by Ryan Manion
That evening, Joel walked me back to my apartment complex and we parted ways. I had the biggest, most genuine smile on my face when he dropped me at my door. It was the best five hours I’d spent with anyone in a long time.
It was easy to like Joel. His thick Chicago accent is endearing, and he’s quick to share his ever-present smile with anyone he meets. He lights up a room as soon as he enters it and displays a warm, welcoming, and friendly demeanor that makes you want to open up to him, even if you’re the reluctant type, as I originally was.
What attracted me to Joel from the beginning was his ability to get to know people deeply and to try to learn everything he could about them. He really invests in others and takes the time needed to build strong relationships with them. He did this for every single one of my closest friends, making a genuine effort to get to know the people closest to me.
He’s good at it. After meeting friends whom I’ve known for years, Joel will tell me things about them that I never knew. His questions are always intended to help him understand people better: what makes them tick, their perspective on various topics, and their views on life.
One thing I’ll never forget about our early relationship was how Joel made me feel, even from the start: safe, secure, and known. Immediately, I felt loved in a way that I hadn’t felt since Brendan died. He made every effort to make me feel whole again and has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. His capacity for love seems nearly endless. He’ll do anything for someone he cares about, and he’ll do it with an easygoing, lighthearted attitude.
Nothing rattles Joel. Like me, he’s seen hardship, which allows us to connect with one another and gain perspective about what truly matters in life. At the end of the day, what matters most to us is each other. We each put the other first because we know how fortunate we are to be part of such a loving and powerful relationship.
Most important, Joel loves me for my past just as much as he loves me for my present. He respects my relationship with Brendan and asks thoughtful questions about him. Even early on, he was confident and comfortable enough in his own skin that he didn’t feel as though he was being compared with anyone else.
It would be silly and wrong for me to compare my love for Joel to my love for Brendan. I swore I would never do that because I think that doing so would set up any couple for failure.
They are completely different relationships and neither one replaces the other. I’m a different person from the person I was nine years ago. My experiences have changed me. And they’ve changed me in such a way that I’m now the perfect fit for Joel, and he’s the perfect fit for me. This wasn’t and couldn’t have been true nine years ago. I can honestly say that I love and cherish the life I have now, and that’s because of Joel.
On October 14, 2017, three years after we met, Joel and I married in his home city of Chicago. I was filled with excited nerves in the back of the venue as I waited to greet my new husband. Just before I prepared to walk down the aisle, the wedding coordinator guided our two little ring bearers in front of me. It was such a powerful moment, one that I’ll always remember, because it made me stop and marvel at the journey my life had taken until that point.
Brendan Travis Looney, who was now four years old, walked down the aisle in his black tuxedo and Converse All Star shoes. He walked arm in arm with Travis Brendan Borek, Ryan Manion’s three-year-old son. Travis Brendan and Brendan Travis, two little boys who bear the names of two great men they never got to meet. They were family now, and it was important to both Joel and me that they play a special role in our day. They represented new beginnings, old legacies, and a messy, beautiful life that I have come to love.
Brendan and Travis smiled radiantly as they approached my future husband. When they reached the altar, Joel reached down and gave them each a giant grin and a high five. I’ve never felt so fortunate. In that moment, I knew I’d found a life partner who loved me not in spite of my past, but because of it. Because he knows that my past is what made me the woman I am, the woman he was marrying that day, and the woman with whom he wanted to build a new future.
I’m so grateful for having found the courage to open my heart again, and I’m grateful to have a husband who recognizes and values that courage. He tells me all the time how much he admires me for starting my life over at twenty-nine and opening myself up to love again. He commends me for not attempting to erase my past, but for embracing it and pushing forward.
He hates what I had to go through to get myself to this place, but he believes wholeheartedly that I am the person he loves today because of the challenges and obstacles I faced. He knows how much I value our love and relationship because I know what it is like to love deeply and then lose that love. He knows I will do everything in my power to make our marriage work.
And I admire him just as much. I admire that he was willing to date a young widow, even with all the uncomfortable and awkward moments that accompanied that decision. I’m so grateful to Joel for showing me that love still matters, that it still exists, and that there is still a beautiful life waiting for us.
There was a time when I simply didn’t think that was an option. As Joel’s best man said in his wedding toast, “It is a testament to the character that Joel and Amy have that so many of Brendan’s friends, teammates, and family are in this room celebrating tonight.”
He was right. My marriage with Brendan is still a very important part of who I am now, and the relationships that I formed when he was alive play an integral role in my life today. Joel has graciously accepted all of them because he knows that they are part of my identity, and that our marriage is all the stronger for them.
There are times when I think how lucky I’ve been to have two great loves of my life. There are other times when I think how unlucky I am to have two great loves of my life. I will always treasure the past, and the special life that Brendan and I created together. I still mourn the future I almost had, but today I love the present with all my heart.
