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Left Alone! But Never Really Alone! |
| Written by Jamie Ann | |
| Monday, 28 April 2008 | |
 My name is Chrystal Meyers. I'm 23 years old. I grew up in Wyoming and moved to Colorado following my graduation from high school. I met Jesse my first year in Colorado Springs. He did not stand out in a crowd or draw the stares of every woman in his vicinity but there was something about him. I was in a local club with a few of my new friends when he and a few other guys came in the door laughing merrily. I tried to ignore the subtle feelings of butterflys in my stomach as he walked to the bar. I noticed he ordered only a corona. Odd as most guys I saw like to go for the harder stuff at clubs. He had dirty blond hair and his eyes were a dark shade of brown. Like I said nothing our of the ordinary. He was the tallest guy in his group of friends but was just of average height at six feet two inches tall. He worked out you could tell even though he was wearing a loose t-shirt with a rock bands logo on the front. My friends pulled me out of my chair and onto the dance floor soon after he came in. I had a few drinks prior to this forceful evacuation of my seat so the buzz was there. I was loosened up but not enough to not know what was going on. Somehow I was able to sneak away from my friends and get back to my Apple Martini that was untouched on my table. I was sitting alone watching my friends dance when I heard his voice for the first time. He asked me to dance. I was stunned. I was a plain jane last I had looked though my friends always told me otherwise. Why was this guy, who even as ordinary as he was caught my eye, asking me to dance? I agreed reluctantly and we danced. It wasn't extrodinary, fire works going off, type of thing but my heartbeat picked up and set things off. We spent a lot of time dancing that night and exchanged numbers before we parted, I don't do one night stands. He was a Soldier from the Local Army Base. Just returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq. He was raised in Colorado and was surprised when his orders stationed him back in that same place of duty. His family lived a few hours away in Boulder, Colorado so he got to visit them often enough. To make things short. We hit it off. Dated for 9 months before he proposed. We were married on our one year anniversary just weeks short of his third deployment to Iraq. Yes they were sending him back. Honestly I didn't know what to think as we moved into an apartment just off post out gate three. I worked at a local childrens center when I wasn't in Class at Pikes Peaks Community College. I said farewell to him three weeks into our marriage. I cried myself to sleep for several more weeks. And at my lowest points when I wish he were back with me I would wonder if he would ever return home. That was when I called my mom. She always seemed to know just the right things to say to cheer me up. Then the point being was she had been raised as an Army Brat then had married into the Army herself. My dad was honorably discharged from the Army before I was born. My days went by as quickly as they could but nights were the worst. I was alone and it made me worry the most then. I recieved emails about once a week from him, sometimes only once every two weeks. He always kept me posted on what was going on with him and his buddies, who I had also become friends with in the year before they deployed. I found out I was pregnant six weeks after he left. I honestly didn't know what to do or expect so I once again called mom for the answers when I needed them. I delighted in every movement or development of pregnancy, though some developments I wished I could do without. I sent Jesse pictures of my progressing pregnancy almost weekly. It was a boy. He was born nine months and five days after Jesse and I were married. Once again I sent pictures to Jesse who was so excited about coming home in a couple months to a new baby. David Jesse was the baby's name. After his father and his fathers late father who had died when Jesse was fourteen. Jesse rarely, if ever, spoke of his father or anything that had to do with him. David was the spitting image of Jesse and according to Jesse's mother who visited often to help with little David did everything just like Jesse had. One month before Jesse would return home I got a call. Not what I expected so close to his return but there it was. Jesse had been in a Hmvee which had been hit with an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) two days earlier. His injuries had been fatal. They were shipping his body home. To say the least I was devastated. But I knew with a growing child who needed me to stay strong I didn't cry right away. I recieved his belongings a few days before his body arrived. I didn't think I could handle going through them right away so I didn't touch them. Just put them away in storage until later. Except for a small wooden box which I kept at the side of the bed. We held his funeral and I finally cried as they handed me the flag. I didn't worry about what benefits I would recieve now that he was gone or what I would do now. All I thought about was that David would now never know his father. Except for what picutures I had for him. I was alone again. Only this time I had David to care for. My childhood and early adulthood had never prepared me for this. Nothing in any book I had ever read had ever prepared me. Nothing I had ever been told or taught prepared me for this. I was alone with my grief. I wasn't prepared for Jesse's mother to visit again so soon after the funeral but she came one day when David was at Daycare and sat down with me. She told me something Jesse never had, about his father. Jesse's father had died during a Special Operations Deployment during what I had always thought was peacetime. This news was a shock for me as I realized I wasn't completely alone. Jesse's mother had been through the same thing as I had just been through. She visited often the following months and years. But seven months after the funeral I finally pulled Jesse's belongings out and went through them while David was at Daycare. I opened the box next to my bed first and found a packet of letters addressed to David in them. I set them aside because I knew they weren't meant for me. Then I found the hardbacked green notebook that most Non-commissioned Officers in the Army carried. It had my name on the front of it. In the front cover were written these words,
You will Never be alone! I will always be right next to you where ever you go! I Love You Always And Forever! ~Jesse Meyers~
That book brought me peace from that moment forward as I got on with my life. I always kept it in my nightstand, even after I remarried and had several more children. You were always my first True Love and always my first husband. No one could change that. No matter what I made it through just as others I know will and have made it through lifes hardest trials.
I miss you Jesse and Love you Always and Forever! You are my #1 in my mind, heart, and soul!
~Crystal Meyers~ Copyright 2008 Jamie Ann |
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