Living with a WAW while going through a D part II

[25yearsmlc]

Well a few hours left to the worst year of my life. I have never experienced so much loss in such brief period of time. M, father, dog, friends ,neigbhors inlaws you name it. Life changed in a second, unreal.

Rick, I know you have had a rough year.

I too, was feeling bad today looking back, for similar reasons. We lost 3 family members in 20 months, another now has autoimmune liver failure, (age 30)
and 2 close friends died or were killed in the past 5 months including one in the Army who served with us before...

Our finances have taken some big hits, most of which were based on factors outside our control OR made with the information we had at the time...

My husband's Reserve unit is getting deployed to the middle east. This is a huge surprise for us as his unit has never been deployed before.

His paycut will be VERY significant. Unless my pay triples, literally, I doubt we'll be able to keep our house even though we've lived here for years.

I'm looking to get better paying work but I quit a well paying job to care for mil dying of cancer (she died in the spring), so my pay now is much less.

But we thought, "not to worry, h is an MD and makes a solidly good living".

We didn't know about the deployment or how much his pay would plummet if he were deployed. In hindsight, perhaps We should have known, given that we are veterans. We knew Congress passed a law to match lost income for activated reservists, so we thought we were fine. But they write poorly drafted laws a lot- so unbeknownst to us, the law does not apply to us...
We do not get to know how long he'll be gone so I don't know how long our savings will last but I admit it bothers me that we have to DIP with a shovel, into our savings at all...we'll likely lose those and that's being realistic.

So I could AND HAVE argued that "thanks to being patriotic and caring family members, and debt payers, we are being screwed". I began to get really down about that. I am ashamed to say I felt bitter and was a bit of a martyr...


Then I recalled the night I was hospitalized while pregnant w/d1. It was decades ago and I was sick w/pneumonia, felt miserable and worried and sad.

I stared out the window at a full moon that night.

I began to wonder about other pregnant women in the world, who were seeing that same full moon that night...I got really detailed about what THEY were likely going through... Some of them were probably hiding from enemies, or wondering if their h's were coming home that night or that week or ever.

Some of those women lacked shelter, or their shelter was cardboard or metal and can't withstand rain or strong wind. There would be no epidural for those women; they'd be lucky to have medical help in their delivery at all...

So it hit me that if you really really truly want to see something so UNFAIR--go to AFRICA or most of the 3rd world.

Rick, you and your children are all healthy as am I and mine.

You are employed. Let's not forget that. Let's REMEMBER that:

There's food in our refrigerator (we have refrigerators & indoor plumbing and electricty!!) and they will be there tomorrow!

We are living in a country where we are free to work where we want, and

free to worship as we wish or not at all.

We are free to criticize our governments or vote them out.

No one is forcing our sons to join their rebel armies or raping our ds

or shooting at us or hacking at us b/c we don't belong to the "right" tribe.

We vote when we want for whom we wish...we are truly free.

All this^^^^, and more

makes us luckier than 95% of the earth's population...


So IF my h comes home from Afghanistan at all, let alone unharmed, and if all we lose is our home,

we're better off than thousands of other military families...and most people on the planet.

You too, Rick, you too....when you remember all this^^^

you will have a blessed new year.

((( )))