De Facto Family

Family Photo Before Joining the Army

With the holidays around the corner, once again, I am thinking of family near and far. How are they doing? Are they healthy? There are any number of questions I should be asking my relatives directly. Instead, like many, I allow myself to get caught up in the chaos of daily life. The worst guilt I have is in regards to my brother. I am not very good about staying in touch. This is a bad habit that started nearly 30 years ago when he joined the Army right out of high school. I don't remember writing to him during basic and AIT. I can count on less than two hands the number of times I wrote or sent packages overseas on his many deployments. The brother I knew has been largely absent from my life for decades. My sister and I have given up on trying to celebrate a holiday together because he will always decline. Over the years, I have tried to find ways to connect. When I told him how much I loved living overseas, he laughed and told me that his experience living in the same country was very different. I didn't understand that for him, living in the barracks on a military installation was very different than a civilian living among the local population. No matter how hard I tried, there seemed to be this huge military wall between us. I was not a part of his world, his family, or his life.

The reality is that I can't relate to him because I'm not military. I can't possibly understand his life because I haven't lived it. I was writing a completely unrelated blog for work this week when I reached out to my brother. I asked him for his favorite quote that depicts how he felt about the military being his family. Once again, I was trying to relate, make an emotional connection, and to understand his world. My brother's response was:

"Consider this, our 'military family' have been present. Our old families have not been present. They (military family) have the same points of time reference, speak the same language. Our children have grown up playing together, surrogates for cousins they only see every other year. Military members become 'de facto' aunts and uncles and in a few cases are referred to as such. They have shared the exact same hardships for the exact same reasons often at the exact same time. When was the last time our family got together for a holiday?"

I honestly can't remember the last time our family was together for a holiday. I remember getting together for a family reunion in 2004. My oldest daughter is 29, and the last holiday that I have pictures to include my brother was the Christmas of 1994. I am ashamed to say that I did not support my brother like I should have done. After chastising myself, I realized that relationships are a two-way street. The hard truth remains that my brother pulled away from his biological family as much as they failed to give him the support needed to fight the fight. During the same conversation, my brother told me that "he no longer attends church because there is no one that he can relate to and that he doesn't belong." Have our churches truly convinced our combat veterans through 'Jesus is my boyfriend' songs that the warriors of the Bible are no longer relevant or celebrated? Have we as a society contributed to our soldiers believing the only family they can count on are their fellow comrades in arms?

Today I am married to a combat veteran who has taught me a lot about what it means to be a part of a military family. I have had more contact with my brother in the last five years than in the previous 25 combined. I am still an outsider. My brother told me yesterday that even though "you sister have raised the flap of the tent to peer inside, you are still not a part of the circus." He is right; I am not a military wife. I am a disabled combat veteran's wife, and that is an entirely different type of circus. I have become a de facto family member in the ever-growing population of our nation's military veterans. I went from working in church ministry full time to being an advocate for my brother, my spouse, other veterans, and their caregivers. I don't have the power to change the past, but I can change today. I still have several family members serving in the military; maybe you do as well. Let us all make the commitment to let our family and friends in and out of the military know that they are loved and supported this holiday season.

Written by a Veteran Caregiver