Stay Safe: Chapter Twenty-Six
What follows is a chapter from "Stay Safe: Life After Loss," a book that I wrote following the death of my brother, Robert James Reeves. Rob, only 14-months younger than me and 32 years old at the time of his death, was a Navy SEAL on the prestigious SEAL Team 6. On August 6, 2011, while on a mission in Afghanistan, he and too many of his teammates and other servicemen, lost their lives when their helicopter was shot down by enemy fire. It was the single largest loss of American life in the Afghan war. And because of the high profile nature of this event–being on the cusp of the Bin Laden mission and the number of those lost–my dad and I were part of many, many memorials and events, and the recipients of much outreach, and the point of contact for all those wanting to do something in Rob’s memory. This book chronicles the first month after his death. I am releasing a chapter a day starting August 5th as we mark the fourth anniversary of life without him.
The days got more awkward as each piled on the other. We had a meeting at Rob’s house that Monday about the house and what to do about it. This house, where Rob lived for seven years, felt nothing like Rob. A big red-brick, two-story house in suburban Virginia Beach. It was cold, austere, big, empty. It lacked personality. Rob did this intentionally, I know. The house where we grew up was full of my mom’s collections; every square inch of surface area was covered with something in our house. It drove Rob crazy. He strived to make his home the exact opposite of the one where we grew up. He didn't have keepsakes, things that were special to him. There were no pictures on the walls, nothing displayed on shelves. Really, it was about not being tied down by anyone or anything. The house felt like a spacious jail cell, closing in on us a little more each day. Perhaps this made it easier for us to make decisions about the house and his few possessions—all that fit into a closet—within it. Though I can't imagine it being harder than it was. We did find a treasure trove of collector editions of G.I. Joe action figures in original packaging, packed away in boxes in his closet, though. I guess he never lost his love of G.I. Joe and his memories of the seven-foot long aircraft carrier he had as a kid.Rob and Jerritt bought the house together. And two others of their teammates were invested in the house through handshake only. They all had big dreams of the house value increasing a few years after purchase and making money on their real estate investment. But they were all young and single at the time. One by one, each guy—except Rob—got married. And each guy lived with his wife in that house with the other guys and their wives for a short time before one by one they each moved out to start their own lives and families. Rob didn’t envision it becoming a commune with a bunch of families living in it. The guys would come back occasionally, when they were in between homes, or after a divorce. But mainly, it was Rob and other random guys that rotated through when they needed a place to live. Rob was the only consistent resident, though I think Nate might have been there most of the time, as well.The house had given him trouble over the years. Early in his residence there, the house served as a party place. Four young, single Navy SEALs living together in an expensive suburb of Virginia Beach having parties turned out not to be what the neighbors had in mind when they bought the surrounding houses. As they matured, the parties died down.But then they were all traveling for work, so the house wasn’t taken care of very well. At one point, Rob received some kind of neighborhood citation for his lawn being below the neighborhood’s standards. Rob took this as a challenge and hired a lawn company requesting that they make his lawn so beautiful it could be the cover of their brochure. He said he would pay whatever it took to make that happen. Then he went door to door in his neighborhood, introduced himself, apologized for the poor state of his yard promising to fix it and threw in that he was a Navy SEAL somewhere in the conversation. He made all his neighbors his new friends while making them feel guilty for turning him in for a bad lawn.The house was going to be trouble for Dad, as well. There were issues around ownership that needed to be resolved. I didn’t know who this guy C. was—the one that arrived in Shreveport with K.—but he seemed to have taken on the role of representing her interests in Rob’s affairs. He parked himself in our meeting with the interest-holding roommates—Jerritt and Nate—of the house to talk about next steps. C. didn’t live there and I’d never heard of him before. This was all so bizarre to me. It felt too early in the grieving process for either Dad or me to be able to process what needed to happen with property, assets and people living in Rob’s house. I was certainly not equipped from an experience level to comprehend the business aspects, and while Dad was equipped, I don’t think he was emotionally ready to deal with it. The only thing I knew to do was act like I was taking charge. This had worked for me the last couple of weeks, so I just maintained this front. Fake it until you make it. Dad’s eyes were glazed.The day was stressful. It didn’t feel like Dad was ready to make decisions or really get into the details of all Rob’s stuff, but he knew that he should so he was present, but not really present. Rob’s paperwork was practically non-existent and what was there was out-of-date. Everyone desperately wanted Rob to have a will so they could prove that K. was going to be taken care of in some way, but the last will on file was before Mom died, as Mom was still listed on it. I always thought Rob had all that kind of stuff really lined out and together, that he was more put together than I was. It didn’t look like he had filed taxes in several years, no one knew who was paying house bills, it turned out the house payment was late and everybody just wanted out of the house. Rob wasn’t put together at all. Kind of like me. We had even more in common. We met with a lawyer who outlined our next steps for setting up the estate, but it seemed like we were still far away from that process. We had to have a death certificate to proceed with any of this and the Navy couldn’t give us an anticipated date for when we might receive one.I started to get angry with Rob for making this difficult process even harder than it had to be for us. I understood his wanting to live each day to the fullest without thinking about what happens after death. But, he obviously didn’t realize the impact it would have on those he left behind. It seemed trite to complain about it, but all I wanted to do is figure out how to mourn and learn to accept his being gone, and instead I was swallowed in paperwork—or lack thereof—and I was just pissed off about it.I knew this was all going to work out and be just fine, but it was hard to believe at this point.
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