As a Marine, when I think of resiliency, I think of Marines coming home from combat with the challenges of posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, or amputations. I think about them having the right conditions in their lives so that they can overcome these challenges and get on with their lives, having found that “new normal” as we now call it. I always took family readiness seriously, but like many Marines, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find myself thrust into one of those poster situations for family readiness. But things changed quickly on 24 September 2010, and in our case, it didn’t involve combat. It involved one of the more likely things that families confront—a tragedy on the homefront.
Melissa and I finished watching our son, Forrest, play in a high school football game in Northern Virginia and then headed home with our other two children, Brett and Merritt. Forrest would be driving home in his own vehicle a few minutes behind us. As we left the school, I texted Forrest, “Drive carefully,” then added a little punchy father-son banter, “Hugs and kisses, Sweetheart.” He read that text in the locker room. It was the last one he would ever read. He lost control of his car on the way home, hit a tree, and died the next morning.
As you might imagine, it was the gut punch from hell. He was a top student, talented athlete, and well liked by everyone in his school. His college applications and Marine option Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship application were all submitted. All he ever wanted to be was a Marine infantry officer. Our family could not have been more proud of him or more excited about his extremely bright future. And then he was gone—no goodbyes, no nothing—just gone.
The first 2 weeks were so filled with administrative and logistical details that we seemingly didn’t have time to really think about what happened. With the hustle and bustle of friends, family, and the community subsiding by about week 3, the reality of what happened became pretty dreadful. Yet as our family worked its way through these tearful days, a second set of emotions started to take hold of me—guilt.
At first I thought it was simply my mind playing devil’s advocate about all of the things I might have done differently preparing Forrest for the responsibilities of driving. But that wasn’t it. The feelings of guilt were coming from somewhere else. I struggled with these unsettling feelings for several weeks, becoming increasingly unnerved by them. Finally, the source of that guilt revealed itself. Our family was moving forward. We were rebounding at a pace that was so much faster than I had ever anticipated, and the guilt came from the feeling that this rapid rebounding somehow minimized the tragedy that occurred.
I found myself trapped between two emotions. I was thankful our family was quickly getting on with finding a new normal. Yet I felt that somehow we were cheating Forrest’s memory because we weren’t in a state of highly debilitating despair. My mind knew that our rapid rebound was healthy and good, but my heart wasn’t so sure. With a little time though, it became clear to me that our family’s resiliency was something for which to be very thankful. The guilt of moving on gave way to us finding special places for Forrest in our hearts and minds that didn’t conflict with getting on with our lives.
As the months passed by, I watched our family really get back to doing what we always do. I think it started the day of Forrest’s passing when both of our other two children asked whether we were still going through with our China adoption—a process we started in January 2007. The answer was a resounding “yes.” A few weeks later, I was back at work getting on with daily business. Melissa was up to her elbows in volunteer activities and managing our children’s busy schedules. Brett and Merritt picked right back up with getting top grades, involvement in all of their extracurricular activities, and the busyness of being young teenagers.
I was finally forced to think rather analytically about all of this when the Commanding Officer, Headquarters and Service Battalion at Quantico, invited me to be the keynote speaker for the 2010 holiday season safety brief. The topic—dealing with the unexpected. I agreed to the task, knowing that I owed it to my fellow Marines to share lessons learned. I led off by telling the story of that very scary night, sharing the news clips of Forrest’s accident from Channels 4 and 7 in the Washington, DC, area. I wrapped it up with “where do I go from here?” But the heart of my presentation was aimed at our family’s readiness to absorb this unthinkable tragedy, our ability to get right back on our feet.
What makes us resilient? It’s a big question, one our Marine Corps leadership is currently working on in earnest as it relates to unit and individual Marine resiliency upon returning from the experiences of war. But family resilience is also a big part of the equation, and it starts with many of the very things we have been preaching for years about family readiness.
I shared 10 things about our family’s readiness that had prepared us to be resilient. Before 24 September 2010, I could have written plenty of conjecture about the value of having these things all squared away. But after this experience, conjecture is no longer necessary.
