What You Need to Know About This Deployment Goodbye

Originally published on The Military Wife and Mom

This was our hardest goodbye.

I didn’t expect it. Afterall, we’ve been here before. In fact, we were just here. We’ve done the deployment farewells, the countdowns, the epic homecomings. We’ve made paperchains and welcome home signs, we’ve Skyped on birthdays, ordered Daddy Dolls, and for a military family, to a degree, this deployment just felt like another little stepping stone in our journey.

After nearly ten years of marriage, four deployments and plenty of farewells, if I’m being honest, I was fairly apathetic about this one. I knew where he was going, knew there would be internet, and in the midst of two kids in school and work and life, I kept telling friends and family and even myself: “It is what it is. No big deal. We’ve done this before.”

 

But nothing I could have told myself would have prepared me for this one.

 

To continue reading and be redirected to the Military Wife and Mom, please click here.