"My unit's going back to Iraq right about the time I'm supposed to get out of the Marines.  I thought about extending my enlistment so I could go back with them, be there for my buddies, help out the younger guys who've never been.  It's a tough, tough decision, but in the end, I decided that, even though it IS my decision, there are a whole lot of other people who are affected by it.  My girlfriend, my parents.  I just can't put you guys through that again if I don't have to."
--my son, Dustin, in a phone conversation with me.  His unit has made three deployments to hell, and had been promised no more, but the so-called "surge" changed all that.


An e-mail exchange with a friend prompted this post.  We were discussing how to handle these deployments, especially those where, the guys were due to come home and then got betrayed by their commander-in-chief, as happened with my son's unit.  In her case, her son's deployment was extended.

The stress that these repeated deployments are putting on families is unimaginable.  Divorce rates are soaring, kids of all ages are suffering, and parents are in a particular hell.

I say this because spouses have the option of living on-base and often have access to the support the base offers.  Chaplains, family readiness officers, support groups, social activities and so on are geared to help families, though their effectiveness is in question after all these deployments.

But parents don't usually live on or near a military base.  We are spread out all across this great country.  For Marine parents, especially, if you don't live on a coast, you are nowhere near a Marine base.

So we don't have anybody to talk to.  Friends of mine who live in the suburbs complain that not another house on the block contains anyone who has been touched by this war.  Most of us don't know many other military families.  Some of us come from families where none of our family members have ever served in the military--not since World War II, anyway, so there's nobody even in the family to talk to.

If there are support groups--I had to drive a hundred miles to meet with one--I find them to be a sort of odd soccer-mom group.  They raise funds to send stuff to their kids' units, they make many many care packages, especially at Christmastime and raise funds for that as well, and they do things like hold scrapbooking parties.

In fact, in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the organization, MarineParents.com,, who were holding their second annual convention--opened the article with a seminar on scrapbooking, which is presented as therapeutic.

I find those kinds of activities to be hair-pulling nerve-wracking mind-bending scream-inducing exercises in frustration.

Not that I don't send my fair share of care packages.  Not that I object to groups sending hundreds of care packages to the troops.  Don't get me wrong.

It's just that, to me, that kind of stuff regards our men and women as some sort of sports team playing in the Big Game, and we're all out here RAH-RAH cheerleading, slapping those yellow ribbons on our cars and looking for every kind of red-white-and-blue backgrounds we can get for our nifty scrapbooks.

But this is not a sport.  And this is not a game.  This is war.

I don't mean to sound patronizing or condescending to those who find comfort in such activities, not by a long shot.  Busy work like that can be very comforting to people who don't want to think.

They don't want to watch the news.  And they don't want to think.  Easier to DO.  Easier to pack up those care packages.

God bless them.  I wish I could do it, too.  I really do.

But I find all that stuff just an empty exercise in denial, frankly.

When my boy's life is in jeopardy every moment of every day, and he could die...HE COULD DIE...I just don't find comfort in scrapbooking.

Yes, I have a photo album.  He carried disposable cameras in his side pocket whenever he went out on patrol, and whenever he had a chance, he'd snap a photograph--some of them so good they could be published in Time or Newsweek, because I saw similar shots in those places.  He'd wrap the cameras up in coarse brown paper and send them home.

I would develop the photographs.  When he was due to come home, I bought a beautiful leather album for him, put in the photos, and special-ordered a brass plate for the front that identified his unit, platoon, and branch of service and place and dates.  And yes, I took great care in how I placed the photos and yes I made copies for our own photo albums.

But for me, that was not enough, not by a long shot, to keep me from cracking up during my son's deployments.

Furthermore, my son's deployment was intensely personal, those photographs were like a private journal.  I had no desire to spread them out over someone's dining room table, pass them around like baby pictures, ooh and ahh over them.  It just didn't feel right to me.

