I realized she was gone for good three days after St. Patrick’s Day.
In the months that preceded her sudden departure from Norfolk, it was apparent Lisa was stressed, trying to strike a balance between married life as a first-year Navy spouse and the never-ending demands of her husband’s career. Still, she seemed to be adjusting reasonably well.
For all intents and purposes, Lisa, 23, had successfully settled into Navy life in Hampton Roads. She had a good job in Virginia Beach, an active social life, a darling six-month-old son to care for. She had a strong support system comprised of neighbors, co-workers and ship support group friends. She also had my own day-to-day encouragement as her daycare provider.
During the course of her first year of marriage, Lisa tried her best to cope with deployment and the endless string of her husband’s duty days. She even shrugged off the frequent “boys night out” beer-drenched poker games that her husband - who had been her high school boyfriend back home - yearned to attend on Friday nights with the guys in his division.
When Lisa suddenly announced shortly after Valentine’s Day she was leaving with her son to visit her family back in Kansas for a few weeks, she insisted she would return in plenty of time to spend St. Patrick’s Day with her husband, a 24-year-old third class petty officer stationed aboard a local destroyer.
She wouldn’t miss celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with her husband for anything, she said. It was, after all, one of his favorite holidays. It was also the anniversary of their engagement.
I sincerely wanted to believe her. When the end of February came and went with no word from Lisa, I worried we might have said “goodbye” for good. The 6th, the 10th of March - still nothing. On the 20th of March, I had no choice but to accept the inevitable.
She wasn’t coming back.
Sound familiar? Chances are, too familiar. Everybody’s heard stories about young military wives over the years, wives who use trips to visit family members back home as an excuse to make a nice, clean getaway from deployment-bound marriages these women simply can’t emotionally handle any longer.
It isn’t necessarily that they’ve married bad husbands. It isn’t always that they are bad wives. In my view, these women are merely too young, too inexperienced and far too insecure when they whisper those “I do’s” to survive what are destined to be challenging marital commitments to sea-going military men.
By the same token, many marry sailors still too immature to capably juggle the responsibilities of marriage with their own demanding obligations to the Navy. Not to mention their own insatiable appetites for partying with their shipmates.
As such, these spouses (and significant others) take what they perceive to be the path of least resistance by falling back on that classic “I’m just going home for a short visit” excuse that bushels who came before them resorted to as soon as their own fairy-tale military marriages rounded that harsh curve onto Reality Street.
The solution? Don’t get married or start having families too soon when you’re on active duty. Stay single, focus on your military career and get the most out of the opportunities you are given. You owe it to yourself and the family you will one day take care of to work hard to build a solid foundation for yourself - and your future - first.