A strong marriage. Melissa and I had been married for almost 26 years and always believed that our marriage was the centerpiece of our family. If it was strong, everything else would follow suit. We could talk all day about building a strong marriage. Instead, let me tell you, perhaps a little more graphically than you are comfortable with, why it matters. Our younger son and daughter knew Forrest was hurt badly, but they were at home with friends and didn’t know how badly he was hurt until they arrived at Mary Washington Trauma Center the next morning. Melissa and I were sitting in a little room with our pastor next to the intensive care unit waiting room when Brett and Merritt arrived. They sat down on the sofa between Melissa and me, and I told them that Forrest was going to die. One threw up and the other’s face went into his hands with exasperation. As they struggled to gain their composure, they both had the same unmistakable realization: mom and dad were there, together, and so all would be okay. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like for them had they looked around and saw their mom and dad sitting at opposite ends of the room, separated by cold war or worse. It’s been a year now and they haven’t skipped a beat in grades, extracurricular activities, behavior, or anything else—because the center of their world remained firmly intact. I don’t know the relative importance of the other nine things I will tell you about, but I know a strong marriage was number one when it came to our family’s resilience.
Spiritual readiness. We have always been a church going family, but when this happened, something became clear to me. It’s all just religion until you are tested. Then you will figure out whether your religion is truly where your faith lies. The promises my faith provides its believers are no longer just passages in some arcane translation of an ancient and dusty old tome. They now have meaning in them that I was never able to really understand absent this tragedy. That meaning has been critical to me being able to understand, on a deeply spiritual level, what happened, what I am expected to learn from it, and how I move forward in a constructive way with my family. My spiritual readiness was in decent order when this tragedy happened, but it has grown leaps and bounds since. Our family’s knowing what we believed when this happened played a huge role in our resiliency. For us, Forrest is in heaven. We all knew that we would see him again soon enough. That kind of faith and hope was priceless to us as we looked for the courage to dust ourselves off and get on with finding our new normal.
That someone you can trust. For our family it was LtCol Darrin Kazlauskas (also known as K9). He had been one of my recruiting station commanders some years back and was at the recruiting command headquarters with me at the time of the accident. He knew our family well, and his protective instincts and trustworthiness made him the perfect person to help us sort through a mountain of issues related to arrangements, insurance, news reporters, and so forth. LtGen Robert E. “Boomer” Milstead, Jr., then-Commanding General, Recruiting Command, assigned K9 as our guardian angel, and for 2 weeks he ran a fire support coordination center at our kitchen table that would make any combined arms officer proud. He even selected the gravesite for Forrest at the Quantico National Cemetery. I didn’t see the site for nearly a week after Forrest was buried. If your family doesn’t have someone you trust that much, I really encourage you to identify that person and nurture that relationship so they can be your trusted guardian angel. K9 made sure we never hit the mat when the gut punch came.
Children connected to community. Melissa was always quick to get our children connected in their new communities and schools. They helped a lot in making this happen, but her involvement was fundamental to minimizing the seams in our children’s connectedness. This connectedness was good for all the obvious reasons, but then it became good for a not-so-obvious reason. Our 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter really didn’t need to listen to us adults talking about funeral arrangements, insurance policies, and family travel plans around our kitchen table. Their connectedness made sure that didn’t happen. In no time, Brett’s and Merritt’s friends were showing up at our home to spend time with them. Brett spent hours on end out in the front yard with two of his friends wearing the color off of lacrosse balls. We needed to work with K9 to deal with the logistics of our tragedy, but our children did not. They were connected in a way that allowed them to avoid being pulled into a bunch of adult business. The time with their friends was one of their first steps toward getting things heading toward a new normal.
Parents connected to community. When Melissa and I arrived at Mary Washington Trauma Center, we were met by teachers, principals, coaches, police officers, our pastor, and close friends of ours and of Forrest. These were not unfamiliar faces. Despite having only been in Stafford, VA, for a little over a year, these were people we knew and had formed relationships with well before Forrest’s accident. These were people who didn’t just go through the motions for a family that lived in their area. They were people whom we really knew, and their actions were based on having well-established relationships with our family. There is no doubt in my mind that our family got back on our feet—maybe never even got knocked off our feet—because we had invested time and energy in making sure our family was well connected within the community in which we lived.