In the end, the greatest thing Brendan prepared me for was the life I would have without him. He was the first person who taught me to love unconditionally. We vowed our lives to one another, in front of friends and family, on July 12, 2008, and I keep that promise today.
The love that Joel and I share is entirely different from the love that Brendan and I shared, and it is no less precious to me. It has been an amazing gift to know that I can be happy and fulfilled in a relationship that is separate from and incomparable to the life I led previously.
I’m forever indebted to Brendan for helping me to develop the resilience that would strengthen me to open my heart again; and to Joel for affirming that doing so would be worth it. He reminds me what love is and provides me with the kind of life I didn’t think was possible for me.
The last decade or so has been quite the roller-coaster ride. Is it the life I pictured for myself as a little girl? No, it is not. But whose is? Is anyone living the life they thought they would be living by this point? I doubt it. If nothing else, it has taught me some powerful lessons around expectations, reality, and love:
First and foremost, choose courage.
It’s not the easier path of the two, that I can promise you. It’s almost certainly far more difficult and painful. But it will bring you more joy and peace than you can possibly imagine. This is one beautiful, harsh life we’re all leading, and we’re going to get knocked around a time or two. After every fall, we have to be prepared to stand back up. After losing Brendan, opening myself up to love was the second hardest thing I’d ever had to do. And in truth, I didn’t “have” to do it. I could have stayed on stable ground and lived a decent and possibly contented life.
If nothing else, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. But by the time I lost Brendan, I’d made a habit—largely due to Brendan—of being courageous and resilient. And every small victory along the way gave me just enough confidence to take another shot. If I could do wind sprints, I was tougher than I thought I was. If I was toug
her than I thought I was, I could move to a new city. If I was brave enough to move to a new city, I was brave enough to start a new career. If I was brave enough to start a new career, I was strong enough to handle loss. If I could handle loss, I could handle anything. You don’t need to have buried your husband to know that you have courage. You just need to have experienced defeat somewhere in your life. If you don’t know what defeat feels like or you haven’t found something to fail at yet, you’re not trying enough new things.
Second, building a new present does not whitewash your past.
Life is complicated. It’s fluid and dynamic, and as easy to grasp hold of as it is to nail Jell-O to a wall. Today you are wonderful and strong, and tomorrow you might be hopeless and scared. That’s simply how it works. But if you’re lucky enough to find the courage to build a new life for yourself after struggle, or you’re fortunate enough to watch someone else do the same, know that the scars of the past don’t simply disappear once you establish a new present. I can’t tell you how many people wanted to dismiss the pain of losing Brendan after they learned that I’d started a new life with Joel. Remarriage doesn’t eliminate the pain of widowhood. Recovery doesn’t cancel the pain of illness or addiction. Healing doesn’t remove the wounds of abuse. Finding joy in the present means accepting the difficulties of the past, not forgetting them.
Finally, you never know what you’re being prepared for; so be present and have faith.
When I first met Brendan at that bar in Baltimore, I had no idea the critical role he would play in my life. As our time together went on, I didn’t know that all the little moments we had together were just micro-lessons in life that would hold the key to my finding happiness again after he was gone. We can never know what life is preparing us for. We can only trust that it is preparing us for something that we need and from which we will ultimately benefit.
Next time you find yourself with a recurring challenge—the co-worker who drives you mad, the disillusion you experience after a failed relationship—ask yourself why this challenge keeps returning for you. How can you be present in your current situation, and what are you meant to learn from the experience? How can it prepare you for the life you want to lead? No matter how small the obstacle is, it can teach you something about yourself.
Heather
* * *
Chapter 7
* * *
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
My knock at the door came at 3 a.m.
I was in a deep sleep, and when I first heard the rap at the front door, it felt far away. I was still coming out of a drowsy haze, so I didn’t recognize the noise for what it was. In fact, I thought the knocking noise I was hearing was part of a dream. Eventually, I realized that the sound was real and it was coming from my own front door.
Obviously, I wasn’t expecting company at that hour, so I hesitated before answering. I got to the door and looked through the peephole to see three sharply dressed Marines standing together. Immediately, I had a sinking feeling in my gut. My husband, Rob, had deployed to Afghanistan six weeks earlier. It was our third deployment together and I knew that the appearance of Marines, in uniform, at your home, was rarely a good thing. Then I remembered something I had heard in a meeting I attended for spouses of deployed service members, and it gave me some hope.
“If you receive a notification,” a family readiness officer had instructed us shortly before Rob left, “two to three Marines will come to your house no earlier than eight o’clock in the morning.”
I recalled sitting with other military families at the meeting, where we learned important things we would need to know to get through the next seven months. A strict protocol governs how families are notified of a loved one’s death, we learned. Remembering the readiness officer’s words calmed me. If this were bad news about Rob, it wouldn’t be coming for another five hours, at least.
I wondered how long the Marines had been standing outside trying to get my attention. After concluding it was unlikely they were there for Rob, I figured they were there to ask about where another Marine’s family lived. I felt sorry for whoever they were planning to visit later that morning. Regardless of whom they were seeking to visit, I knew that they were bringing bad news for someone. I had been half asleep just a moment ago, but I was wide awake now.
