“The media gives Americans a number to count casualties. Not a name or a face, but a number. To us, the loss is deeply personal.”
—EULOGY FOR OUR 10TH MOUNTAIN SOLDIER
EMPTY DESERT COMBAT boots and poster-sized pictures line the front of the chapel. None of the faces are familiar to me, but they were Jack’s soldiers. I listen to a general give eulogies; he didn’t know them either. But he strikes a beautiful chord with his words. “So few of our men serve these days. To the rest of the nation, it’s hard for them to feel the war personally. Their lives go on untouched by its constant presence. But for us it’s different. For us it’s deeply personal.”
The mothers and widows of the soldiers are here. One of the widows is showing an obscene amount of cleavage, which I hope is accidental, and at a reception earlier in the day, I overhear her lament that her soldier escort hasn’t hit on her yet, and doesn’t he know how hot she is—is he blind? It’s like a topic for The Jerry Springer Show: “New widows offended when not hit on at their husband’s funeral.” But instead of judging her, I try to tell myself that she’s out of her mind with grief.
One of the mothers grabs my hand during the ceremony. I made index cards this morning with each soldier’s name and his parents’ names, hoping they might believe that I knew their son, or at least not ask directly if I did. They don’t quite understand who I am or how I fit into the picture, what my role is. “No,” I explain, “I’m not the chaplain’s wife. I’m the commander’s wife.”
“But I thought that was the other lady, her over there.”
“Well, she is, too. Her husband is the brigade commander. It’s just a different level.” Why am I trying to explain this, here and now? And whose mother is she? I’d really like to pull those cards out of my purse and refresh my memory, but I can’t do it with her clutching my hand and whispering to me. I made sure that Ben had someone put dozens of boxes of tissues in all of the pews. Controlling the things I can control. One of the younger wives in the battalion, the Rhino (who is one of the wives attached to us from the other battalion, of course, so I tolerate it even less for this reason), tries to boss Ben around in front of other soldiers, and he whispers to me to put her in her place or he will do so. His recent meltdown broke the barrier, and Ben is emboldened; he earned his bragging rights by chewing my ass. He’s afraid he will go off on the Rhino if he even has to open his mouth to talk to her at all, so I do his nasty bidding. She leaves in tears. Angry that the Kleenex boxes weren’t positioned to her liking and that she didn’t get a personal introduction to the grieving mothers. She arrived late and couldn’t jockey for prime seating in the chapel. We are a hotbed of displaced anger and neurosis. Every one of us.
After the grueling remembrance ceremony, I break down in the restroom when the enormity of responsibility on Jack’s shoulders hits me. I feel like shit for being so angry at him. This is when I finally face something I’ve carried but ignored in the back of my mind: We are fighting a futile war. How many of us feel responsible for each death? Does this mother even know that I never heard her son’s name until after he was killed? Was he there that day I said good-bye to Jack? Carrie Barnes is there; my kids call her Aunt Fannie, the woman who has been like my big sister. She held my hand when I fell apart during Somalia. With two young children of her own at home, Carrie nurtured me. Now I hear her knock on the bathroom door. “Ang? Are you okay?”
Where is my Xanax? I left it at home. Last week the doctor graciously gave me exactly ten when I begged at a routine physical, explaining to him the extra heavy upcoming week. Two are gone already. I need its numbness now, but I’ve left it at home in the medicine chest. Didn’t want it in my purse, mocking me and making me feel like a sad character from Valley of the Dolls. I wipe my tears with toilet paper and tell Carrie I’m okay, I’ll be out in a sec, the eulogy just caught me off guard, gimme a sec, Aunt Fannie.
How has the impact of this on Jack slipped past me? He seems so impervious to the pain and loss, focused on the mission and able to compartmentalize it. I thought I was good at that, too. The moment of giving in to the tugging and ever-present emotions takes me over, there in the restroom. I can’t bear the thought of Jack feeling what I feel now—but so far away and in a world I can’t even fathom.
Looking back, my shift was in that exact moment there in the bathroom stall. The one that turned my gradually darkening soul pitch black. With Mira and our friends, we later give this phenomenon an official name. The black soul. We’ve learned from our years as army wives that giving something a name somehow makes it more palpable.
THERE’S A NEW program in the division that’s intended to be helpful, but is in reality just creepy. Civilian counselors and therapists, most with zero experience and knowledge about our lives, now lurk in the corners waiting for one of us to flip out. Of course one counselor is present in the next stall when I break down and sob at a volume that frightens even me. No, don’t you dare hug me, lady. For reasons beyond the fact that you didn’t wash your hands. My soul just turned black two minutes ago, but how could I tell you that?
Over cocktails later that night, Mira and I theorize that the counselors are secretly keeping statistics so that long after the war, they can tell the rest of the world how fucked up and disturbed we were. A covert social experiment sponsored by the government? It sure feels that way. Maybe I should have tried to explain our black-soul phenomenon to that loitering counselor.