American girl Addis Henderson and her mother-in-law disagree about marriage, but when they both lose the person they love most, a shared love unites the two women's hearts.
Cohabitation On
a warm fall evening in Fort Rucker, Alabama, my boyfriend Miles and I were sitting at the kitchen table of his apartment in Ford Rucker, Alabama, discussing our future. When we decided to move in together, I asked Miles if his mother would be upset. In a few months, Miles will graduate from flight school, Army authorities will send him to a base in Fort Brig, North Carolina, and I will end my work in Tallahassee, another city, So the timing of this move was just right for both of us.
"Don't worry," Myers said. He leaned back on a wooden chair and rested one foot against the leg of the table. "She might give a moving gift, and think about—what's the best thing."
I thought about the placemats we might be using.
We moved into a small rented home outside Fort Brig, North Carolina, and Miles' mother Terri came to visit three weeks later. She didn't bring any placemats. I felt that she was serious and unstable, and refused to stay in the guest room prepared for her in our house, but found a hotel on the other side of the city by herself.
In our family, though, Terri was enthusiastic. She cooks dishes and is busy cooking her son's favorite dishes, such as "steak stew," a traditional dish in Myers' hometown of Texas. Plus, the biscuits she makes are Miles' favorite, and I've never been able to make them. My future mother-in-law was busy in the house while telling me some of Miles's past in his hometown, church and family.
The next day, when Miles put on his uniform and left home for work on the base, Terri suggested driving with me to the mall to buy something. In her rental car, we drove along the highway. It was a grey morning, and the roadside was full of pink rhododendrons. When we got to the entrance to the interstate, the sky started to rain. Terri then talked about the reason for her visit.
"You know, Miles' father Brad and I don't quite agree with the way you live together..." she said, because she considered it an "immoral form of living." It was pouring rain outside the car window, and Terri's hands clenched on the steering wheel, and I went on and on for an hour and a half. When we arrived at the mall, the atmosphere between the two seemed to lighten up a bit. However, her words did nothing to change my opinion.
After the Marriage One day in the summer of the
following year, while traveling with Miles to Fordhold in central Texas, I stopped by his parents' home in the "pot handle" area of northern Texas where they lived. Miles' troops will train at Fordhold for nine months before being dispatched to Iraq. We got off the highway and turned into a gravel country road. A sudden wind blew into the dry grass, causing a commotion among the cattle grazing there.
Miles and Dad sat outside on the grass for days talking, while Terry and I worked inside the house. She taught me how to make meatloaf and gave me the recipe for the biscuits on little cards... Most of our conversation involved Miles, for example, how many years it took them both to get pregnant with Miles Les, who had several miscarriages after giving birth to him. Terri also talks about breastfeeding, the sleepless nights caring for babies, and Miles' childhood.
As the conversation turned to the fact that Myers and I were moving to Texas and touching on the topic of our former cohabitation, we were interrupted by the sound of someone stopping by. Anyway, Miles and I got married less than a year after we lived together, and from then on, it seemed moot to discuss the subject.
On the day Miles moved out of North Carolina for Iraq with the troops, Terri came to see me off and help me sort out our groceries. I will be going back to my home state of Florida for a while. The two of us packed some items like sheets and towels into a suitcase and put them in one of Miles' pickup truck, which Terri was going to drive back to Texas. The car will be stored there until Miles returns from the field.
die in the line of duty
Miles finally "came home" the following day, not in the way we had hoped, but in the company of an escort, an honor guard, and several casualty assistants. Terri told me that when the soldier who notified her came to the door, she immediately blocked what he was about to announce.
"Don't talk yet," Terri said, raising a hand. "Just tell me if my son is still alive."
"It's a pity, ma'am," said the soldier, "he didn't."
I can't imagine the kind of fortitude that must have been. I myself silently listened to the briefings from the troops who came to my door from my home in Florida, and thanked them as they left. But in the days that followed, when all the experiences came together—the new reality and what we need to do when we lost a loved one—Terry felt rightfully. Miles is the person she is most proud of. He had a similar face to hers, a similar body shape, a similar Texan accent, and Miles was more important to her than me as a wife, more fundamentally the same.
A few months later, Terri came to Florida to help me clean up my husband's belongings from Iraq. Two black boxes contained Miles' belongings, each carefully labelled, and some were littered with Iraqi dust. Although legally they belonged to me, the widow of the martyr, I felt that I should not be the only one in possession of them.
The door to the garage was open, and the two of us sat inside, carefully sorting through our belongings, trying to figure out how Miles lived in the desert. We flipped through his diaries, looked at his military supplies, overalls, socks... Terri pulled a T-shirt out of a pile of clothes, held it close to her face, took a deep breath, and tried to find Son's breath. Yet she doesn't know what I've been told (because I've already done the same thing): Miles's unit has washed his clothes, so this, too, is gone.
common love
We are deeply saddened by the loss of Miles' passing. Losing a spouse is not the same thing as losing a child. But the passing of all the dearest people is in a way a loss of self. In the months following Miles' death, Terri and I both struggled to reorient our lives. During this search, the two of us got to know each other, and gradually brought the distance that existed between the two people closer, leading our love for Miles to a point of convergence that is beyond comprehension.
During a briefing on the death of military personnel held not long ago, we witnessed live photos of the helicopter that Miles was piloting crashing into the citrus grove, and we heard the last few seconds of the recording of the helicopter's cabin. "Pull up, pull up..." It was Miles' final words to bid farewell to the world. Terri was standing behind me at this most poignant moment, placing her slender hands on my shoulders.
I've heard people say this: You must never marry a man who doesn't love his mother. I was lucky: Miles loved his mother and he loved me. After losing Miles, we did not divide our love for him because Terri and I shared his legacy. The two of us found that there was still more to share between us.
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