thedrifter
12-23-07, 08:35 AM
Life without him
Widowed by the Iraq war, a Marine's wife confronts an uncertain future that approaches ever so slowly.
By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, December 23, 2007
Mimi Martin had 30 minutes. She was trying not to count them.
It was April and her husband, Shawn, was leaving for war. The drive to the drop-off point was going too fast.
In 20 minutes, I will send Shawn to Iraq.
In 10 minutes, I will hug him.
In five minutes, I will have to figure out how to say goodbye.
Sgt. Shawn P. Martin had been ordered to Iraq before. But his assignment was always switched. This time, the 30-year-old Delmar Marine would go. Shawn unpacked his gear and his Xbox.
Marianne "Mimi" Martin remembers their parting hug, being squeezed by her brawny, 6-foot-tall husband. It was the last time she touched him. Shawn would survive seven days in Iraq.
"There's only one thing I need," she said, "and I can't have it."
For Mimi, the past six months have been a battle with time. Her life is one version of the story told every time a member of the American military falls in the Iraq war. She alternates between squeezing every second out of eight years of memories with Shawn and struggling with time, a lot of time, in which to figure out how a 29-year-old widow faces an uncertain future alone.
"You feel like you're going insane," Mimi said.
life altered Mimi has re-created June 20, 2007, perhaps to make sense of it.
She was asleep at home in San Clemente, Calif. -- near Camp Pendleton -- when Shawn died. It was 5:20 a.m., West Coast time. She woke up hours later with a feeling of dread.
The feeling lingered as she spoke with Dawn Martin, her mother-in-law, in Delmar. They told each other he was safe. By the time Mimi dropped off T-shirts that read "Deployments Suck" to her friend, another Marine Corps wife, the feeling had faded.
At 5:30 p.m., Mimi was in a good mood. She opened a bag of potato chips in the kitchen.
The doorbell rang.
Mimi wouldn't let the Marines on her doorstep come in at first. She knew why they were there.
She collapsed. She couldn't breathe. She remembers hearing something about a roadside bomb.
On June 20, desert temperatures in Saqlawiyah, Iraq, exceeded 110.
Sometime before 4:20 p.m., the explosive ordnance disposal technician team for Combat Logistics Battalion 13 responded to a roadside bomb.
The unit had cleared 15 bombs after being in Iraq for a week.
Sgt. Shawn P. Martin and Staff Sgt. Stephen J. Wilson of Duluth, Ga., tried using a bomb robot to search for a secondary explosive device around a major transport route.
Martin volunteered to help Wilson inspect the area on foot when the rough terrain prevented use of the robot. A hidden insurgent bomb exploded. Both Marines were killed.
Six days later, Mimi was on a plane to Albany for the funeral. Her reading material was a booklet called "Military Widow: A Survival Guide." Among other things, it gave advice on when to take off a wedding band.
She also had a military-issue, 5-inch-thick binder with colored tabs marking sections for insurance, taxes and the casualty report. It was called "The Days Ahead."
Shawn The days surrounding a funeral pass quickly. There is so much to do.
Hundreds of people came to services at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Delmar to share stories about Shawn's lasagna, his dancing ability and his devotion to his wife and the Marine Corps. He was buried in Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery.
Mimi doubled over in sobs when a Marine handed her the folded American flag that had been draped over Shawn's coffin.
Two months later, time crawled by as Mimi and one of Shawn's friends drove his 2006 Nissan Titan pickup from her home near Camp Pendleton to Herkimer County. Mimi was heading back to her hometown of Ilion to a house she had just bought. Near the front door, a bookcase holds Shawn's medals, his favorite hat and a cigar humidor with the Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor.
That such a memorial would someday be in her home was inconceivable on May 1, 1999. That was when Mimi first noticed the guy in a black T-shirt and jeans sitting on her roommates' couch at SUNY Oneonta. The muscular landscaper from Delmar smiled a lot.
"You know in cartoons when the hearts pop out of the eyeballs?" Mimi asked. "That's how he said he felt. It was kind of the same for me."
As Shawn and his friends prepared to leave the next morning, Shawn told Mimi he'd see her again. She didn't believe him, until later that night.
Shawn drove 83 miles home to Bethlehem with his friends and then turned around and came back. After that, the two told their friends and family they had each found "the one."
"Everything was Mimi," said Dawn Martin, describing the way her son had changed after meeting the woman he would marry in November 2002. She said Shawn and Mimi's relationship was "magical."
Now, Mimi is back home where her two brothers -- her best friends -- are minutes away. They're on call when the passage of time becomes crushing.
Bill Thomes, seven years older than his sister, said she is a "rock" in public, but struggles alone.
He holds his sister and remembers funny stories from childhood when she's balled up on the floor. He brings her baked potato chips and tries to make her laugh while choking back his own grief over the Marine he came to love like a brother.
"I try to not let her focus on what happened because that's not going to change," Bill said.
Mimi spoke publicly for the first time about Shawn in November when she accepted his Bronze Star medal. Her voice cracked as she told the audience of family, friends and Marines about how Shawn taught her to drive in California traffic and how his big heart won over her family after their initial shock over his piercings and tattoos.
