The sun shined down upon the couple sitting on the grassy hill dotted with flowers, their hands entwined peacefully. It was a bright day, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the couple was spending their last day together before the man went off to war. He had to leave that day for Iraq, and they wanted to spend his last moments before he left together. Both were very emotional about his leaving.
“I wish you didn’t have to leave.” The woman said with a soft sigh. The man smiled down at her sadly.
“I know, but I am going to help my country. Besides,” he said holding up her left hand where a beautiful gold ring with a small diamond sparkled in the sunlight. “I will come back to you. I wouldn’t leave this beautiful woman I love and plan to marry alone would I? What kind of man or soldier would I be if I did that.” He gave her a bright smile and she couldn’t help but smile back. He always could make her smile, and that was the thing she was going to miss the most while he was gone.
“I know, and I love you too, but I just can’t help but be worried about you. You can’t keep something from happening to you just so you can come back to me. After you get on that plane to go over there, everything is out of our hands. I won’t be able to sleep for worrying about you.” The woman whispered, tears forming in the corner of her eyes.
“Oh please don’t cry. I promise you I will come back to you. Have I ever broken a promise to you?” He said with another soft smile. He wiped away one of her stray tears.
“No, you haven’t. You always keep your promises. But I don’t see how you are going to keep this one. There’s no way that you can promise me this. You can’t keep things from happening to you during war.” She said in a very quiet voice, bowing her head. Her light brown hair fell over her shoulders to shield her face from his eyes. He swept a hand forward to move it back.
“I can promise you and I will. You know how stubborn I am. When I put my mind on something I stick to it no matter what. This will be another one of those times. Ok? And you don’t have to worry about me. We can write letters, and talk on the phone whenever possible. Everything will be ok I promise.” The man said softly, tightening his grip on her hand. “I will come back to you, no matter what happens.”
She smiled softly, her eyes still shining with unshed tears, but now they were no longer falling as they were before. “Good, you had better. And you had better write me a letter every day. No exceptions. If you miss a day, the next letter had better be twice as long, ok? And I mean that.”
He grinned at her. “Ok, I think that I can manage that. Expect your mailbox to be filled with letters.” He lifted a finger and softly poked her nose. He knew she always laughed when he did that.
In light of the situation, she giggled. “Good, because I’ll be mad at you if it’s not bursting open at the seams. I’ll write you every day too, so expect a lot of mail from me. Oh, and care packages too.”
“Good.” He said softly, leaning back further into the soft grass. The woman smiled softly and leaned back next to him. They lay for a little while longer before the woman spoke up again softly.
“Are you afraid of what might happen, of what you might see?” She said with a whisper, her thoughts swirling around in her mind.
“No, not at all.” His reply was instant.
“Really? But why? Men always come home with nightmares of what they have seen. That doesn’t scare you in the slightest?” She said, sitting up fully and looking over at him, a questioning look in her eyes. She didn’t understand how he couldn’t be the slightest bit scared about going off to war.
He grinned at her before replying. “Because they didn’t have someone like you to go home to and I do. If I ever get scared all I have to do is think of you, and remember that you will be back at home waiting on me. I know that if I come home with nightmares, that sleeping next to you will make them ok, and that they’ll go away. That’s all I need to know.” He said, pulling her closer to him.
“Well, I don’t know about all of that. But I do know one thing; I will be waiting on you.” She said with a smile back.
“Good, that’s all that I need to know to get through this.” He said, smiling softly.
“And all that I need to know is that you promise to come back to me.” She replied with a smile.
“And I do promise that.” He said, squeezing her hand. They turned and smiled at each other before settling back on the ground. After that, they just lay on the ground, chatting about little things. A few hours later, it was time for his flight to leave. They had decided that she would go with him to the airport, and that they would say their goodbyes there. The two of them walked down the hill slowly, their hands still entwined. His bag was already packed and in the old ford truck that he had had for years, and they walked toward it.
He walked her over to the passenger side door before opening it for her and letting her climb up inside the cab. She smiled at his small act of chivalry. After she was settled, he closed the door and walked over to his own side. The drive to the airport was silent, both afraid to say anything in case they started crying. When they arrived at the airport, they went straight to the divider between the gates and the rest of the airport. She couldn’t go past that point so they had to say their goodbyes there.
“I love you, and I will come back to you. That is a promise that I will not break.” He said softly. He wanted to cry, but there were a lot of men from his unit here that would notice, so he kept all of his tears in check.
“I love you too, and you had better come back to me. By the way, I do expect those letters, so get writing.” She said with a soft smile. She made no attempt to hide the tears that were streaming down her face. The two shared a tight hug, and then he was gone, going through the security checkpoint.
The woman sat down softly in one of the chairs, trying to get her emotions under control. As she sat on one of the hard chairs, another woman sat down next to her. She had blonde hair and looked around forty. She also had some tears on her face, but hers were already subsiding, unlike the younger woman, whose tears were still coming down strong.
“It doesn’t get too much easier for us military wives. Even as time goes on, we always miss our husbands and worry about them.” The blonde woman said. She slumped down in the chair heavily, as if her mental burdens were weighing down on her physically as well.
“But, I’m not a military wife. At least not yet that is. He proposed to me just yesterday. I offered to go to the courthouse to get married, but he knew that I wanted a nice church wedding so he wouldn’t stand for it. He said that we would have a real wedding when he came back.” The younger woman said softly. The tears were still falling from her eyes, but at a much slower pace now. “But it’s ok, because I know he’s coming back. I’m not worried about it anymore. At first, I thought that because he was going that there was a big change he wouldn’t come back to me, but now I know that he will. If I don’t have hope for him, then there would be no hope for us. I know that he will be back for me, because he promised.”
