Leaving you

I always thought that my mom leaving us for her deployment was the hardest. I was severely wrong. Leaving her at home before she is deployed was actually harder. The small balloons of "what if" played pinball in my head.

Before my mom met Mike, the day before she would leave for deployment we would eat nothing but junk food. Cold pizza for breakfast, fast food for lunch, and my personal favorite, ice cream for dinner. It was every kid's dream.

My mom always made deployment seem like a good thing. I got to stay at Grandma Campbell's and we always did fun things. She used to say it was a vacation away from my normal life. Back then I didn't understand the severity of the situation. I just thought she needed to travel for work, which wasn't wrong, but that wasn't even the half of it.

The car ride back was painfully quiet. I refused to look at Bryson in fear of breaking down. I was never one to let people see me cry, I had too much pride.

I was having a hard time deciphering if the thickness in the air was real or my mind playing tricks with me. Between my silence and the reason we came, it might be a mix of both.

Back at the bunker, I made my way, quickly, to my room. Bryson watched me carefully but said nothing. Joe appeared in my doorway before I closed it. He opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off.
"I just want to be left alone, please." I closed the door.

I grabbed my laptop and started to look at all the old pictures I had with my mom. Of course, I was homesick for the rest of my family, but my mom was flying across the world and may never come home again.

This was a common thing for me to do after she left, look through old pictures. Grandma Campbell started the tradition. It was a way to help me miss my mom but not freak out because I can't talk to her. It was always made a point to take pictures or videos of everything so I had something to hold on to.

I found a video in our family cloud of me and my mom when I was about 9 or 10. Grandma Campbell was still alive so she was the one filming. My mom and I were playing a game of twister. She encased me like a fortress. I was always petite, short, and thin. My body fit just under hers. We were laughing at the weird position we were in, trying not to fall. Grandma Campbell said we were looking our best so we looked up at smiled. We have the same smile. Back then I was her mini-me, I looked and acted just like her. The older I got, the more that changed.

There is a picture of me when I was about 18, I was sitting on the front porch reading a book. My mom has a similar photo of my dad reading a book to me. With my hair pulled back and the clothing I'm wearing, I look just like him.

I kept scrolling through the photos and videos remembering all the times like they were yesterday. How did they all get so far away? When had I grown up to be so much older? I was almost 23, I hardly remember turning 18. How did the time fly and I hadn't even noticed?

A knock came at my door. I sat still and said nothing. No one needed to see me with tears streaming down my face. To my dismay, the door opened and Mr. Gold poked his head in.
"Hey," he saw my face. "Oh, Lawrence." He closed the door behind himself and sat down beside me. "It's okay." I broke down sobbing. Pushing the laptop aside he pulled me into his shoulder. I started sobbing even harder.

After a few minutes, I was able to stop crying. I pulled myself away from Mr. Gold's shoulder, slightly embarrassed.
"You know," he stated in a low voice. "When I first joined Forestons my mom was highly distraught. She was in constant fear but eventually, she got used to it. After I got pinned in, I visited my parents. My mom told me that how she made it through was reminding herself that the worrying, distance and minimal communication may be hard, but loving me was always the easiest thing she could do." Without crying, I leaned onto his shoulder again. "The worrying and the distance and the missing her is hard when they are away, but always remember to love her because she loves you right back." Nodding, I said nothing. What he said made me feel better, as hard as deployment was, I could love her through it with ease.