Online groups are a source of support, but again, I found it difficult to fit in.  For one thing, the MarineParents.com website has the most ridiculous OPSEC rules I have ever seen or heard of on any planet in any universe.

On that website, I tried to reach out to new members whose kids were deploying for the first time, but I kept getting my stuff censored for "opsec" reasons.

Example:  I once wrote that in every letter my son wrote home, he mentioned how much he was going to miss being home for Christmas.

OPSEC'ed OUT.

It seems that was sensitive top-secret security information that could be used by our enemies to hurt our boys.

Oh give me a break.  If any insurgent wanted to know what my son's unit was doing and when, all they had to do was (a) set up a fruit stand across the road from the post and observe the unit's comings and goings (b) ask their cousin Ahmed who is an officer in the Iraqi Army detached to the unit or (c) not worry about it, just set out hundreds of IED's on the only road located between one town and another and wait for any random Marine unit to drive over it.

I don't think there was some shadowy terrorist cruising the MarineParents website, watching for some stupid mom to write that her son wasn't coming home for Christmas AH HA!  SO THEY'LL BE HERE THROUGH CHRISTMAS!!!  I MUST BOMB THEM NOW!!!

I got so sick and tired of it that I quit after only a couple of months.  But paranoia reigns.  My friend Jamie posted something innocuous on her Traumatic Brain-Injured son Ben's Caring Bridges website (hardly a Marine website) and got an ass-chewing from some Marine mom because she'd broken opsec rules.

What had she done?

Asked for prayers for the boys who were about to deploy.

Meanwhile, all we have to do is pick up a copy of London's Daily Mirror to find out when Prince Harry deploys, the name of his unit, and his job assignment.

Or read any article in the New York Times or Washington Post where a soldier or Marine is quoted, and you will see their full name, rank, unit, and location printed.  The only ones which aren't printed are the Iraqi Army guys.  Now THEY have real opsec problems.

Or, shoot, just watch Bush the Commander-in-Chief in a televised press conference!  He's likely to stand in front of a MAP showing WHERE EACH NEW POST IN BAGHDAD IS LOCATED while bragging about how successful his Big Plan has been.

Apparently, he hasn't yet been briefed on opsec stuff.

Should we be careful on support online sources like this one?  Of course.  I don't mention my son's specific unit or specific dates for when they will do this or that, nor do I do so for my nephew.  That's just common sense.  But some of this other crap is just plain paranoid.

Another problem with online support groups is that so many of them are By God the President or Bust Republicans who think you are a traitor if you even hint that Bush may not know what the hell he is doing.  They will attack you, full-bore, for daring to suggest such a thing, and that can be intimidating and depressing to people like me and most of the folks on my mailing list who, you know, actually think.

So I went to a private Yahoo! group that catered to only my son's unit during his last deployment a year ago, and after reading through yet another diatribe about how the Democrats hate the troops and hate this country, I posted a comment that it wasn't fair, that we weren't all Republicans just because we had loved ones fighting in a war we questioned.  That Democrats were fighting too.  It was a mild post and met with respectful silence.

To my shock, I got half a dozen private e-mails from like-minded souls who also felt left out of the group, so we formed our own e-mail cadre and many of them followed me over to Blue Inkblots.

So that's my first suggestion:  Find a group of like-minded souls, even if it's just two or three, and even if they live a thousand miles away.  Call each other.  E-mail. Pray for one another and one another's kids.  These souls won't give you an ass-chewing for security reasons.  They won't ask you to come scrapbook with them.  And they won't attack you for thinking.  You will come to cherish them.

I sincerely hope Blue Inkblots provides that sort of forum, and I think it does.

Second, get help.  If you are having trouble dealing with your anxiety, rage, and fear about your child's deployment, find a counselor you can talk to who can help you come up with some new coping strategies.  Sometimes they might suggest anti-depressants or anti-anxiety drugs, and that's a personal decision.   Some people may be depressed enough that they really need the help.  Others may just need someone objective who will not judge you for feeling the way you do or try to talk you out of it.

