I have been married to a Marine for many years now.
As we go through this most recent deployment together, it reminds me of years past and the one that changed everything. This journal is dedicated to that time and to what happened during those unforgettable and life-altering months. Those are the months that no one will ever forget, and those are the months that defined the life we live afterward, for those involved in the battle and those left behind.
This is from my point-of-view, as one who has been left behind too many times. Days will bounce back and forth, as my thoughts and memories surface, but ultimately, you will see a unique and honest portrayal of what Al-Fajr/Phantom Fury and the months that preceded and followed were like for this wife who happened to be married to a Lava Dog with 1st Battalion 3rd Marine.
Some will say, and likely have said, "move on, it's been four years." Although insensitive, it just evidences the lack of stories told by our families and Marines. The pain felt does not go away, time just erases the memories. Though I hurt from what we went through and the toll it took on us, I must acknowledge that there are many others who had it so much worse throughout this deployment (while outside of 1/3 others were hurt as well, I am limiting my scope to fellow-families-of-Lava-Dogs). Many wonderful women, who were some of the kindest, sweetest, most loving people I have ever been blessed to know lost their husbands. The Peralta family lost their son (whose memory has been desecrated and abused by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his failure to acknowledge that science cannot explain everything -- we'll touch on that again at another time). We lost 51 Marines during this deployment, 31 in a single day, in a single incident. There are many, many others who feel deeper and harder pain than I. I hope to lend them a voice by expressing the pain of my experience, and acknowledging, honoring, and appreciating the theirs. The families who lost their Marines are the ones most impacted. I think about them every single day. Though it is inconceivable to most, because of the intensity of the fighting and severity of the battle on every level, each wife in that battalion questioned whether her husband was alive or not at least once during our ten-month ordeal.
It is important that these feelings and stories are shared, that this love is not left unaccounted, and that these memories do not deteriorate, as time would like to have it.
