel like he needed to leave while she made breakfast or fixed lunch for the kids. He’d get angry at all the things he needed to do around the house, things that should’ve been done w
hen he was gone, even if Heather had had to hire someone.
The kids were loud and argued too much. His football team was doing terribly. There were too many families he was meeting with. The guy in front of him just cut him off at the red light.
It felt like every single thing throughout the day would get him angry. And as much as he tried to suppress it, Heather could see it.
She not only saw it, she often took the brunt of it.
I have to get my head and my heart in the right place.
But as he drove back home, reality smacked him in the face once again.
You can’t even pick out a simple costume for Halloween. How do you think you’re gonna figure out your life?
4
With Thanksgiving a few days away, Heather found herself searching to hear something—anything—from Darren, so she eventually began to reread the posts on his CaringBridge journal. She had read them all, but it felt good to hear his heart once more. Perhaps there was something inside these words that would help her understand what had happened out there. What really happened.
She found herself welling up at the words she had written five months ago on Father’s Day. In some ways, it felt like the woman who wrote that post had dramatically changed, and the man she wrote it about no longer existed.
Darren, this past year and our journey into the army has been so amazing. When I first met you, I knew that besides the fact that you were about the best-looking thing I had EVER seen, that there was depth about you that intrigued me. You hooked me that first day, and the mystery of you still captivates me today. Watching you grow as a husband and dad these last nine years has been amazing. When I’ve been my ugliest you have not flinched and have even reassured me that my fits will not push you away. Wow. When you’ve been your ugliest you have without fail humbled yourself to say that even though you may not understand the offense, you wanted the Lord to reveal to you your heart so that you could be a better man. WOW! I talk to countless wives who have never heard those words from their husbands, and it overwhelms me that I got you! Although I know that you are just a man who sins, you have been a most excellent representation of Christ to me as a woman and to your children. Right now you are the center of their world and are a part of their conversation every day. I think that this year has gone so well for them because they are so secure in their relationship with you. I see every day children who are safe in the knowledge that they are loved and adored by their dad. I can give them some of that, but there is something about you that cannot be filled by me. We are blessed by the gift of you.
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