I’d spent the night before like any number of other ordinary nights at home. I cooked dinner and settled in to watch some TV before going to bed. I don’t remember what I watched, but I know that I made a veggie casserole that evening because I remember returning home weeks later to find the leftovers in my fridge.
For now, however, I was still trying to wrap my brain around what was happening. I opened the door and welcomed the men inside. I only had a minute or so to process what was going on. There had already been several casualties on this deployment, even though it was early on. Two of our good friends, Second Lieutenant James Byler and Second Lieutenant Cameron West, had been injured, and I knew that Rob had lost members of his platoon.
Receiving news of our friends’ injuries in the weeks prior had been a rude awakening. It had hit way too close to home, and I wasn’t ready for more bad news. I ushered the Marines into the living room and sat down on the couch, feeling anxious. In just a moment, all my questions would be answered.
One of the Marines served as notification officer, and he began his formal, scripted speech telling me that my husband, Lieutenant Robert Kelly, was dead.
“On behalf of the president of the United States,” he began…
The rest is a blur. My head fell in my hands and my brain shut down completely. I heard the remainder of the script as though I were under water. Something about the “honor of the duty Lieutenant Kelly had been performing”; something about how he had “sustained injuries from an IED* blast that resulted in the loss of his leg”; and some formal closing where I caught only the phrase “extend our deepest sympathies.” And then, silence.
When he finished reading the speech, the notification officer looked up and stared at me, I imagine waiting for a storm to erupt. I felt the gaze of the two Marines on me and then saw them look to the chaplain who had accompanied them. I don’t think they were quite sure what to make of my reaction—or rather, lack of reaction. There was nothing on the surface to observe from me. I was in total shock; I didn’t offer any bellowing screams or agonized cries; no torrent of questions for them to field.
I think they would have much preferred if I had. Instead, I sat dumbfounded, staring straight ahead. All that stood between me and them was a deep, quiet sadness that made me feel empty.
The news that Rob was dead didn’t seem real, and yet it was real enough to leave me hollow. Unlike some people, I didn’t immediately conclude that there must have been some mistake; that this notification couldn’t have been meant for me. I knew this wasn’t the kind of thing they were going to screw up. Rob was gone forever, and that was clear to me.
I’m not sure how long we sat in silence, but I imagine the three gentlemen were painfully uncomfortable with it.
“Let’s get you a blanket,” one of them finally suggested. He went to a nearby room, retrieved a blanket, and draped it over my shoulders. I continued staring straight ahead. I think the other Marine offered me something to eat. I’m sure they were looking for any signs of life from me, but I simply didn’t know what to say or do; and neither did they, it seemed.
Rob and I had had a few deployments under our belts. I wasn’t nearly as naive now as I had been on his first deployment, when I was still in college and he was fresh out of boot camp. But even still, no one believes they’re going to receive the knock at the door. You don’t believe it could ever happen to you. No one does. And no matter how many times I had scoured the internet and news channels looking for any sign of Rob on the casualty lists during his deployment, there was simply no way to prepare myself to receive the one piece of news I feared the most. There was nothing to be said, so I said nothing.
There are few s
pecifics about the encounter that are solid in my mind. Hearing that my husband had lost his leg is certainly something I’ll never forget, as is the painful silence that enveloped the room afterward.
One thing that I do remember in acute detail was the ridiculous pajama T-shirt that I was wearing. Even through the unimaginable awfulness of that day, I still look back and laugh at what I was sporting when the Marines came and woke me up. It was one of my favorite shirts, and I wore it often. It was a vibrant turquoise color and was emblazoned across the front with the saying, I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF. Rob hated that shirt, and he always gave me a hard time—in a lighthearted way—for wearing it. I loved that shirt and its deadpan, sarcastic message. But I also can’t think of a more incongruous article of clothing to be wearing as you receive the news that your husband has been killed in a war half a world away. I’m sure that Rob got a good laugh out of that as he looked down on me. I’ll always picture him saying, You just had to wear that one to bed that night, didn’t you?
“So, what now?” I finally asked when I found my voice. “Who else knows?”
My casualty assistance officer looked relieved when I broke the silence. He informed me that my in-laws, Rob’s parents, had been made aware at the same time I was, so there was no burden on me to share the news. Rob’s father, General John Kelly, was then an active-duty Marine and a senior leader in the Marine Corps. As commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North, he would see the names of casualties when he arrived at the office.
That would be a terrible way for a father to learn of his son’s death in Afghanistan, so the Marines had sent his friend and fellow Marine, General Joe Dunford, to notify the Kellys at their home in Washington. Dunford was the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps at the time and had known Rob’s dad for decades; the two men had served together as junior officers when they were in their twenties. Because I was three hours behind in California, that meant I would be learning at the same hour, which explained the strange timing of the visit.