Poetry on War From an Army Wife: The News, Read This One First

In June of 2010 I attended a Commander’s Conference in Moline, Illinois at Rock Island Arsenal, where my husband’s Division was head-quartered. The Commander’s wives were provided training in the needed skills of deployment, for we too serve and offer support whenever we can to the families of our nation’s heroes as they undertake the defense of the greatest nation the world has ever known. It is an immense job, both for the Soldier, and for his family.

At the conference two women spoke to our group, and never will I forget the impact they made on my life. One beautiful forty-eight year old woman shared her story of losing her beloved Soldier. It was a beautiful love story, a heart wrenching story of loss, and yet as she told it, we all knew despite the passing of her husband from this life to the next, she had known a love many never experience.

Through her tears and ours she told of her experiences both before his death and after as “the wife of a Soldier.” She told of how she loved the life of the Army, how she loved being the devoted wife of a Soldier, and all that this experience entails. She also shared the story of learning that her husband had lost his life in The War on Terror. She told of how she had somehow known for around two weeks that her husband was never coming home, and how she had waited and watched for the Chaplain and an officer to come, as they always do, to bring her the news that had already began to steal over her heart. She waited the news that he had “given his last full measure of devotion” for us all.

The vision of her face streaming with tears, the earnestness of her broken heart, and sharing the joy that had been hers in a once in a lifetime love, will never leave me, and indeed haunted me until I needed to find the words to express what the experience had meant to me.

When I was a little girl, my father read to my sister and me every night, and often it was poetry. He is a veteran, although he says he does not deserve that title, as he never fought in battle. He was a part of the occupation forces right after WWII, and almost died of malaria and its' complications, and later served in the Texas National Guard while I was a young child. Those childhood memories of his reading to us each night before sleep are some of the sweetest of my life. My father is giant of a man. He loved being a Soldier, and if not for the love of my mother, and her need to be close to her large family, he would have been a "lifer." I had never written a word of poetry until I met the two women at this conference, heard of their losses, and then somewhere deep in my soul, I heard the whisper of my father's voice from childhood reading "The Road Less Taken," and I have not stopped writing poetry since...