I was supposed to meet up with a friend of mine in Dallas this evening for some drinks. He’s one of the relatively few Iraq vets in the area, so my wife and I hang out with him and his fiancée a lot on the weekends. Instead, he called me about 5:30 and said it wasn’t happening. I said, "Yeah, that’s okay. I gotta go to the store anyway. . .and then take care of some things for work tomorrow. But anyway, what’s up? What do you have going on?"
He said, "Well, my brother took off today. And my sister-in-law is a wreck." I thought for a second before it registered.
My friend’s brother is an Army Reservist. He’s been training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi for the past month or so in preparation an upcoming Iraq deployment. And that’s where he "took off" for this afternoon: Iraq.
I said, "Oh, yeah."
My friend continued: "I’m gonna go over there with Megan and we’re just gonna spend some time with her. She’s upset and crying. I don’t really know what’s going on. I mean, she’s done this before."
This is going to be my friend’s brother’s second tour in Iraq. I said, "Well, it’s probably tougher for her the second time."
"Yeah, I guess," he said. "I mean, this time she knows what to expect. She knows what it’s like."
"Yeah. Okay," I finished. "You guys go take care of her. Let me know if you want to get together sometime this week after work."
He said, "Yeah, I will."
She knows what it’s like. So it goes for military families across America each day, each week.