Military life is not for the faint of heart. The enormous challenge of this journey is tempered by incredible friendships and rich ceremonies.
From parades and promotions to barbeques and change of commands, each ceremony celebrates our nation, it’s people, and the greatest of courage.
As a career military spouse, I have attended my fair share of these ceremonies. I have bid bitter farewells, sending my husband to war, and celebrated a joyous return, eagerly and nervously standing in the shadows as my husband stood in formation, waiting to be released after 14-months in combat overseas. As we moved, and our career and family grew, the decorum of these celebrations also became a part of my children’s lives. From their first company Christmas parties to their dad’s change of command, they were quickly woven into the fabric of military life.
My youngest child, my daughter Heidi, was no stranger to military traditions. Only hours after she was born, with her daddy 6,966 miles away in a combat zone and his picture nestled in the corner of her hospital bassinet, she was wrapped in a pink 1-17 buffalo blanket, the unit’s welcome gift for new babies.
Heidi’s attendance at military functions would be no less frequent than the other military children, but would quickly prove to have a very different tone.
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August 25: Heidi and I attend the first family military meeting of the deployment. We are pulled out of the session by the rear detachment commander. With Heidi carefully buckled in her little car seat, we are notified that her daddy, my husband, CPT John Hallett, has been killed in Sha Wali Kot, Afghanistan. His last words to us on the phone, 10 days prior, “But I’ve never heard her cry.”
August 28: Dover, Delaware: John’s body returns to the United States. We are given the option to fly to Dover, Delaware to witness John’s homecoming. At three-weeks old, Heidi is too young to make the flight.
September 3: Travis Air Force Base, California. Heidi is 4 weeks old. John’s body returns to his home state. In a little bonnet and pink linen dress, Heidi is wrapped in my arms as we greet John’s flag draped coffin on the tarmac.
September 4: Catholic Church, Concord, California: Heidi is shooshed by a mourner, as she fusses at her daddy’s memorial.
September 5: Lafayette, California: Heidi witnesses the most significant of military traditions, the military funeral. With an honor guard, Taps, a 21-gun salute, and a folded flag, Heidi’s daddy is laid to rest.
Heidi would attend over 25 military memorials before she turned 1 year-old. Her ability to remember these hallowed moments, just like her dad, would be non existent. With a laminated picture of her daddy pinned to the side of her car seat, we would again and again hear the playing of Taps and shudder at the unfailing starkness of the 21-gun salute.
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The question with which I now grapple, how do you teach your child to remember something they never knew?
Despite what her history suggests, Heidi has built her own story with her daddy. It’s not one only of tears and loss, but one teeming with strength and pride.
