A Very Different Goodbye

We are in the countdown now. Only a handful of weeks remain before Jack leaves for Basic Training. I didn’t know what to expect emotion-wise, and I still don’t. This leaving is so very different than sending a child off to college or leaving one behind as you are ushered out of a country. Both of those experiences come with their own unique challenges to motherhood. But this? This one is huge and unknown and uncomfortable in a lot of ways.

On a larger level, this is not really the time to be sending your child into military service. While I know there is still support for our nation’s watchdogs, be they police or military personnel, the criticism and the anger are frankly, frightening for a mother to hear as her son packs his bags to start a career doing the very thing that suddenly has put Paw Patrol on notice for even suggesting to children that law enforcement might harbor some good guys. My son’s base recently deployed several hundred Guardsmen to DC. I prayed for each of those men and women like they were my own son when I saw the photos of them in their gear, ready to follow their orders. I prayed for them because well… they could be my son.

On a more personal level, there is some joy in watching this slow-motion parting unfold. Jack is anxious to get on the road to his future. He’s been anticipating this for months (for years if I’m being honest with myself) and is finally so close he can touch it. He’s realistic about what he’s walking into, and says he plans to neither be the worst Airman Basic at his BMT nor the best, in the hopes of being solidly under the radar. He’s ready. And that’s a beautiful thing to witness.

But we will miss him. The saying goodbye part, at which we are becoming so painfully practiced, will be harder this time than the last few rounds have been, simply for the fact that he will leave and be gone. We will not see his room, we will not meet his roommate, we will not get a video call tour of how he’s arranged his personal items on his desk. There will be no calls after his first cafeteria meal rating the food. No random photos of funny things texted to my phone to share a moment.

Instead, there will be a curbside drop-off at the airport, and a driving away that brings me to tears right now even imagining it.

Yes, he’s ready. But in so many ways, I’m not.

It’s not just the cancelled graduation ceremony, although I admit that this is the one thing Covid has taken which has sent me reeling. It’s not the idea of carrying my phone with me 24/7 just in case he gets the precious opportunity to call. It’s not the idea of not knowing what he’ll be doing, or if he’s dead tired and needs to sleep, or if he’s hungry and it’s hours until he can eat. It’s all of it— and then some. Things I can’t describe shifting in my heart like leaden weights. Maybe if you’re a mom who has been there you know what I’m talking about? I don’t know.

Jack will come back and be changed. There’s no way around that. We will see him again late this fall, after he’s walked through BMT and his Tech School. He will come home and work on base through January, when he’ll have to make what I imagine to be the difficult transition from being Airman Jack to being math major Jack. And which point, of course… he’ll be gone again.

I’m not quite sure how to support my son through all of this— the sudden societal stigma, the changes, the transitions. But I’m trying to learn. I’m praying. And I’m trusting that even though there will be bruised hearts (mine) and mistakes (also mine) along the way, that God has this. It’s not the path I know, or the path that feels the “safest,” but it is the path Jack was led to follow. So here I am, following along. Pray for us all if you think of us during this time!