Future Army Wife

It's funny. Every time someone congratulates me on my engagement they say that my ring is pretty,gorgeous,etc., tell me how happy they are for me, and then they ask "So have you picked a date?"

Have I picked a date? That's laughable. Have I picked a year? Possibly. My response every time is "probably not for a couple of years. We're looking at 2013." Have I looked at dresses, invitations, flowers, cakes, reception halls, anything? No. Why?

How can I plan a wedding when I don't know if the groom will even be there? It's crazy to think that I'm marrying a soldier. I'm not exactly new to military life-my dad was in the national guard and worked for the department of defense for over 30 years. My freshman year of high school he was deployed and spent 18 months in Iraq. But...the military was never part of my home. The only time that I saw traces of the military prior to him in Iraq was the one weekend a month when my dad would come home from guard in his BDU's and the two weeks in the summer when he would go to summer camp and come back with tshirts that said Panama Hard Rock Cafe.

It wasn't until my fiance that I learned army acronyms, understood ranks, attended my first dining out, went through my first receiving line at his ROTC events, stepped foot on an army base, visited a px and a commissary on two different bases, and learned what the army really was about.

It's the not knowing that kills me. I try to organize every second of everyday of my life. To not know what will happen one day to the next-to know that he can be anywhere in the world in 18 hours-it's not easy but I deal with it.

Two days ago-I was terrified. He went on a jump with most of his battalion. The wind was horrible and it was dangerous but they still went ahead on the jump. In the end there were people in the hospital with broken legs, broken pelvises, and one soldier-is comatose still-two days later. My fiance is ok and safe. He said that at one point his chute got caught on another soldier's parachute. They managed to untangle but it let all of the air out of the chute which cause him to essentially plummet 70 feet to the ground at an extremely fast pace. He told me that he got into emergency position-and said "Dear lord please don't let me die. Please don't let me die." He blacked out on impact but came out of it quickly and was fine. Thank god.

These are the things that I deal with. And it scares me. I'm ok with being apart from him as long as I know that I will hear his voice at the end of the night. It's so scary that he wasn't even deployed and stuff like this can happen. And he is going to be deployed-I can't say when or where-for security reasons-but within the upcoming year-he will be gone for up to a year.

As much as the media wants you to be distracted by stupid stuff like Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen...please remember that there are soldiers in harms way away from there loved ones. You know-it's interesting how things happen. When the wars first started it was constant coverage. I remember the very first day when the news stopped showing what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan because suddenly-it was such an old topic, people were tired of hearing about it-but it's not over and it's still going on. Just because the war keeps dragging on-and seems like old news-for the people who are about to face their first deployments, and their loved ones who need to believe that everything will be ok-the war is very real and still very new to them.

I don't really know what this post was supposed to be about in the end. I guess I just had a lot of thoughts on my mind. If you do live with your significant other or are married. Appreciate it. Don't take it for granted. I told my fiance on the phone today- "I remember that a year ago at this time we were still in college and we saw each other every single day. Every single night we slept in the same bed. We took so much for granted back then"

What I wouldn't give to be laying in his arms right now. Give your boyfriends/fiances/husbands an extra hug and a kiss and if they ask you why-tell them "just because I am able to. "

Good night everyone.