Both the best and worst moments in my life happened with a knock on my front door. I mean you may have seen many movies where the man in military gear shows up at the unsuspecting wife’s door to deliver the news and it’s heart wrenching, but until that moment really happens, you don’t know true pain. The sound around me disappeared, deafening to a white noise. He couldn’t be dead. As quickly as the shock approached, I moved right into outrage. 

“What do you mean ‘presumed dead?’ Why can’t you find him?” I screamed at the officer. 

Looking back, I should have been kinder to him. He was just doing his job the way he was trained to, but then again screw it. He had just told me my husband was missing and presumed dead. That isn’t an easy thing to hear. 

I am honestly not sure how I made it through the next few weeks. I wasn’t much use to anyone. His parents used every connection they had left inside to find out more information about Jacob’s disappearance. As far as they could determine, there was an attack on his platoon while they were traveling to the small village. The search and rescue team had found massive amounts of blood, but absolutely no sign of the vehicle, supplies or any of the people in Jacob’s troop. This was the reason that he was missing, and the reason he was presumed dead. There was no sign of any of them and hadn’t been for days before that day the officer showed up at my door.  

After a week with no new news, everyone just began to believe he was dead too. They were all losing hope. I honestly do not know what I believed. I was a part of the whole thing, but I wasn’t really there. I couldn’t fathom any of it happening. I wasn’t eating or sleeping. Looking back I was too young to experience anything like this. I had never even had to face death at this point in my life and here I was having to grasp that my new husband was not only gone but killed in some grizzly action overseas somewhere never to be disclosed.  

After losing him, it was the loneliness that got to me the most. Before the accident, he may not have been in the same room with me, but his presence was always there. I knew he was thinking about me the same way I was thinking of him. I could read it in his letters to me. But now all of that was gone. I was truly alone for the first time even though there were so many people around me. 

To be continued…