Sarah couldn’t behave like a typical single parent. Despite being deployed to the other side of the world, Stephen was still in the picture to have a say and an influence. At times she felt as though he was her supervisor looking over every decision she made. She could admit that he never really behaved this way, but without acknowledging it she placed him in the role. Sarah found herself questioning her decisions and then compounding the doubt by questioning what Stephen would think about it. The constant pressure, seemingly coming from two people, one of which was mostly unable to communicate, was too much on her. Hailey’s nightly bedtime crying became so common she practically made a calendar entry for them. Sarah realized she had to find a better way of handling things if she was going to make it through deployment.
In a break of clear mindedness, somewhat of an epiphany, Sarah awoke one morning and committed to taking on a new approach, a new outlook and a new role. It was the role of the household drill sergeant. She began to run the financial books with a sharper pen. She initiated routines and firmly scheduled her oversight of home maintenance with no tolerance for anything less than perfection by contractors or volunteers. When Hailey got sick, she coordinated her daughter’s medical appointments with fierce efficiency. She managed relationships and coordinated family visitations with firm opinions determined by what was best for her and Hailey. Despite the constant insecurities and questioning, she began to handle matters with commanding respect and immediate responsiveness. More than once she raised a firm voice to put a stranger behind the counter in their place. It didn’t matter if it was a mechanic trying to feed her a line about needing a new oil filter, or a less than enthusiastic office assistant at the doctor’s office who was previously unconcerned with Sarah’s schedule conflict. Sarah learned to put the screws to people and how to make them move. No longer was she passive and easy going. This new shoot first, aim later personality created a shadow that made her previously over-accommodating self, barely even recognizable. The only one who consistently penetrated Sarah’s thickening shell was Stephen’s mother, Rebecca.
Rebecca and Sarah did not have a stereotypical mother-in-law relationship. Years before, when Stephen and Sarah began dating seriously, Rebecca bypassed the standard judgmental review of her son’s girlfriend and instead took time to get to know who Sarah was. Rebecca learned that Sarah had lost her own mother during her teen years when a patron from a two-drink minimum bar slept through a lane change and continued over the road’s yellow line. Rebecca’s heart went out to the twenty-three year old without regard for her own son’s intentions. When Sarah’s status changed from friend to family, Rebecca remained a mentor to Sarah rather than a mother-in-law.
Rebecca was a true caregiver at heart. Even before her own husband suffered the debilitating stroke, Rebecca could always be found tending to the sick or lonely or elderly in her church. When the family began battling the dual fronts of war and cancer, Rebecca refocused her time, attention and strength on Hailey, Sarah and her own husband, Tom. Rebecca didn’t always ask. With a gentle forcefulness and a keen sense of grace guiding her to know just how far to push, Rebecca would step in and lower the heat before pots could boil over. She had an uncanny ability to see the things which needed to be done and know just where to place importance. Sometimes the priority was laundry, other times it picking up extra groceries, but most of the time her priority was the people. Whenever able, Rebecca would jump in and take care of something for Sarah at just the right moment, such as the time when Rebecca had asked teenager from her church to come by and trim the hedges. The young man arrived, accessed all of their tools, cleaned up and left without Sarah so much as having to make him a glass of lemonade. Rebecca, knowing Sarah’s attention had been diverted to caring for Hailey, took care of everything and gave him a ride home before Sarah even knew he had been there. In most in-law relationships this type of impeding activity by a husband’s mother could be like a lit match resting on a powder keg. But Sarah had a great appreciation for Rebecca, and the deployment only brought them closer.
Great as Rebecca was, she couldn’t replace Stephen as a helpmate. Several encouraging folk and the area support networks did their very best to reach Sarah. There were visits from friends and neighbors. On more than one occasion a senior officer’s wife and in some instances, even the officers themselves, came by to offer a word of encouragement in the hope to support a deployed soldier’s family. Due to Hailey’s frequent medical checkups, the visits were typically not received; many took the time to leave a friendly note or voice mail when the doorbell of the empty home went unanswered.
Circumstantial self-dependency mixed with a regular dose of loneliness forced an internalization of Sarah’s own feelings. As a result, she watched herself become stronger by the day and she hated it. She didn’t like being an authority figure. At first, she hated handling conflict situations even as small as disputing a utility bill. But as the frequency of conflict situations arose, the easier she found it was to bury her natural aversion and respond aggressively. A dishonest auto mechanic, an apathetic nurse, an unprepared contractor, regardless of the reasons for being put in a conflict position she quickly learned she could walk past her fears much more confidently while wearing a mask of determination and ruthlessness. It wasn’t long before her revealed no-nonsense personality eventually developed a supporting quick-fuse temper.
The sheltering masks didn’t work when she had to deal with Hailey. She didn’t like playing good-parent, bad-parent, which all too often came out in the form of bad-parent and really-pissed-off-parent. It broke Sarah’s heart to be the authoritarian and disciplinarian while also trying to be Hailey’s comforter and protector. Even when cancer wasn’t around, Hailey was still a difficult child. Chemo treatments and medications had led to side effects which didn’t ignore Hailey’s own frustrations. Some things had been amplified while others had been suppressed, such as Hailey’s ability to know when was not a good time to scream at the top of her lungs. Acting as a single parent, Sarah had long since kissed away dignity and pride.
Sarah understood what Stephen was doing and why he had to go. She knew deployments were part of the package when they had gotten married. She appreciated that he had signed up to serve their country. But that hadn’t made a cold bed any warmer, it didn’t balance the checkbook and it sure didn’t make raising a sick daughter any easier. She missed Stephen tremendously but once the storm of life brought on the rainy season and the initial months of loneliness had became familiar, she had to regularly remind herself that she didn’t resent Stephen for leaving. During his second deployment, she eventually forgot those reminders.
She knew a return from a deployment, especially one which included wartime injuries, was a difficult time for military families. Since his arrival was another abrupt return and this time to a military hospital, Sarah missed the reintegration training where she would have learned about being reminded about having patience, tender words, a low soft voice and several other things about how to help Stephen return. Instead, her crash course was seeing her husband for the first time in months, wrapped in bandages and healing from broken bones and a gunshot wound.
Rebecca and Sarah’s friends attempted to encourage her about Stephen’s road to recovery. Unfortunately, she quickly came to the realization that Stephen wasn’t the same as he was before. During a moment of Rebecca’s honest counsel, Sarah came to appreciate that she wasn’t the same either. Despite the advice she received from women who had gone through wounded warrior therapy, Sarah hung on to hopes that their life could go back to the way they were before deployment, before cancer, before whenever it was that they didn’t argue endlessly.