Healthiness. The wear and tear on our bodies didn’t just involve our emotions. There was a physical dimension that was daunting as well. We couldn’t sleep. We weren’t hungry. We weren’t thirsty. Our stomach and digestive systems contorted in ways that brought a physical pain that made it feel like someone’s hand was around our throats squeezing tighter and tighter. I run nearly every day, and Melissa and our children are all physically very active. I can’t imagine trying to negotiate what we endured if we had high blood pressure, ulcers, or other assorted ailments. The long walks Melissa and I took each morning didn’t just help clear our heads; they helped keep our bodies strong by improving our appetites and our ability to sleep, and thus our ability to provide leadership for our family.
Alcohol, drugs, and other unhealthy temptations. When tragedy strikes, I don’t care who you are and how strong you think you will be, every ounce of you is looking for some form of release. We craved something to make the pain go away—anything that would distract us from the realities we were going through. If we would have had a proclivity toward alcohol, drugs, pornography, or any other destructive vices, we would have very likely buried our sorrows in those activities. My safe spot has always been writing. In the days and months following Forrest’s passing, I buried my mind in writing short stories about his life. I chose constructive behavior, but I can’t tell you how many times I was tempted to drown my sorrows in a beer bottle. The time to eliminate the destructive behavior is before tragedy strikes. If not, I can guarantee you will struggle mightily to refrain from making matters worse and prolonging the ability of your family to get back on its feet.
Professional standing. We have all had that Marine who, on top of his personal tragedy, had a host of professional challenges. Any decent leader and unit still respond with care and concern for the Marine and his family in such times, regardless of the pending nonjudicial punishment or performance shortfalls. Yet we make it a whole lot easier for our units to get behind us and do everything possible to help our families when our professional standing is solid. The recruiting command family, including the extended family in the regions and districts, went way beyond what my family ever could have expected. We’ll never forget that. They left no doubt in our minds whatsoever that my family and I were valued members of their team. Make it easy for your command to wrap their arms around you. That care and support go a long way toward getting you back on your feet.
Finances in order. You might think this is about ensuring you can pay the bills when bad things happen. Thankfully, in our situation, that wasn’t a concern. The real issue is that when tragedy happens, small fractures in one’s personal life become highly vulnerable to magnification. Everyone’s nerves are on edge, sensitivities are heightened, and small issues can get blown out of proportion. Finances always seem to create some level of discord in any relationship, and it is very easy for a minor financial challenge to ignite emotions that blow other things way out of proportion and prolong getting settled into that new normal.
Common understanding of arrangements. One thing was for sure. When our son died, he was going to end up with arrangements that would be planned and executed in not more than a week. There were options. We could have denied this could ever happen to our family, we could have hoped that Melissa and I would agree on everything quickly if the time ever came, or we could have planned ahead and thought through what we would do well ahead of time. In the end, we ended up with option two. That option worked for us because the number one part of our family readiness (a strong marriage) enabled us to quickly work through to a solution. But not unlike finances, this is an area where small fractures—small differences in desires—can quickly magnify emotions and cause family struggle and discord that are very unhealthy and prolong getting things to a new normal. We didn’t have to nail down which verses of Amazing Grace we planned to have the congregation sing, but knowing the major muscle movements, such as what will happen to the remains, where will they be laid to rest, and what form funeral activities will generally take, is a good start.
Tragedies are always difficult no matter how prepared your family might be. Individually and collectively, our family still has some tough moments. But we are on our feet, moving forward and, even most recently, excited that we now have a picture of the 2-year-old little girl from China who will join our family in the short months ahead. Forrest wanted to name her “Macee,” and that will be her name. There is life after tragedy. In fact, there can be good life. The “when” that good life returns has much to do with a family’s readiness when disaster strikes.
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