Stay Safe: Chapter Thirty-One
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.
A Hurricane
I awoke on Saturday to a text from Dad at 5:30 AM saying he was showered, packed and ready to go. Of course he was; that was so Dad. I was still in bed. Rolling over to ignore this for a while, I attempted to close my eyes again. This only lasted for a few minutes before the fire alarm in hotel went off. It was still 5:30 in the morning. I jumped out of bed, slid on a pair of shoes and grabbed my bag. When I swung my door open, there was Dad, waiting for me with his bag in hand. We rushed down the nine flights of stairs only to learn it was a false alarm. Back upstairs, I was so ready to get out of that hotel, I jumped in the shower immediately only to hear the fire alarm going off again. I chose to ignore it this time. I thought if there really is a fire, maybe I was meant to die in this hotel on this day after my own version of Hell Week. We left the hotel by 7 AM and headed to the other side of town to our new hotel. The windows of all surrounding businesses were boarded. This is such a discomforting sight for a weather wimp like me. It was very windy, though it hadn’t started raining yet that early in the morning. We couldn’t even check into the hotel this early. We were able to find an open Panera for breakfast, then ventured over to the hotel where they let us check in early around 10 AM. There was literally nothing to do. So, we just proceeded to hang out in the hotel for the rest of the day, eating, drinking, watching movies. Eventually the bar opened and we planted ourselves there and told stories the rest of the night while the rain beat down in sheets against the windows. A man sitting next to us, alone, attempted to start a conversation. Neither Dad nor I are big conversationalists. But we were attempting to be at least polite. The man inquired as to the reason for our travel to Virginia Beach that weekend. This was such an awkward question for us. To tell why we were really there would result in sad eyes, an apology for our loss and an uncomfortable silence with all parties unsure of what to say next. Dad and I looked at each and both knew we didn’t want to go down that road. Dad responded with a dismissive and uninteresting response: an event for my son. It was the truth, but didn’t warrant further inquiry. The hotel was absolutely packed; they ran out of food. There were people sitting in every available seating area of the lobby, all out of the rooms as bored and stir crazy as we were, cooped up in that hotel. Many had their pets on leashes with them. Seeing the well-behaved dogs made me smile and made me homesick for the company of my own dogs. I bought snacks from the gift shop: chips and salsa, and chocolate. It was an odd dinner at the bar with our drinks amongst strangers also taking cover from the storm. Though the storm was a non-event for the area from a damage standpoint, it provided us a needed buffer between the week of memorials and the week of the real world facing us ahead. The storm served as our palette cleanse between these life events.
© 2015 Emily Reeves Dean and msadverthinker.com. All Rights Reserved.