by Bridgett Kelly

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: April 15, 2009

I will admit that watching my brother graduate from basic training at Fort Benning Georgia was an amazing experience. Tears trickled down my face as the soldiers done their parts in an outstanding performance. The guns,the big tank the works. They were truly amazing. Now my brother can come home and the other guys can go home, end of story right? Wrong. We had hoped for a different outcome but things do not always work out as we would like. Nothing can prepare you to watch your loved one go and travel across the world and only pray for their safe return. Only knowing they are safe as they leave and not knowing the status of their safety while they are gone. How do you cope with that? How do these brave men and women cope with it. Yes, they are strong and have the abilities to stand their own ground and are trained for any situation,yet they are still human and humans have fears,concerns,worries and doubts. So how can we cope and how can we help our loved ones cope? Easy.

In a couple of weeks from now my brother will leave behind his new pregnant wife,parents,sister,brother in law and a much loved nephew to go to Iraq. It is something that we do not like to discuss. My brother told a few weeks ago that it helps him to talk about it. So I do. And it helps. My fears is that he will get injured or killed and his fears is that his three year old nephew will forget him.

While he is gone we are going to do some things to help the time pass for both my brother and ourselves. Packages. Soldiers can not get enough packages from home. We will send him photos,home made dvds,crafts his nephew draws or colors or paints. When he was in basic training I liked to send him the Sunday comics and he seemed to really like that. He could not get enough. We will put a package together for him every week.

My son is the prided nephew of my brother and at only three years old they are very close. My son did not forget him when he was awaw the five months for training and we are going to make sure he does not forget him this time which will be a year. We talked about my brother and often with his photographs. We would tell my son that his uncle was out of town at work and be home very soon. Things like that. Just to keeps the memory going so he would not forget. My brother feared he would have forgot him, but he did not.

The news. I will not be watching the news. The reason is simple. The media makes things over there look a lot worse than they are. Do I know this for a fact? Of course not.

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