What most parents and family members don't realize is that, just like the troops, they suffer survivor guilt whenever a buddy is killed but their own child spared; they suffer post traumatic stress when their kid drives over an IED but is not blown apart; they suffer nightmares and obsessive thoughts and short-term memory loss and free-floating anxiety and depression and sexual problems and they drink too much ALSO. 

It's not just the warrior who fights a war.

This is why I was so moved by what my son said, about how his decision affects other people.  He didn't used to feel that way.  Two trips to war matured him considerably, and I am grateful for that.  I wish they all would come to a similar conclusion, but I know one young moron who had served his full term in the Marines, had gotten out, gotten married, his wife gotten pregnant, and they were buying a new house when he suddenly got a bout of guilt for others fighting a war he wasn't fighting, so he tried to re-enlist in the Marines.

Fortunately for him, he had ulcers.  So God does protect the dumb-asses of the world.

Third, although it is important to remain strong for our guys, there may come a time when, if they have time to talk on a phone call home and are in a safe location, you can let them know that you are struggling too.  We think of them as our children but they are, after all, adults.  If they weren't when they got there, they are now. 

Now, that is not to say that I think you should do what one woman I know did, which was scream and drop the phone and sob when her son called home because she was so stressed about his deployment.  I think she wailed something like, "THE WHOLE FAMILY IS FALLING APART!!!"

Obviously, being that big of a nutcase does not help them.  They have enough to worry about without having serious concerns that mom or dad is losing their mind.

But in a calm and quiet, conversational way, I don't think it's such a bad thing, once in a while, to say--maybe in a light-hearted way, maybe jokingly--that you're flipping out, too.  Depending upon your adult child's level of maturity, they might laugh with you and find it comforting that you care that much.

But again, I wouldn't do it if, for example, they are in a really bad spot.  Wait till they're on a secure base to have that conversation--or don't have it at all if you don't think it wise.

All I'm saying is that, for some of our adult children, treating them as adults can be reassuring to them in an odd way. 

As long as you don't scream, drop the phone, and sob.

Fourth, don't be too hard on yourself.  Yes, you are going crazy.  We all did.  It does not mean, as one sister-in-law said, that she was "weak."  There is nothing weak about feeling yourself coming apart at the seams because you are afraid your child might die. 

Fifth, find a way to channel your emotions.  For one sister-in-law, yeah, she's so deep into the scrapbooking, yellow-ribboning, care-packaging, support-the-troopsing crowd that she still does it even though her kid's out of the Marines and a civilian college kid now.  It is, quite literally, her reason for living.  More power to her.  It helped her survive.

It's just not my thing.

For me, I found my voice--which IS survival to a writer--and found that by speaking out against the war from the perspective of military families served a purpose larger than my own self.  Having the support of my son means everything to me when I get into attack-dog mode.  I know I'm doing it for him as well as for myself, and for all of those guys.

If starting a blog of your own is a form of journaling that helps, then do it.  If you fear repercussions on your kid, then use a pseudonym.  Post pithy comments on some of the websites where you find common ground.  Be brave.  Be bodacious.  Be yourself.

Sixth, if you have the time and/or energy and think it would help, volunteer.  I have a friend who contacted Soldier's Angels and "adopted" a young woman soldier who rarely gets mail.  She's had more fun than you can imagine putting together care packages and writing to this young lady.  Recently, she got a phone call from Iraq from her adopted soldier, and she was thrilled to death.

She also gets involved in fund-raising drives for, say, disabled vets.  There are all kinds of things out there you can find with a simple google search that will put you in the right direction to use your particularly skills and interests to get involved and burn up the hours until your family member comes home. 

The bottom line is that, coping with these godawful deployments is intensely personal for each and every one of us.  As with grief, there is no RIGHT or WRONG way to do it.

Just keep trying different things, or all the above, until you find a way to make it through the night, because for every single day you survive, that is one more day your loved one has lived through, and one more day closer to getting them home and in your arms.