The Year Without My Father

It's hard to believe, but four years ago (today, if my memory serves), we were in Taylor, MI, to greet my dad's unit as they returned from serving a year in Baghdad.  Megan Leigh met Robert Lee for the first time (at three months old), and we got to regain some sense of normalcy in our lives.  In honor of that great day--and that hard, hard year--here is something I wrote for Women's Lifestyle Lakeshore.


The Year Without My Father


“Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.” Gloria Naylor

I have been here before—in this hotel, in a room not far from this one. That time with my father, and this time waiting for my father. “We made it,” I sigh to myself as my head drops to the pillow. And when I wake, he will be here.

My father is a chaplain with the 177th MP Brigade of the National Guard, and in May 2007, his Brigade was deployed to Baghdad to take part in Operation Enduring Freedom. We were told he would be gone 400 days . . . standing on that end of it, the beginning, it is truly hard to imagine 400 days. At the time he left, my daughter was barely more than 400 days old and she had changed so much in that time. How would we change while my dad was gone? A little girl’s daddy is her entire world while she is young and half of her world when she is old. How would we ever make it through a year without my father—without my world?

I remember when my dad joined the National Guard. I was 13 and in 8th grade when he left for a one-month training. While he was gone, my sister turned 16, and our country entered the first Gulf War. War was so foreign to me at the time that I never thought he would actually be deployed anywhere, so our only concern while he was gone was what day we should take the trash out and where it should go. That war ended quickly, and since then we have been a military family who kept our soldier right by our side. In May 2007, the war came to our family, and our father left it.

Mom, my sister, and I stood at the armory in Taylor, MI, saying goodbye to him and watching him fight back tears as he climbed onto the bus, our own tears falling down our cheeks, anxiety flooding our hearts. Would Dad come home? Would we be the same if he did? Would he be the same if he did?

During his time away, we leaned on my husband and my brother-in-law when we needed a man (not for the trash, but for the grilling), and we leaned on each other when we could. We added yellow ribbons around our trees and National Guard deployment flags in our windows. And we lived each day tender, with empty hearts and tears ready to fall.

Four hundred days means far more than the thirty days he was gone before. This time my parents celebrated an anniversary apart. I turned 30 without my daddy. I announced my pregnancy over the telephone and wished there was a good way to send ultra sound pictures to Iraq. Dad had a birthday surrounded by soldiers and boxes packed with whatever gifts and goodies can travel into another country. My oldest daughter turned two. We celebrated one birthday for each person in our family, without Dad there to sing. On Thanksgiving, we huddled around a web camera, talking to Dad—joking about how badly the Lions would lose, remembering the time that the turkey was almost raw, laughing about the battle for the most turkey skin—all of the same things we share every year, but this time without the joy. My dad never says much, but every meal we shared together was quiet without him.

Our most desperate time may have been Christmas. Tradition for our family dictates that we spend Christmas Eve at my parents’ house, opening our stockings, filled to the brim with more gifts than we could ever need; eating a huge dinner; and opening still more presents. This year, we all moved with mixed emotions toward a holiday that is considered a family favorite in normal years. Dad arranged for his leave time to fall just after Christmas, so we decided to hold off on most of the family celebration until he was back. Still we knew that the day itself, the day that was marked for family, could not be spent apart. So we gathered in a house that felt empty without its spark. I had spent the weeks before Christmas frantically buying gifts that my father could give to my mother, and I tried my hardest to make light of the fact that I filled a role that should have been his. Together on Christmas Eve, we talked with Dad over the computer, but any time that your call travels ocean and most of the way to the other side of the world, the conversation lags in timing and lacks in heart. How do you celebrate such an important day with someone who is present but nowhere around? And how do you share joy while the man who was your world for so long is now a world away and all alone? How does your heart not break?

Dad came home in January, on leave, and we relished each moment, celebrating Christmas again and hanging on every word he spoke. He left again far too soon.

When my daughter was born, it was night in Iraq. That did not stop my dad from rushing to a telephone where he could call us to welcome his fourth granddaughter and learn that this one, named Megan Leigh, shares his middle name. She is the only one in the family to have that honor, in part because he was gone when she was born and in part because, in the end, he really is still my world. That night, as a February blizzard blanketed the city outside our window, I whispered to my baby girl my hopes for her life. They were hopes for peace, joy, love, wisdom, a sense of humor . . . and the gift of being held by my father.

We learned so much during our year apart. We learned about ourselves, about the geography of the middle east, and about each other. We learned about the emptiness of having someone so central to our lives so far away. And we learned that we are stronger than we thought we were.

My dad is home now, for the holidays and the meals and the celebrations. He has held my daughter and participated in her baptism. Life is normal again. But while he was gone, I missed him so.