I'm sitting on a hotel balcony looking out over the ocean, completely in awe of the vastness and power of the water. It's so peaceful now, but it's still easy to see how quickly it could become your greatest fear.
Anyway, today we are in Wilmington, NC. We left Top Sail Island this morning but decided we weren't ready to come home. It's just me and my mom and dad, Grandma and Aunt Donna should be home by now. Uncle Lady and Aunt Teresa headed home yesterday and Riley should be in Greenland about to head to Germany.
I'm listening to Justice and Mercy now and the reality of everything has still not sunk in completely. We stayed with Riley till the last minuet (2:30 in the morning) and watched them do the last check and load the buses. I've never seen anything like it. All the families standing as near as possible, trying to say one last goodbye to there Marine. There were well over one hundred Marines tensely waiting or the call of the higher ups to load the buses and head out. Some had been over before but most were heading out for the first time.
The trip to Iraq is long. First stop was High Point, NC then a plane ride to Maine. From there they take another plane to Greenland only to take another plane to Germany to take another to Kuwait, then take another plane the rest of the way to whatever part of Iraq they are headed to.
We got to spend a lot of time with Riley before he left. He stayed in the condo with us from Thursday to Sunday night. Saturday we walked to the beach to walk around and look for shells and all that other stuff you do while on the beach. Riley decided to go for a swim while I was walking in the water about knee deep. I wanted to swim so badly but I had on jeans and a t- shirt and didn't think that was the best idea. But the temptation was too much and I took off out toward Riley just wanting to have fun. We swam for probably an hour turning back here and there to look at family on the beach (not that we could really see them at some points). Riley stopped at one point and said that he was having a flash back to when we were little and playing in the creek during the summer, one of us would always "accidentally" fall in and splash the other so we were both wet and might as well swim while we were there. He also had to pick on me a few times "Wow. It did you a lot of good to roll up your pants legs." he said as I came back up from going under a wave. I just smiled, knowing that this experience, this entire time here, would stay with me and help me (and him) get through these 6 to 8 months.
I don't know what's going to happen, and I don't know how this is supposed to go. I don't know how or when I'm supposed to deal with this. I don't know what dealing with it is going to mean, and I don't know how long it's going to take.
What I do know is that this is where he needs to be. This is the best thing that could happen. And I'm sitting here, still on this balcony in the dark listening to the waves roll in and thinking of where he is, sitting on a plane over the Atlantic somewhere not knowing anything about what he's doing. And I think forward to when we go back to that base to watch the busses roll back in, standing with the same people we were with last night, and knowing that the worst is over and that we get our Marine back for a while.
"And I'm starting to belive the ocean is much like You, because it gives and it takes away." - Open Water by Thrice
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Islands, Beaches, Family, and Iraq blog
