Dreams and Nightmares

The knock at the door is what we all seem to be trained to dread. We all have that image of the 2 green uniforms ready with their scripted speech. I could at least wrap my head around that scenario. But, what would you do when what you expected to happen doesn’t?

I always thought I would know if something happened to Jamie. I told him about a certain dream I always had whenever someone in my family died. For some reason I never thought I would have that dream with Jamie…I never did.

I had just come back from my lunch break when my boss comes over to my desk. He asked me to go wait in the conference room. I was thinking to myself what customer I might have pissed off recently. To my surprise my best friend Alicia, who also worked on the same floor, was already seated in the room.. We both looked at each other not knowing what was going on. Before we could talk, the 2 soldiers came in. They were hidden away in a manager’s office so I wouldn’t see them when I got back from lunch. I grabbed Alicia’s hand and kept repeating “He was supposed to be home.” They proceeded to tell me about what little information they had. I just remember “IED” and “building collapse.” It turns out they had the wrong information. Jamie was out on a recon mission and drove over an IED. No buildings were involved.

Alicia drove me to my parents house. I asked her to call them beforehand because I couldn’t get the words out. They didn’t understand. They thought I passed out.“No, Jamie passed away.” I was sitting in my parents living room wondering how I was going to talk to Jamie’s parents. They are divorced so that meant 2 phone calls. I just spoke to them the day before to let them know the deployment had been extended to 15 months. I had to talk to Dad first. I tried his cell phone. No answer. I tried the house phone and his wife answered. “Is Dad there?” I asked. He quickly got on the phone and said he was sorry he missed the cell phone because they were bringing in groceries. “Has anyone come by the house?” I asked. I was half hoping the soldiers would have been by already. Of course they hadn’t. “Jamie is gone.” Dad kept clearing his throat as he was asking me what happened. I gave him the wrong information that I was given and told him the soldiers would be there soon. Later, I found out that Dad had nightmares of Jamie dying from the day he left for Iraq until the day he died. He hasn’t had that nightmare since. I still had to call my mother-in-law. The soldiers had already been there. I was just glad I didn’t have to go through that conversation again.

Things weren’t supposed to happen this way. Jamie was supposed to have already been home on leave. He was supposed to be home to celebrate out 1st wedding anniversary. He was supposed to be home for my birthday. Jamie got bumped because an E-8 needed to go on leave before him. Now I ‘celebrate’ our anniversary, my birthday, and his death all in a 13 day span.