The Cleveland Orchestra
Deployments are a strange creature.
I am a very rational person – however, I am also a very passionate person. I’m a strong believer that everyone is able to live a life full of passionate moments and make sure my life is full of them. This passion extends to my work, my family, my extracurriculars, and most importantly D. While this “motto”( if you will), is great for a lot of areas in life – it is really destroying me in the coping with the deployment area.
If you read my earlier blog about Bad Timing, you’ll know I was completely crushed when I missed D’s phone call last week. It’s only fueled my desire to be the ideal spouse for him as he’s deployed – making sure I send him a package every two weeks, a letter every day and taking care of every wrinkle and detail his life in the states presents. I do this for him now – and I would do it for him if he were home (in a different capacity). However, missing the phone call not only fueled that desire – it also was a crazy experience that brought up all sorts of suppressed emotions.
The problem is during D’s deployment, all of this “doing” really helps the pain of him being gone, but there are always those quiet moments – or random moments (like the missed call) – where what has welled in your chest all day creeps up to the surface. It’s dealing with those moments that I find the most difficult.
For example tonight, we were at one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in my life, Severance Hall -
Severance Hall
and were listening to the incredible Cleveland Orchestra play the music of Wagner (you probably know him from the “The Ride of the Valkyries” See Below 
)
The music was incredible, flawless – and you would think I would be super happy (I was to be there – most definitely). However, it’s crazy how music, notes with no words, can evoke deep emotion in your heart – no matter your language, origin, life experiences. It’s one of those beautiful life mysteries.
Well I was listening to a piece earlier in the concert set – the Prelude of Tristan and Isolde – and the music invoked emotions in me alright, big passionate emotions. In fact it tore right into my chest and lifted up all those suppressed deployment emotions I had been carrying around the past few months.
Maybe it was because being at a concert reminds me so much of D - being around the instruments brought back incredible memories like: Us cracking corney jokes about how we both used to play to flute (threatening each other to a flute off), him playing the guitar for me, the pride I felt when he told me on a road trip about how he once played the saxophone with Winston Marsala, or the picture that popped into my head of him and my mom sitting on the piano bench at Thanksgiving – him listening to her play with his incredible love of music undeniably radiating off of him…. that I got so emotional.
The fact that this salty Marine is so rich, deep, beautiful, and complex in other areas of his life.
No, I don’t think it was even all these things – I think it was just at that moment, I was quiet… and the music – it was powerful. Tears began to well up in my eyes, I felt like the notes ringing off the musicians instruments were telling the story of him leaving, of my heart breaking, of carrying the worry of his happiness, comfort and safety every day, and of the emptiness that is ever-present while he is not near.
It’s these moments, that you can’t really explain to anyone, that are only understood by those who have been through a deployment. Moments where you feel shaken – where the tough, together, non-stop persona you have all day finally rests - while you just give in and feel.
Has this ever happened to any of you? It’s sometimes a difficult for me a strong independent woman to realize this is just part of the passion – that sometimes out of great grief, strife, and sacrifice a greater, stronger and more beautiful love grows.
Sometimes these moments just take me by surprise, and I guess as the deployment continues on they will become something that I learn to find comfort and solace in.
