I'm not sure why I do this to myself.

When the M&M's are gone, he'll be home.

Earlier today I stumbled across this blog. I knew from the "about me" section that this was a blog of a woman whose husband was killed in Afghanistan.

Yet, I started reading. I read a few of the more recent posts and then I was morbidly curious about her life when he died, so I clicked over to the month that it happened and read those posts. My heart absolutely breaks for this woman. The day he died she was blogging about baby formula and making care packages to send to him. And the next day her whole world came crumbling down. Her husband was a Marine and he was in Afghanistan, so I had assumed that he died due to enemy fire or land mines or something like that, when in actuality the vehicle he was in flipped over. That doesn't make his death any less meaningful, but it made me sicker.

Graham is deployed right now and he's pretty safe. He's in the Air Force, so he's not on the front lines. He spends 12 hours a day in 120 degree temperatures fixing planes. He works, goes and gets dinner, and then goes back to his dorm and calls me. We talk for a little over an hours, then he tells me goodnight and goes to bed. And I am absolutely terrified that something is going to happen to him. Specifically I'm terrified that on one of his trips to another part of that God forsaken desert he's going to be in a plane crash. Logically I know that isn't going to happen. Logically I know that there is a greater chance of me dying in a car accident in this town of ridiculously bad drivers (and I always thought that South Carolina drivers were the worst) than him dying in a plane crash. I even looked up statistics on plane crashes one day. I thought the pretty low number would make me feel better, and it did for a while. Until I read her blog.

My husband is seriously the best. He calls me every night (unless he has to fly off somewhere or there is a communication outage on base) and sends me an email every morning. But every time I don't hear from him at one of those times, I start picturing a black car pulling into the driveway and uniforms getting out. I picture myself going numb as a complete stranger tells me the love of my life is gone. I picture having to tell his family and his best friend (I have a very active imagination). Although I also worry constantly that they won't know how to get in touch with me and they'll tell his parents first and I think hearing it from his family might be worse. I park in the garage, so no one would know if I was home or not. Unlike a lot of military wives, I work. I spend a lot of time at the gym & at Target. So... would they wait? Would they track me down? Would they give up doing it in person and just call me? It's all so confusing and upsetting to think about, but I can't help it.

I just... I can't even fathom what it would be life to go through that.

Anyways. I've asked this before and I'll probably ask it again, but please pray to whatever deity you pray to for my husband and every other service member to have a safe return home.