FINALLY, my first post-deployment post

[aadler]

I’ve been forced to recognize that if I wait until I feel like I’m ready to post, I never will, so it’s time to just jump on in.

At last report, I was still waiting at Fort Dix for various aspects of cardiac testing. I was also hard at work on another Buffyfic, hoping to finish it before I left Dix so that I could say I’d completed five such stories (plus the brief Magnum fic I did for my wife’s birthday) during the official period of this last deployment, even if three of those stories were finished at Fort Dix rather than in Iraq.

Well, the last of the tests came back with the same result — no sign of any problem — as had been the case with all previous checks. I don’t feel the least bit embarrassed; several times, during our out-processing, they stressed to us that we should assess and document any problems, and this was an issue that I absolutely DID want to have on record if anything actually was there. Since it wasn’t, I’m good. And, I finished the draft of the story the night before I was due to fly out, so that too was settled.

At which point, my wife called to tell me she’d just gotten word that her mother had died.

That complicated the situation. My flight was already scheduled, so I was already set to get home about as soon as it could have been done in any case. Susan lives and works in the upper corner of the state, however, and her mother had died (and the funeral would be held) in center-state. As a result, the day I got back home, she had to be elsewhere to take care of things. She arranged for me to be picked up by other wives in the Family Resource Group for our unit, and got back just about the time I arrived home (the two of us converging, from opposite directions, on the same end-point).

In another bit of synchronicity, arrangements had already been made for our daughter to fly back from Idaho to be with us for awhile, so — again — no revision needed to be made in her schedule. However, I had to drive to the airport in the next state to pick her up, and then get her back in time for the family visitation. I’d bought a new suit for the funeral just the day before, and after the visitation we went out to get Roni something suitable to wear, and the funeral itself was the following day.

There were other complications; it was as if a dozen things had been snarled and pushed to the back, waiting for me to return so they could be dumped on me. Susan had sold her minivan just before I took leave in February, and had been using my car; then, when our son went to China, she started using his because it had an automatic transmission; but, a few weeks before, the second car had suddenly refused to crank, so we had to get it towed and checked out and repaired, and this was with Susan returning to work and me trying to work through other things in the immediate field of necessity. (As a for-instance, I still haven’t picked up the gear I sent ahead from Baghdad, first because I didn’t have time to get to my home unit after returning home, and then because the person I needed to see was out for two weeks on his own leave.)

Then there was the matter of seeing to our son’s international tuition. While he was finishing up his time in China, he found that he was having trouble using the debit card we’d given him in order to pay ahead for the classes he was due to start in Japan. So, I moved money from his mother’s account to mine, so that he could bill MY bank account … only, he couldn’t do that because their payment system automatically deferred to PayPal, and I’d used PayPal once to access my bank account for something and so it wanted from him a password that even I couldn’t remember. So, I wired the money directly to the proper account in Japan … only, I got a call informing me that the payment had been received but I hadn’t properly specified the recipient, so I had to go back the next day and send in a correction regarding the recipient …

There was other stuff, too, but I’m tired of trying to keep up with it all. Basically, I’ve been back for weeks now and I still haven’t had the spare time I need to simply sit down for brief revisions on the completed Buffyfic.

Soon. Maybe Monday.

Comments

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Yikes! It all sounds rather horrific. I hope things are getting better.

I'm glad you could be there for your wife while she grieves for her mom.

[lwbush.livejournal.com]

Glad you're safely home despite all the difficulties entailed in the getting there. My condolences to your wife.

[aadler]

For me, hectic rather than horrific. Lots of distress for Susan, particularly at the beginning, but it helped a lot that both I and our daughter were already on schedule to arrive at a (mostly) opportune time.

Still assessing what the long-term effects will be.

[aadler]

Thank you. It was more annoying than difficult, but I got through my part. As for Susan’s mother, we’d been foreseeing that for years; this was just when it came.