Waking Up from a Coma

I don’t know what it’s like to wake up from a coma. Most of us don’t.  We can certainly imagine.  We can hear stories, and read about what it must be like, but most people don’t slip into a coma and then eight months later wake up.

As I try to describe what coming home, or as the military calls it “redeployment,” is like, the analogy that I keep sticking with is a comparison to waking up from an 8-month-long coma.

I severely underestimated how challenging this would be. My previous deployments (all three of them) had been while serving on active duty with the Navy, and while my last deployment was just a few months after Jason and I were married, we did not yet have children as part of the equation.

There is a huge difference between returning from an active duty deployment and a reserve deployment. I know that now.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be hard to come back home. You know it will be excruciating to leave, and you know that a combat zone will be scary and dangerous, but what gets you through the whole thing is the knowledge that eventually you’ll go home – to normalcy.

I learned otherwise.

As an active duty service member, the military is your life. Your community is the military and knowing that you’ll inevitably deploy you don’t settle down into a commitments on the home front. You live in a military community that understands what you’ll be doing and what it will be like.

You typically deploy with a unit that prepares and trains together and then comes home together. You take a couple weeks off to enjoy life and your family and then you and the others you came home with get back to training.

As a reservist, this experience is much, much different.

I’ve spent the last six years living in my small home town. My husband and I have raised our children here. I’m involved with my church and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, school activities and more. This town is about 180 degrees apart from a military community filled with active duty military families.

I have a whole different full-time job that I’ve done for the last six years, also incredibly different from what the military has asked me to do these last eight months.  In a blink of an eye, I’m back to the place and life I left months ago, but here’s the catch – I was very involved in this life and while I’ve been absent for these many months, this community has continued on.

It feels very much like waking up from a coma.

I don’t know who my kids teachers are – I missed the Meet the Teacher night. I don’t know what time the bus arrives or when football practice is.  I don’t know which of my company’s members have transferred jobs, or even who in our company is still on the team.

I don’t know the latest research from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, or where my church is with the search for a new pastor.

I’ve been completely and utterly out of the loop for eight months, but life hasn’t stopped.

I struggle with that realization.

As I run into neighbors and friends around town, they have a funny look when they see me for the first time. I imagine it is the look I give someone in deep grief after losing a loved one.  There is a hesitancy – as if they aren’t sure what to say.

The most frequent question I get is, “Do you have to go back? How long are you home.”

Thankfully my answer is that I don’t have to go back, ever again.