My Life and Missing People

Last night I was sitting on the couch watching the telly and started thinking about how often in my life I have spent missing people. Not the missing like when you don't see a friend for awhile, or a distant family member, but missing someone that should be in your life everyday. When I was born my father was shipped off to Vietnam, after being in country for a few weeks he was killed. Does an infant miss a parent that they don't even know should be there? Is it ingrained in our DNA that we should have two faces looking down on us, protecting us, making us happy? Did I know even at 9 months old that someone in my life, my dad was gone? Did I miss him? Well I'm not sure, I do know when I was old enough to know I did miss him. Even though I later had a wonderful step-father, who I still adore and who always raised and loved me like his own, I still "missed" the dad I never knew. So I think "missing someone" was something I started out in life doing and it occurs to me it has never stopped. My sister Lisa was killed by a drunk driver when I was 14, she was 11. It was devastating and I still miss her, I missed her sweet face when I woke in the morning and I miss it still now. My older sister met and married a Marine when I was 12 and she left home, and it was just me, sisterless. I turned to myself all my life. It is like "missing" someone is as natural to me as breathing. Is that normal? When I met my husband he told me he was going into the Marine Corps, I knew what that meant, and I wanted no parts of it. But I relented because I adored and loved him more than any human being on the planet and I set in course another person I had to miss on occasion. Flash forward to last year, our son graduating, preparing to go to University and I figure, it will suck but I can do this, nothing new..just another person I am going to "miss". To be honest, this ache is deeper, and more complicated. Complicated because although I miss him, I know he is exactly where he should be, and I am proud...but still the ache. In the past when my husband left for various reasons relating to the Marine Corps, I had distractions, I have distractions now while missing my son. But than last night, the reality that when my hubs deploys next year....I will be missing both of them at the same time, for the first time ever. UGH. I know my hubs is having a bit of a war with himself, I think this next deployment weighs heavy on him because he doesn't want me in this position, alone. But after thinking about it for awhile I was thinking, I got this. It's literally in my genetic makeup. I can compartmentalize this and "miss" them both. But in that "missing" I am reminded of how lucky I am to have people in my life that mean so much to me that their absence can cause me physical pain. My favorite quote, "love knows not it's own depth until the hour of separation." G.K. never rang so true.