News you never want to receive on deployment

It’s my first full day of quarantine, so I planned on sleeping in.

My mom sent an email because she did not want to wake me up.

My brother woke me up at 2:30 AM local.

 

My grandmother, one month shy of her 98^th birthday, and about three weeks before I was supposed to come home from deployment, passed away.

 

Since I am in quarantine, I cannot test for COVID to leave deployment and get to the funeral. I won’t even get there in time for Shiva.

 

I get to watch the funeral over zoom, alone.

 

This is one of  the hardest parts of deployment, and serving in the military in general. We do not have the freedom of movement like civilians. The mission comes first – always.

This is not the first time I have had to deal with this. 

When my great-aunt, my grandmother's sister died at 100 1/2, I could not get home from Okinawa in time for the funeral, and most of Shiva as well.

I am not the first, nor the last to experience this. 

It hurts just the same.