What Did We Used to Talk About????

I can't believe how long our wars have been going on. My son was in the 4th grade, now he is a college freshmen. My husband was a brand new SSgt. Now he is a Sr.1stSgt. The years have passed, each one slowly, each one with pain carried over from the last and no one has been more impacted in these past 10 years then those of us in the Military Family. My husband was in the service 6 years before the Wars started. He used to go away, 6 months, 4 months, 3 months at a time, that's what Marines do. Humanitarian, UDP, 911 Force, and CAX and WTI, and Cobra Gold, and numerous other reasons for deployment through the peace time years. But then 9/11 happened and it changed what we knew as Military Families FOREVER. The other night we were eating and as usual the topic of our conversation turned to DEPLOYMENT. How many conversations have we had in the last 10 years about deployment? 365 X 10 at least every day of every year the wars have dragged on. "When are you going?" "When will you be back?" "Where are you going?" "How are you doing?" "I miss you" "I love you" "I miss you" "Welcome Home" "I love you" and that is the start or finish of most of our conversations of the last 10 years. I can't remember what we used to talk about before this took up the majority of our conversations. I shouldn't complain, some one right now would change places with me in a second to have that conversation again with the love that fell, the son, the daughter, the mother the father. I get it, my father fell in Vietnam when I was an infant, and I was in school before that war was over so I know the feeling of people forgetting about the loss. I will never forget, but just making an observation. I look forward to the day we can all take these conversations out of our daily lives.