Call Home

I’m standing at debrief listening to our incident commander urging us to call home.
“Call your loved ones. They are worried.”

Today is day 43 of Harvey relief.
Not sure when the end is.
We’re all exhausted, mentally and physically. Sleep is a luxury that barely happens unless you get the coveted day off. Calling home just to whine/kevetch about your day seems pointless…. “No one wants to hear about this shit. No one wants to hear that all you did today was deal with HR crap. They wanna hear about your war stories! How you single handedly saved an elderly woman and her 87 cats from a house filled with mold! Those are the great stories! Not ‘I had and endless series of difficult conversations and I had to adult today’.”

This is what I was thinking as I was listening to Traci give her daily debrief. Day after day- saying the same thing along with “make good choices.”

Calling home never seemed important.

…..

Day 45 I take a coveted (forced) time off. I fly to Philly to see my (very elderly) grandparents. 96 and 94 years old. Still living in the same house for 65 years. Still married. Still very much in love. But now he has dementia and she has a terminal, inoperable cancer.

They both have colds and are hacking up lungs. Granddad had a mini stroke last night, fainted, fell and cut his arm up pretty bad. They slapped a puppy pad on it (whatever works) and I was redressing it. He’s pretty unresponsive. A shell of a human. All his energy is used to sit up right now as I’m cleaning up oozing blood.

“Hey granddad, does this hurt?”
“Who are you?”

The realization that I’m too late starts setting in.

The whole time I spent out “saving the world”, my two biggest fans were sitting at home wondering how they could help. Wondering how they fit in the whole big picture.

Their role is to listen to me. To hear my adventures. To know that they are part of this world and part of the solution because I call them. They listen. Then they (probably- as grandparents do) brag to their barber and bridge club and waiters and whoever will listen: “my granddaughter is helping all those people in ! She’s doing _______! Isn’t that wonderful?”

The two people who used to be my biggest fans now don’t remember me.
Because I didn’t call home enough.

I slipped out of their memory faster than the news stops paying attention to said disasters I’m helping.

And worse yet- they feel purposeless. They feel disconnected to the world. They are looking down their life and seeing the end come up fast- and not caring about any of that.

The moral of the story: Call home. Share your stories- even though they are stupid and mundane and frustrating and potentially filled with bullshit and politics. Call home. Because your biggest fans want to hear from you.

 

EDIT: 

One of the best safety briefings I’ve ever heard was about calling home. 

“Here you are… expecting a call… Your adrenaline is pumping and you’re itching and you’re staring at your phone more often than a teenage girl expecting a message from her crush. 

Your family sees this. they see how anxious you are to get out and GSD (get shit done). 

Your phone rings! HOLY FUCK! TODAY IS THE DAY!

You rush and pack and barely say a word to your family. They are pushed to the side. 

You get on a plane. You, indeed, GSD. YOU FEEL ALIVE!

You don’t call home, because, meh… you have more important shit to do!!! Like this fire! Or this thing!

Meanwhile, your family is at home dealing with the same ol’ daily shit…. Paying bills, Cindy has a cold. Johnny got a splinter. The dog ate something bad and is now vomiting all over the carpet…. (oh and now the bed! BAD DOG!…..)

You don’t want to deal with that! You are GSD!!! 

You get home. You’re exhausted. Your family is excited to see you but your andrenline is tapped. 

‘Hey honey! What do you want for dinner?’

‘I don’t care’

‘Hey! Do you want to see me do a trick on my bike?’

‘Maybe later. I’m too tired.’

Your family sees this.  They see the shell of a human that is more excited to go out and GSD than spend time with them. 

This happens. It’s called the post deployment blues. 

You can go on 983,234 deployments and you’ll always have a little bit of this. But there’s hope! Combat it now. Make reservations for a restaurant before you get back. on day 9, make plans and things that you’re excited to come back and see. Call home. OFTEN! 

It happens, but you can make it suck less.”