The Few, The Proud, The Soldiers

There hasn't been much to say lately. Life has been boring. But coming up was always something that would change our whole family, and I know I have been avoiding thinking about it, talking about it, or even living it.

My cousin was going to be deplyed at first to Oklahoma, then to Iraq. He is in OK now, and will be back for a short bit this summer. But then he will be gone for, I'm guessing, 18 months. It's hard to watch from the outside. His fiance and 2 little girls are missing him like crazy. Not to mention the rest of the family. I can't even imagine what it would be like to miss out on that much time with my baby. Some days he drives me crazy, but I wouldn't trade that for all the tea in China.

I am hoping to do the best that I can to help out with the family. We are the ones that live the closest to them. I am going out west to bring my other cousin home (his sister). She needs to be closer to the family, and we need her to be here too.

I try not to think about it right now, he's only in training at the moment. But soon, he will be overseas, and everyday will be hard. Much harder for him than us, but hard none the less. Do you go on living life, like nothing has changed? How could you do that, knowing that it has, at least for now. How do you keep him up to date on what the kids do? How do you have a marriage from thousands of miles away? How do I write a letter, what do I say?

I worry that he won't come back and I know everyone else worries the same thing. I try not to think about it, but if it doesn't even cross my mind, would it be even tougher to deal with if I hadn't even thought about it? I like to think that sending out good karma his way will help keep him safe, but I don't want to be completely shocked either if something happened, even if he lived through the something, I think I need to be mentally prepared for almost anything. I won't be much good to others if I am mentally paralized at what has happened. Maybe it's the mom in be coming out, but I need to be useful to others in a time of need.

For now, I guess I will go on thinking that live is a bowl full of cherries, but soon, I will need to think about all the "if's".