​Giving special thanks to those who didn’t serve

By Tim Shannon

With summer just around the corner, the winter doldrums are giving way to the joy of spring and that has left me feeling a little thankful.

I'm thankful my first winter back in the Fargo-Moorhead area in over 20 years was a mild one and that I missed the nasty winter they experienced in Maryland, where I used to live.

I'm thankful for my health and the Veteran's Administration for helping me to stay healthy.

Great friends are another thing I am particularly thankful for. They have supported me and stood by me through some very tough times, and I love them all dearly for that.

Now all of that is well and good; however, there is another group of people for whom I am eternally grateful for. These people do more work, put in more hours, make more sacrifices and receive far too little credit. As a veteran, you would probably think I'm talking about the wonderful men and women I had the pleasure of serving with, but I'm not.

I'm talking about their spouses.

I didn't come to this way of thinking naturally, either. As a sailor, I would often see t-shirts in the Navy Exchange stating "Navy Wife -- toughest job in the Navy," and I'd roll my eyes.

After all, my wife had spent exactly zero days deployed at sea. Zero. She had never stood a 27-hour watch during an anti-submarine warfare exercise. She had never tried to sleep in a three-sided coffin in a room of 79 of my best and gassiest friends.

But while stationed at Fleet Activities Yokosuka in Yokosuka, Japan, I had an epiphany. I truly saw the light and at that moment, everything changed for me.

One day, on an afternoon off, I received a phone call from my wife's friend, Atsuko. Atsuko is Japanese and English is her second language. When I answered the phone, she was clearly beside herself and in a panic.

She pleaded, "Tim-san, where is Junko (my wife at the time)?" I replied she was visiting her mother and wouldn't be back until the next day.

At that moment, Atsuko's voice became very small and she asked me, "Can you come to the hospital? I need your help."

Atsuko is a strong, independent woman who would only ask for help under the most dire of circumstances. She is also the mother of two, and her children and my two children were close friends. I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was very wrong when she spoke. I don't know what she said next because I was already on my way to the hospital emergency room to help out.

When I got to the ER, Atsuko was waiting with her son Mark and she relayed her story. Her two children, being children, decided to have a contest to see who could stick the biggest rock in their ear. Fortunately for young Mark, his older sister Ashley won the contest. Ashley, in fact, had stuck a rock so big in her ear that it had affected her balance and caused her to fall down.

Ashley was decidedly freaked out by the entire ordeal. Children like being dizzy and will induce the effect upon themselves, but it's pretty short-termed and controlled.

Ashley's was not. She wanted it to end and she wanted it to end now. When it didn't, she was not happy. So it was off to the emergency room. At the ER, she continued to freak out so the doctors told Atsuko she would have to hold her daughter while they removed the stone.

However, at the very same time Atsuko was told by a nurse that she had to stay in the waiting room with her son, Mark, because he was too young to be left unsupervised.

So there she was. This poor woman with both of her children reduced to tears, one of them panicked. She had just been put in a catch-22 by people from a foreign country who she can't fully explain herself to, and her husband was probably on a port of call in Hong Kong!

It was the hottest of hot messes. I've never seen anything like it. She was holding it together by sheer responsibility and will. She wanted to fall apart, but that simply wasn't an option.

At that moment I said to myself, "My God, I've done this to my wife." And the blinders came off.

I had been at sea while my wife, whose English was limited, had to deal with the U.S. Navy and American government's red tape. She had experienced sleepless nights with sick kids. She'd seen her husband leave to go to a war, with no way of knowing if I would come back.

And she was one of the lucky ones. I wasn't gone for a year-long plus deployment like our troops do now. I wasn't deployed multiple times like our troops are now. I came back, unlike many. I came back with all my appendages and only some mental health issues. I didn't have a traumatic brain injury. Compared to many, I got off easy and so did my wife.

So now I get it. When and if I see a lady wearing an "Army Wife -- toughest job in the Army," you will see no rolling of the eyes, ladies. You'll get a knowing nod or perhaps even a salute from this old sailor because of the job you do.

Boy, oh boy, you've earned it. When I shake the hand of a service member and thank them for their service, I will give a tip of my hat to the spouse as well, because now I know they have the toughest job there is in the military.

As they say in the Army, "Hooah" spouses. "Hooah."