Deployment Diary: Military Wives Celebrate Thanksgiving in October

I remember the year we celebrated Thanksgiving on a Sunday evening in October. It was the fall of 2007, the night before my husband, Scott, left for his seven-month deployment on an aircraft carrier. Other military wives, far more seasoned than I, gave me the idea to whip up one giant festive dinner to mark all of the holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones that my husband would miss while his squadron was in the Persian Gulf. It was a long list: Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Ethan’s fifth birthday, Estee’s third birthday, and our wedding anniversary, to list just a few.

I wasn’t sure how to handle such a significant meal, so I started with dessert, ordering the most elaborate, celebration-neutral sheet cake Costco had to offer. If nothing else, I knew the kids would love the icing-filled multicolored balloons, and I hoped the three of us would be able to float on their sugary ballast for a few days after the farewell. For dinner, I made some sort of chicken dish in the crock pot. I wrapped gifts for Scott to give the kids, and hid them under the couch.

I’d been tutored on how to handle the menu, the presents, and the general sense of occasion but not the emotion. Because it wasn’t, of course, a celebratory meal; it was a sad goodbye. (Once I jokingly called it “the last supper,” but the horrified look on Scott’s face reminded me that gallows humor is just that.) The chicken emerged from the pot simultaneously salty and tasteless. Our speeches on what we were grateful for sounded like we were trying too hard, and our birthday songs to the kids echoed, to me, an ancient dirge. At the end of the meal, Ethan and Estee blew out the candles on the cake, smiling and happy. But the knot in my throat kept me silent.

We four moved to the couch in the family room, and Scott reached for the children’s birthday presents. I grabbed my camera, mostly because I needed something to hide behind; I didn’t want tears to crash our party. In pictures in our photo albums, Ethan is wearing his Sponge Bob pajamas, tearing the wrapping paper from his favorite book, Under the Sea [2], and Estee, long hair still wet and curly from her bath, is proudly carrying her new patent-leather purse, filled with specially selected Matchbox cars. They are thrilled. They have no idea what’s really happening, though we did our best to prepare them. It was our first deployment as a family. Though Scott had been away up to eight weeks at a time until then, the children had never experienced such a lengthy separation from their dad.

Little did we know that only a year after Scott returned from that deployment, he would be leaving us again, this time for twice as long. Now he’s back in the Middle East, eating turkey in a cafeteria. We’re writing letters to wish him a good meal and hoping to be together for the next holiday. Although we miss him terribly, he’s already been away for five months, and his absence is almost normal to us now. But that year, I tried hard to anchor myself. It was Thanksgiving, after all—or our early version of it. I tried to see the upside. Health. Upcoming visits from other family members. The kids’ teachers, sensitive and caring. Neighbors who looked after us.

Lying in bed that night, aware that we had truly run out of time, I felt helpless. Scott and I held hands under the blanket. Neither of us could sleep, so we small-talked our way through the pain, chatting about the cake we’d gorged on and chuckling over the piggish absurdity of trying to combine all of the holidays and birthdays into one. Usually our late-night conversations were quietly exhilarating, a reminder that the flame still burned bright—despite the mounds of dirt that the chaos of our lives heaped on it. But I felt no exhilaration the night before Scott left. Our whispers were shaky murmurs, not the urgent tones of a husband and wife rediscovering each other.

We slept fitfully, not for very long. The alarm rang before sunrise, and I stayed in bed as Scott showered and dressed. Then I got up, and we talked quietly in the kitchen. I packed him a snack. We sat at the kitchen table as we had on so many other mornings and then walked to the front door together. By then, I was stunned into silence. The time had really come. I was worried I wouldn’t even be able to say the actual word goodbye.

I thought about the long list of things to be grateful for we had recited at fake Thanksgiving the night before. In the dark, before sunup, I could think of only one that mattered. Scott picked up his flight bag. He picked up his car keys and turned to me. I am so grateful for you, I thought. “Thank you for being my best friend,” I said as we hugged.

To look at Ethan's Thanksgiving letter to his father, click here. [3]