Disbelief

When I was a West Point Cadet, I learned a lot about death. Death was always looming over us…the school is filled with ghosts of every cadet, officer, and war hero that came before us. We learned how to kill. We learned how to survive. We learned not to fear death. And I didn’t. Because at that young age, I didn’t know death. Even though I was (sort of) training to fight in war someday, I did not consider death. It didn’t seem real. Maybe that’s how it was supposed to be. I had experienced death already…it’s not that it was foreign to me. After all, a high school friend, an Airman, had been killed in Khobar Towers while I was a cadet. I witnessed a suicide my yearling year. I knew death was possible…but I didn’t think it was probable. I didn’t stop, ever, to consider that any of us would grow up and die in war. I only thought…we would be Army Officers, we would get married, we would have kids.

But, I didn’t become an Army officer. Instead, by some twists of fate, I became an Air Force Officer…a Civil Engineer. In the Air Force, pretty much only our pilots see combat. I deployed, but in a supporting role. Our squadrons had deployment after deployment and it never occurred to me that we wouldn’t all come back, every time…and we did. Every time. I spent years in my oblivion. I would call my parents and tell them not to worry about me. It’s not like it was on television. I was not going to die. None of us were. I was so naïve. Either that or I just chose to block it out. After all, we were shot at flying into Saudi Arabia…we were shot at flying out. I was so sure, though, that those missiles would never hit us…even after visiting the Khobar Tower memorial in person, and staring at the picture of my old friend, years after his death. The Air Force might have never sent me to direct combat, but there was always a chance that the combat would come to me. I don’t think I ever prepared for that mentally.

But, I learned something in my final years as an Air Force Officer…my Army friends had it different. They deployed to a different war than I did. They went to combat. And, unfortunately, some of them didn’t make it home. And as I learned of and mourned my old friends and classmates, my view of death changed. It became real. It became tangible. And it was guaranteed to affect us all somehow…some day. My classmates did what I had expected. They became Army Officers. They got married. They had kids. And then they died in war.

In 2004 (or 2005), I met Jenna. She was entering the career I was leaving behind. She was even going where I had just come from…Misawa, Japan. There aren’t many of us women civil engineers in the Air Force. Running into her, just starting out as I had finished up, felt surreal. She was the new generation. I felt like I had to help her. I didn’t have a female mentor when I was her age. I wasn’t around many women like us at all. I told her every mistake I made so she wouldn’t repeat them. I gave her all the tips I had. I silently followed her career…like a proud mother. I wanted her to become more than I did.

And she did. She accepted a deployment leading a PRT in Afghanistan. She was attached to the Army. She was going to combat…something I never thought an Air Force Civil Engineer would have to do. By then, I had already learned to respect death…and so, I feared that for Jenna. She was going to the war my Army friends went to…she was going to a war where death was a possibility. Over the last year, I followed her on her blog as she told stories about her experiences. I read about “Project Notebook” and how her heart went out to the children of Afghanistan. She wanted to help them. I laughed to myself during her initial training with the Army…it sounded so much like West Point…and of course it was…they were training us for war. But, Jenna knew what was in store for her, where I had refused to acknowledge it.

I remember times when I would be frustrated because she wouldn’t update her blog enough for me. I worried that every time I didn’t hear news from her, it was because something had happened to her. I can’t imagine what that did to her parents. I was shocked the day I read that her convoy had been hit with a roadside bomb…something she didn’t share with most of us until two months after it had happened. I thanked God that she had survived.

A few weeks ago, I read that Jenna had returned home. She was safe. Her husband, who had just completed the same deployment, was also safe. They were going to Scotland for vacation. Everything was OK. I stopped worrying about Jenna.

On Friday morning, April 2, exactly one year after she started her Army training, I woke up to the news of Jenna’s untimely and tragic death. I had missed the news that she was in an accident in Scotland five days earlier. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach as I realized what had happened. After all she had just been through, just as she was reintegrating herself back into her normal life as a non-combatant Air Force officer, finally with her husband, her life has ended. She is gone. Coincidentally, her career lasted just as long as mine.

Today there is a memorial service being held in her honor. But, I still don’t understand how this happened. I can’t stop thinking about her. I know what happened. But why? How could she have gone through so much only to lose her life so young? I think I may have been able to accept her death if it happened in war…I could blame the war. I mentally prepared for and experienced the deaths of my friends in war. But an accident that involved no one else? Why? Who do I blame for that? I can only imagine what her family is going through now. I had only met her briefly, yet I feel the emptiness of a world without her in it.

Jenna never felt like a hero and didn’t like it when people called her one. But she is a hero. She is beautiful, and strong, and brave. She made a positive difference in the world. Rest in Peace, Jenna. You did a good job.