I am taking the train home tonight with mixed feelings.
The man I used to work for at the planetarium passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. His heart just stopped. Twenty minutes later they got it working again and while his body was living, he was long gone.
He and the planetarium were some of the things that kept me going while I was deployed and again while I was at Walter Reed. During the deployment I would call about once a week and he would tell me everything that was going on. Even though he was very much against OIF/OEF and would go protest downtown every week, he was very supportive of the actual Soldiers. He always told me how proud of me he was.
Although he was married, he and his wife never had any children. But, as I once told him, we were his kids -- the planetarium techs, the students he tutored, and many more, I'm sure.
I'm not going to lie -- there were some things that I stumbled across or happened that made me feel rather anxious about being around him. Go ahead and call me paranoid, but I'll just blame the PTSD. The last time I really spent time with him was New Year's Eve. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.
But I can tell you that no matter how much my feelings are mixed, I am going to miss him very much.
They asked for volunteers, so I volunteered. I deployed and spent a year in the sandbox. I came home. The Army decided I was too broken to serve any longer and gave me temporary medical retirement. I'm a civilian again and married right back in. My husband is gearing to deploy. In the meantime, I have a strange love-hate relationship with the Army. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't.
About Me
- Techno
- I'm a contradiction all by myself. Soldier and student. Stargazer and computer geek. Boots and music. Paper pusher and globetrotter. It all works out in the end.
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A bit of history...
There was a call for volunteers to deploy in Spring of 2006. I volunteered, was selected, passed the screening process, and was sent to reclassification training to go from being a bandsman to a human resource specialist. After graduation, I was home for roughly a month. I met the rest of my new unit right before we were sent to mobilization training. Once validated, we were sent overseas in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I left university, quit my job, dumped my foreign boyfriend, and said a few very painful goodbyes. But I don't regret it one bit.
In early August, I was MEDEVAC'd out of the desert. My unit was just a few weeks away from going home. Now my only job is to get better. The irony is that they returned to their homes before I did.The Army has offered me disability and temporary retirement pay. I'm taking it. Bye bye combat boots.