by Eileen Lunardi

Created on: March 19, 2009

Someone asked me recently why, why do you love soldiers? I'm a divorced woman, divorced from a soldier, and I've spent my entire adult life around soldiers. I've cared for their wives and children, mailed the care packages, fed their cats and dogs while they were away, watered their gardens, written letters and cards. More than anything I have loved them. My appreciation runs deep, the admiration I feel runs thick in my veins. I will never love anyone more than I love soldiers.

But why?

Military men possess certain characteristics that differ from the rest of the general population. These men are dedicated to something larger than themselves even when their own personal ideals and goals differ from the goal at hand. They are good at proceeding with a mission and following through on an objective. They make good leaders, are good role models, decision-makers and team players. More than anything, they form a brotherhood with the people they train and fight with, which from my perspective is something untouchable from the outside but is a kind of emotional bond that speaks volumes about their capacity for love and an ability to give of themselves. It is a rare person who will fight and die for another.

I suppose I want to be part of that, to feel some of that and maybe have it rub off on me somehow. I know in my personal relationships with soldiers, those of the serious kind, I have found joy and depth in ways I never could have imagined. There has also been sorrow and sadness beyond anything I could imagine as well. I don't have words to explain how it feels when someone you love is leaving for a violent, bloody war zone and as you watch them leave, you don't know if you will ever see them again; how it feels as you hold your children as they cry and wish that Daddy wasn't a soldier; or how it feels to raise these kids and teach them pride in what their Daddy does.

There are no words to explain how it feels when someone you love comes home a completely different person than when they left, either physically or mentally or BOTH.
There are no words to explain how it feels when someone you love does not come home at all.

I recently said goodbye to someone that I love. This is his third tour in Iraq. After the first tour, he came home deaf in one ear and with nerve damage down the left side of his body. After his second tour, he came back with severe PTSD, collapsed vertebrae and traumatic brain injury. There are no words to explain how it felt watching him leave, wondering

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