I got an email from Big Jeff this morning. He says that he’s going to be unavailable in the near future, to the point where we need to stop sending him packages for a while, as he won’t be there to get them. He told me that his mom and I are going to have to handle his bills for a while too, which makes me read between the lines: he’s going to be incommunicado for at least a month.

He can’t tell me where he’s going, obviously. It’s classified. He can’t even tell me when, or when to expect him back.

When he left, we knew that he’d be headed into danger this time (last time, he was deployed to Fresno. Not so much with the getting shot at in Fresno.) But with all the communicating that we’ve been able to do, in which I’ve even been able to see him with my own two eyes, I may have become just a little complacent about his safety. Combine that with his protectiveness of us women in his life, and how he doesn’t tell us the really scary stuff, and it’s a little too easy to focus on how much weight he’s lost (he’s frighteningly thin) or how soon he’ll be back.

I’ve kept the optimism turned up to ten in all of my interaction with him. I don’t want him to be worrying about us worrying about him. Maybe if I don’t acknowledge my fears in front of him, he can be just enough more confident. I don’t know, but I also don’t know that one additional straw on his back could be too much, so I’m doing my damnedest not to put one there.

I take care of everything that needs doing around here, and when I tell him not to worry about that stuff, I mean it. His mom and I kind of prop each other up as needed, but we don’t talk about the things that we don’t want to face either. We stick to the details and the superficial things, but there’s a strong undercurrent of fear swirling around interaction between any of the three of us.

I don’t have any experience in this. I’m not a military wife; I’m not a family member that’s been through it all, has been there as they’ve gone through training, and has the support structure that I think the military is fairly good about providing to the wives. It’s all new to me. But my gut feeling is that now, when he’s in the most danger, is exactly the time when I should padlock that mask on there. He doesn’t need my sense of doom hanging over his head, when I’m sure his own is huge.

So I’m deeply afraid for my friend, but I won’t be laying a bit of it on him. I’ll lay it on you all, what I’ll let myself face in my head at least, but not him. When he comes home and we go get drunk to celebrate, it may come up, as I’m sure his own will. By then, it will be safe to talk about. He’ll never know the depth of it, just as I’ll never know how he felt when he was there.

And if I’m scared, how does he feel?