Life Apart and Together: 41 Years of Marriage and Separation from Each other

Erma Bombeck wrote: “Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.”

Forty one years ago today Judy and I were married at East Side Presbyterian Church in Stockton, California. It was the beginning of an adventure that has taken us many lands and allowed us to explore new places. It is really hard to believe. We were married just six days after I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Medical Service Corps. I have to admit that she was correct, there are no guarantees in marriage and forty one years ago we had no idea what would transpire.

I spent nearly thirty nine and a half years in the military of which we were married for about thirty seven and a half years. The problem with a military marriage is the amount of time spent apart and how each person changes during the separations. We’ve been married for forty one years but been together but a fraction of it. We missed 20 anniversaries, countless birthdays and holidays. In the seventeen years between 1996 and 2013 I was absent for ten years. I haven’t tried to count up the rest but I figure that we have only been together about twenty years of our marriage. We have constantly had to come to reconnect and get to know each other, and that has often been difficult, but we remain together and are reasonably happy.

There is something to say about how one adjusts to changes like this, and it adjusting can be difficult when you live apart for so long. For me it has been the process of essentially being a bachelor and having to readjust to living together and Judy has had to do the same. After all these years we are still learning and adjusting.

The hardest time was when I came back from Iraq, changed by war and suffering from severe PTSD and Moral Injury. I was changed by war and have been dealing with that change in regard to our marriage ever since. I am not alone as Judy suffers from severe childhood PTSD due to physical and emotional abuse.

We will go to our favorite Mexican restaurant tonight and leave our iPads at home so we can be alone together, without the bombardment of social media and news alerts.

I wish you all a good day and I will be posting a couple of article in the next few days dealing with Donald Trump, Christian Nationalists, and their plot to end our democracy and establish a theocratic dictatorship.

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