The War, The War…Which War?

The women I grew up around were always talking about “the war.” Each woman’s reference to “war” was different - World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Bosnia - but they never had to explain what war they were talking about to their community. Everyone knew, and everyone responded with compassion and respect. 

One woman had lost her beau at Pearl Harbor and married his shipmate. She’d get drunk and have long conversations with the man she’d lost. When she sobered up, she’d yell at her husband how he wasn’t “half the man” his comrade was. 

Another woman lost her fiancé in the jungles of Vietnam. His body was never returned. She refused to remarry - a lifelong act of hope that they would eventually find him and bring him home to her. She always spoke of him as if he were alive…somewhere. 

The Desert Storm wife visibly mourned the changes in her husband, who was confined to a chair and required assistance with all activities of daily living due to toxin exposure. She constantly told stories of how they met off Fort Bragg, the cheesy pick-up line that sealed the deal, and all the places he’d promised they would go. 

These women would gather around my grandmother’s kitchen table and talk about “the war”, “the war”, “the war”. They all knew what the other meant, and just what the other needed to keep it together just a little while longer. Their informal support group wasn’t perfect - there was no scripted reflection questions or licensed social worker facilitation - but it seemed to provide what these women craved - an understanding of what they’d been through and the realities of the future they were facing. 

Never Marry a Soldier

As I moved into my teenage years, I argued more and more with my grandmother. She had a very clear plan for my life, and I didn’t want any part of it. 

She would try to explain her lines of reasoning to me, “After the war, I…”, “The war made us…”, “When you go through something like the war…”. 

On one particularly burly summer, I told her, “Enough with the war! I’m never marrying a soldier! It’ll be different for me - you’ll see.”

Yet, as fate would have it, it was not different for me. 9/11 happened, we lost loved ones, and I ended up marrying a soldier. Almost overnight, I transformed into one of those women gathered at my grandmother’s table. I found myself referencing “the war” - just as they had - almost every day in conversation. 

After the war…

Before the war…

During the war…

Because of the war…

…damn that war that just won’t end.

Military Shrinks and Support Groups

When your family endures a certain level of loss during war, the U.S. government provides you with lifelong “supportive services” such as counseling and support groups. I’ve been the recipient of these services for well over a decade now, and the quality of these programs is really hit or miss. Sometimes, you get a good shrink or an empathetic group. Other times, you get assigned to a graduate student who has so clearly fetishized soldiers in Nicholas Sparks movies, has no concept of the realities of war, or anything they are getting paid to do, courtesy of taxpayers. 

Eventually, I was assigned to a decent grief counselor on base. She didn’t grimace like everyone else did when I said that by age 25, I’d been to twice as many military funerals as weddings and baby showers combined. I didn’t have to explain to her what I was referencing when I said “the war” a thousand times over. Her loved one fought where my loved ones had. She, too, understood the costs of war. 

After a particularly frustrating and fruitless session, she gave me some homework: Write out what your life would look like if Afghanistan hadn’t happened. 

“Imagine you have no connection there. No one died in those mountains. No one got blown up by an IED. Afghanistan is completely foreign to you - you can’t even spell it, you've never heard of it! Describe what your life today would look like if it hadn’t happened,” she said. 

Intrigued, I went home and wrote it out. What if Afghanistan had not happened? What if it hadn’t lasted twenty years? What if the initial SOF missions had been successful? What if I didn’t know the realities of war?

I brought my written homework back the following week. She looked through the pages and gave it back to me and said, “This is everything you are grieving. All of this - this life without war - is what you mourn every day. That’s what the war cost you.”

Picking Up the Pieces of Life After War

I have a favorite local tavern where I meet friends when they are passing through town. Many are still in uniform, finishing their final lap through the Pentagon. One week, I ended up there three different times with three different military friends. After I settled the check on the last meet-up, the waitress said, “You sure have a lot of unique friends! Every single one was so different - a Cajun, a New Yorker, and the one from California that you won’t give me his number!”

I never thought of us as different. We all seemed to have so much in common - we’d all lost someone in the war, met during the war, and were desperately trying to pick up the pieces of life after the war. Our regional accents were actually one of the only differences we had. Everything else - the memorial bands, the experiences, the frustrations - were pretty much the same. When one of us mentioned “the war,” which inevitably happened every time we got together, the other knew exactly what we were talking about. No explanations were needed. 

Fast-forward 20 years, and I was living the post-9/11 version of what I’d witnessed at my grandmother’s kitchen table. 

Damn it. 

I always hated it when my grandmother was right. 

Wait…Which War?

Military events and observances are a big deal in my house. Memorial Day and Veterans Day are downright religious. Our social calendar is arranged around promotion and retirement ceremonies, dining outs, and branch birthday celebrations. 

There are certain anniversaries tied to “the war” that occur every year and never feel any better with the passage of time. If you’ve lived it, you know what dates these are, because you have a few of your own. These are the anniversaries of the days they left us for wherever heroes go, and every year, these recurring dates bring with them a flood of emotions. 

It turns out time does not heal all wounds, and the memories of what was, and the feelings of what should have been, leave even the strongest of us quaking. On these days, my husband says he pities the poor souls that cross my path, for they are about to get caught in the riptide of “the war” in ways their bubble-wrapped civilian selves could have never anticipated. 

The fact that so few - less than one percent - of Americans even have a baseline concept of Global War on Terror military service, tends to only fuel my anger in these moments. I loathe people who fail to understand my references to “the war” - probably because it so clearly communicates to me how disconnected “the war” made me from everyone else, the very people he died for. Instead of being caught in their own version of wartime Groundhog Day, these people fail to even acknowledge the cost of their freedoms. They can’t even be bothered to remember his name, attend a Memorial Day ceremony, or sacrifice any part of their “Super Size Me” life for anything beyond their immediate, fleeting gratification. 

 It really isn’t fair. But such is “the war.”

On a particularly upsetting war-related anniversary, I found myself lecturing Behavioral Economics to a class of 20-somethings that could have cared less about “nudges” and “choice architecture” at 8 AM. A comment was made (I don’t recall what) that prompted a steady stream of “the war…the war…the war…” references from my lectern. 

10 minutes into my passionate patriotic monologue, a very brave student raised his hand and tentatively asked, “Which war are you talking about, ma’am?”

I took a breath. Which war? How dare he not understand…

Then I realized that the fact that he’s so far removed from any concept of war is a good thing. It means the efforts of the less than 1% accomplished one hell of a lift. His body isn’t marred with the scars of combat, and no memorial tattoos are etched across his heart. 9/11 didn’t happen again, he has no idea what it’s like to write “in the event of my death” letters, and he isn’t haunted by the memories of “Taps” being played at a loved one’s funeral. His complete lack of awareness and understanding of “the war” was evidence that my family’s sacrifices were successful in allowing most Americans to live their lives untouched by the realities of war. 

The fact that he could be so blissfully naive brought a smile to my face. 

I calmly answered his question and got back to discussing the ins and outs of how technology impacts consumer decisions in a world left incredibly unscathed by “the war.”