Retirement: Another Bend in the Road

I will never forget that day—the day I knew our future was going to change. It was a windy overcast October day in 2013. My parents were visiting and had taken our five children to a movie, and I had the house to myself. At 4:30 p.m. I heard the garage door open.

It wasn’t a sound I usually heard before dark. My husband had been working late almost every day. He’d been under a lot of stress at work and hadn’t been sleeping well. He’d been on edge for months. He walked in the door and I could tell he wasn’t himself. He said he was going on a walk. I really didn’t give it much more thought. He sometimes just needed some quiet time to sort things out.

A couple of hours passed. I tried to text him to make sure he was okay.

No answer.

I called.

No answer.

I began to grow more and more concerned. Besides a strange vague post on his Facebook, there was no trace of him. I knew other families who’d been through this type of scenario, so I went to check the gun case. Everything was in order, but I still had no idea what was going on.

My parents came home with the kids, and I went out to find him. I searched along all the running trails on post. I drove out to the desert where we like to shoot his bow but still no sign of him.

Friends came over to help look and to keep the kids occupied. Hours later. at nearly midnight, the MPs found him walking down a street in a neighboring housing area.

He was uninjured, but he didn’t know where he was or what year it was.

After a night at the hospital, he was diagnosed with a dissociative fugue and was given a couple of weeks to rest. His PTSD and TBI combined with stress resulted in amnesia. His doctors had been pushing him to consider early retirement for a while, but this was what it took for him to realize it was time to leave the Army.

He’d worked so hard for 18 years. He couldn’t imagine being done with his career.

But he knew it was over. With a heavy heart, he asked to be medically retired.

The military process itself is another story, including VA appointments, lawyers, evaluations, briefings, and ratings. There was no guarantee he would receive compensation, so we began to make plans for housing and jobs. We both took classes and looked for resources that would get us ready financially. We knew it would take a good amount of time to be stable after we left the comfortable atmosphere we had grown accustomed to.  

However, being mentally ready for life after the military is something no class or book can prepare you for. I was thriving as a military spouse. I loved being involved in the community and had found my tribe.

Although we were looking forward to moving home and being around our family again, I couldn’t wrap my head around what life would be like on “the outside.”

I moved the kids home to my parents’ house at the end of the next summer so they could start the next school year in the new district. They adapted relatively well to their new surroundings. They’d always been so resilient, but I could tell they missed the familiarity of the military community. They’d been “the new kid” several times but had always had other kids around who understood what that was like. It still took them a while to find good friends and develop meaningful relationships. The things their new friends found to be important seemed insignificant to them.

The perspective of others around us was distinctly different, seeming shallow or short-sighted.

I struggled. I avoided meeting up with old friends. I missed my husband. I missed our military friends and spent a lot of time on social media chatting with them. I needed to make connections in our new community, but people didn’t seem to like me. Or maybe I didn’t like them. I was used to a certain way of communicating.

As a military spouse, I would move somewhere new and my neighbors would love me and I would love them. We would desperately seek each other out, because we knew what it was like to live how we lived. We would find anything in common and make the choice to become best friends. This was my process for 10 years.

You never knew when someone would have to move, so you made “fast friends” and clung to them for dear life. Borrowing eggs from a neighbor would turn into hours of sitting on the porch while the neighborhood kids all played together in the cul-de-sac until the streetlights came on. Holidays were spent together. The long months of loneliness during deployments and hardship tours were brightened by barbecues and drinks around the fire pit.

Our friends were our lifeline. How was I going to do this without them?

The retirement process was very long, so after 14 months of waiting, Shawn finally got his retirement orders the following December and moved to Colorado to join us. We knew he wouldn’t be able to work for a while and needed some time to adjust to our new life, so I started looking for work. I got an amazing job and longed to connect with my new coworkers. But the people I connected with the fastest were those who had been in the military.

I felt like I was put on a six-month trial period with people. I wanted fast friends, but they needed more time. We joined a fantastic church and tried to get involved. But again, people were resistant to connecting as quickly as we wanted to.

We bought a house and had our household goods shipped from storage. Moving day came and I awaited the welcome wagon, but it never came. No one dropped by to greet us or bring us dinner. I felt so lonely. I was so thankful for our family. My sisters and parents kept me sane during this transition time when I was missing so much.

After about a year here in Colorado, I began to see a change. More and more kids from the neighborhood would be at our house to play. Meeting their parents turned into longer and longer conversations. We had a few “fire pit” gatherings in our driveway and friendships began to deepen. Work acquaintances turned into friendships, and I finally got invited to some social gatherings.

Then last November came. I was going to have major surgery the day before Thanksgiving. I knew my husband would need help with the kids and my sisters could only help so much. A meal signup was put out via social media. We had to divide up the kids between friends because we had to be at the hospital very early in the morning. We had to ask for help. I lost sleep about it.

I knew how a military community would have responded. We always took care of each other. There was always plenty of help and lots of food.

Did we even know enough people to help us through this?

Within a few days we had more volunteers than we needed to help with the kids.

Neighbors and relatives signed up to help with enough meals for two weeks, and one very special neighbor even made an entire Thanksgiving feast for our family.

We got phone calls, texts, flowers, and were made to feel exceptionally loved.

Coworkers sent gift cards for food and stopped by to visit during recovery.

Families of our kids’ friends brought baskets of snacks and magazines.

My heart felt revived. It had been months since we felt so cared for. I really did have friends and a community that shared this life with us. But while lying in bed for several days, I had time to reflect over the past couple of years.

Had it truly been everyone else that was the problem?

Or maybe, just maybe, was it me?

Did I set expectations for others that they would never live up to?

Did I truly do my best to give people a chance to get to know the real me?

Or did I wallow in self-pity inside the walls of the past?

Three years into this new journey I’m happy to report that things are good. We’re thriving in our new community and feel at home here in Colorado. I still miss the good old days, but when I look back now, it’s with fondness and nostalgia.

Now I try to find friends through genuine connections and have learned to be a better listener and a softer presence in the groups I am a part of. My focus is on my family, my marriage, and the future. I no longer feel like I am in survival mode all the time. There are hard days, just like there are in any family. But we are closer and more high functioning as a unit. We are mentally healthier. I love where we are and who we have become. But it has only come after a hard wakeup call in a new world.

Let go of old feelings and try to embrace the new ones during transitions. Be aware of the vibe you put out. People who have never lived like you don’t know what it’s like, and that’s ok. Be who you are, but be you now, not you from the past.