Tell My Wife and Kids I Love Them…

That’s the last thing my husband wanted us to know before he died on the other side of the world, in a combat zone, far from the people who loved him. 

I found this out during my husband’s wake. My Casualty Assistance Officer (CAO), assigned to me, pushed through the crowd until he found me. He was holding his phone high in the air.

“It’s the doctor who was with Lou,” he said to me. She was calling from Iraq. Until that moment the only thing I’d been told was that Lou was killed in his sleep. I knew that wasn’t right. (I explain how I knew that in my book, Front Toward Enemy) So I was already doing whatever I could to get as much information as I could, including requesting to speak with anyone who was with Lou when he died.

This was that call.

My four little boys were inside with family. I stepped outside behind the funeral home, my CAO’s phone in my hand. I pushed out a “Hello” and the woman on the other end of the phone identified herself. She explained how she was with my husband in the ambulance, and that he was talking about me.

“What?!” I cried? To go from not knowing how he died, to standing outside of where he lay in his coffin, to hearing how he had hours of suffering, at first thinking he’d live and then realizing he wouldn’t… it leveled me.

She went on while I cried, telling me about how he was talking about me, and our kids. And how he told her to “Tell my wife and kids I love them.”

I had to be carried back into the funeral home. They brought me to the basement. If the customary ambulance had not been tending to someone who’d fainted from the heat, they would have whisked me to the hospital and sedated me - that’s how hysterical I was.

Stoicism had not yet joined my Widow Toolkit.

He didn’t talk about the Porsche he never bought, or the stupid fights we had, or the times I let him down. He only cared about the love, and how sorry he was that he wasn’t going to make it home to us. Before that last minute, he even got a crack in about me being blonde, and another line that had a medic laughing. 

When I first heard this, it broke me. Everything broke me then, though. Here I’d just figured out how to be a strong wife, and suddenly I was a widow with four little boys to raise alone. I was angry, and scared, and… angry. My kids really needed me to get my Sh… self, together, but it took me ten long years to truly begin figuring that out. 

So it’s something of a miracle, along with a whole lot of struggle and hard work, that I’m here today- my kids are grown up, I’m remarried, and I’ve written and published three books of my own. The books I ghostwrite don’t have my name on them!

I’m living the American Dream my husband died in service of, and honoring his legacy by helping others build theirs. 

I don’t know a single person who has not felt pain. I am 100% confident that every single person reading this has been through moments that broke you, tested you, maybe even terrified you.

One day, if not already, your story will be like mine and you, too will teach people how to train their pain, personally and professionally, by telling that story or teaching the lessons you’ve learned along the way.

With all the divisiveness out there, all the reasons we are told to focus on our differences, I believe that in our stories we find common ground. When I finally realized no one was coming to save me and that I’d have to face some harsh realities - when I finally figured out that I was going to have to learn how to rebuild from the carnage in my life, I sought out people who had overcome their own adversity to learn from them. I started with videos and moved to books, devouring incredible stories of courage, faith, and strength.

I didn’t once wonder if that person was a Liberal or Conservative. All I wanted to know was what I could learn from them. I believe if we could all stop looking at one another as enemies, and force ourselves to learn each other’s stories, we would have a much easier time finding common ground to rebuild our country on.

So when I write a client’s book, I remind myself that I’m not just sharing their story - I’m working to reconnect a divided country. A country I love and lost so much for.

  How cool is that?