Ambiguous Casey

I knew that phone call was no good, I had not heard from my husband in 5 days.

It is a fuzzy but clear memory.

My daddy woke me up to tell me I had visitors. My dad is a strong man, at 6’3 and 240 I’ve never seen him show fear. That morning, just a little after 5am, he was different.

I put on my red USMC sweatshirt and headed downstairs. I knew what I was about to see. Before me stood a Navy chaplain and two United States Marines. One shook my hand and began to speak, he had a terrible stutter. I didn’t hear everything he said, I lost all of my senses momentarily, but I heard enough. With my left hand on my pregnant USMC covered stomach, and the other in the chaplain’s hand I gritted my teeth and stared him straight in the eye.

He had a whole scripted line to read me but I didn’t need to hear that. “Your husband, Cpl. Matthew Conley, was killed in action…” I asked him if he was sure, he stuttered,”Y-y-yes ma’am.” He walked me to my mothers sofa to sit. I looked around the room. My parents and Matthew’s family were all crying. I remember Matthew’s father sobbing to me. I don’t remember crying, it was like a terrible scene from a horror story. I couldn’t hear the Marine in front of me any longer or the sobs and sniffles around me.

I heard only a few details throughout the Marine’s required reading. Later I would see how it happened (there was a filmmaker in the backseat during the explosion) but at this point I just listened to what I could. They found him a few hundred yards away from the blast. Matt had stepped out of the vehicle, basically right on top of an IED that was detonated when his feet hit the sand. Some of his face was missing, his trigger finger, his left leg, shrapnel everywhere. There is a photo floating around of his Humvee, it’s unbelievable. I remember asking what happened to the bomber, the Marine was not 100% sure. I found out later that the bomber had been gunned down along with many others.

I’m not sure how much time went by that morning. I’m pretty sure everything stood still. At some point Matt’s family and the Marines left. My mom told me to shower and prepare for a hard day full of people.

Wait, it gets harder? (Oh man, did it ever)

I turned on the shower and gazed down at the protruding belly I had accumulated. My little girl was in there and she would never see him, EVER. She would never know how devoted he was to her, to me, and to his country. She would never get to hold his hand and gaze into his baby blues or experience his unbelievable laugh. That is when it hit me, I sat in the shower floor and cried. I cried until the water ran cold, and continued to cry for a half hour after it did.

I decided I couldn’t make it without him, I’d never survive.

The next 5 days were a blur of shock and denial. I wouldn’t believe it until I saw him. Eventually I did see him, that was the hardest thing EVER. But maybe that is a story for another day.