by K M Draughn

Created on: January 14, 2009

A year and a half ago, my son who was a college student at the time decided that he would join the military. His grades had begun to drop and he had lost his scholarship, he decided it was time to do something else with his life. The day he came home and told this was not a good day. He was still living with me and his dad at the time and in so was expected to still help out with chores around the house. Something that I had asked him to do for a couple of days and was left undone, was still left undone that day. When I got home, he was not there, but I promised myself that when he got home he might be bigger than me but I was still Momma and he was going to do his chores or else find some place else to spend the night. Guess what, he came home, all sweet, like honey dripping out his mouth, apologized went and did his chore, before I had a chance to say anything, and then came in and told his dad and I , that he had been that day to see the Marine recruiter.

My heart fell, why on earth would he had done this. He told us that he knew that his grades had dropped, that he did not want us to have to finish paying for his education, he was three years into a Criminal Justice Degree, and that he really wanted to join the military. He had talked about doing this right out of high school, his grades on the Military Test were very high and he talked to several recruiters then, but we had discouraged it, the war in Iraq was going hot and heavy and he was our baby.

Well now he is a man, our young man, but a man, we told him that if he were going to do this to weigh all of his options to talk to the Army, Navy and Air Force before he chose a branch to join. He went the next day and talked to all of them, and came home with the papers to enlist into the Navy.

He went for all the preliminary things, physical and found out he had to loose a little weight, and he would probably be leaving in a month or so, this gave me time to build up a lot of dread. But time went by pretty fast, we gave him a couple of going away parties, one with his friends the other with family, then we saw him off on a cold day in November, he left us to go to Boot Camp in Chicago, this southern boy who had hardly ever seen it snow, was going to the bone chilling north in winter.

Two days after he left, the dreaded box came, I had been on the Navy Mom web site and found out that it would be arriving, and what it held was everything that he had left with, his pants, shirt, tennis shoes, cell phone, everything

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