One day, a few months after Shawn died, before getting into the shower, she took off her wedding ring. She couldn't put it back on.
She cried a lot about that. The ring didn't feel right on her hand. "Military Widow" had prepared her for that feeling. For some it comes soon, the book said, for others it takes years.
Her wedding ring is now on the bathroom counter so she can see it every morning and night. She wears his wedding ring on a necklace.
"I have to let myself feel this -- it's the only way to get through it," Mimi said. "Most days I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
Last month, Mimi marked her fifth wedding anniversary at Shawn's grave.
A cutting wind whistled through the Saratoga cemetery. Seeing Shawn's name carved into a stone was like having the terrible news broken to her all over again.
She knelt at the grave, holding his dog tags, the ones he was wearing around his neck when the bomb went off.
"I remember thinking it must be cold for him and I couldn't help him," she said.
Mimi wonders how many people hide such sadness. She caught herself picturing other passengers on a recent flight as secretive mourners.
Shawn's death wounded so many that she could see similar waves of grief spreading throughout cities all over America. Everyone on the plane, she imagined, could have lost some piece of themselves in the Iraq war.
Time is something from which she has learned to seek relief. She distracts herself by driving Shawn's loud truck, with the exhaust he altered right after buying it, around Ilion. She wrestles with 95-pound Brutus, their dog, when he drops a slobbered-on doll at her feet. Using a laptop on the kitchen table she buries herself in her work doing analysis support for Verizon. Early next year she plans to become a certified financial planner.
Her greatest escape, though, is on the volleyball courts of Gregory B. Jarvis Junior-Senior High School in Mohawk, her alma mater, where she coaches the girls' varsity team. Mimi has been a volleyball player and coach for more than a decade, first in her hometown and then on the beaches of southern California with Shawn.
"It's the greatest feeling in the world when I'm out there," Mimi said at a recent game. "When I'm doing it, that's all I'm doing."
The team hasn't won a match in a year. When they're down, she encourages them to rally "one ball at a time."
Some days whiz by like a volleyball spike. Others seem like a slow lob over the net.
Mimi still has a video on her cellphone of Shawn opening presents last Christmas. She watches it sometimes, but it doesn't comfort her. She just wants to get through the holidays so the year can be over.
Shawn's personal effects are in boxes in a Syracuse warehouse. She didn't want them to arrive in the mail like presents, so after Christmas, she'll drive the 70 miles to pick them up.
The boxes hold Shawn's Xbox, hundreds of pounds of his gear and possibly some gifts he bought for her on his way to Iraq.
She wants to keep it with her, because it feels like him. The last time she saw the gear from Iraq was in April, as Shawn unloaded it from the trunk of her car when she struggled to stop counting.
She wants to hold that moment again, have it so close she can touch it. She wants Shawn near for the days ahead. Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.
Ellie
Widowed by the Iraq war, a Marine's wife confronts an uncertain future that approaches ever so slowly.
By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, December 23, 2007
Mimi Martin had 30 minutes. She was trying not to count them.
It was April and her husband, Shawn, was leaving for war. The drive to the drop-off point was going too fast.
In 20 minutes, I will send Shawn to Iraq.
In 10 minutes, I will hug him.
In five minutes, I will have to figure out how to say goodbye.
Sgt. Shawn P. Martin had been ordered to Iraq before. But his assignment was always switched. This time, the 30-year-old Delmar Marine would go. Shawn unpacked his gear and his Xbox.
Marianne "Mimi" Martin remembers their parting hug, being squeezed by her brawny, 6-foot-tall husband. It was the last time she touched him. Shawn would survive seven days in Iraq.
"There's only one thing I need," she said, "and I can't have it."
For Mimi, the past six months have been a battle with time. Her life is one version of the story told every time a member of the American military falls in the Iraq war. She alternates between squeezing every second out of eight years of memories with Shawn and struggling with time, a lot of time, in which to figure out how a 29-year-old widow faces an uncertain future alone.
"You feel like you're going insane," Mimi said.
life altered Mimi has re-created June 20, 2007, perhaps to make sense of it.
She was asleep at home in San Clemente, Calif. -- near Camp Pendleton -- when Shawn died. It was 5:20 a.m., West Coast time. She woke up hours later with a feeling of dread.
The feeling lingered as she spoke with Dawn Martin, her mother-in-law, in Delmar. They told each other he was safe. By the time Mimi dropped off T-shirts that read "Deployments Suck" to her friend, another Marine Corps wife, the feeling had faded.
At 5:30 p.m., Mimi was in a good mood. She opened a bag of potato chips in the kitchen.
The doorbell rang.
Mimi wouldn't let the Marines on her doorstep come in at first. She knew why they were there.
She collapsed. She couldn't breathe. She remembers hearing something about a roadside bomb.
On June 20, desert temperatures in Saqlawiyah, Iraq, exceeded 110.
Sometime before 4:20 p.m., the explosive ordnance disposal technician team for Combat Logistics Battalion 13 responded to a roadside bomb.
The unit had cleared 15 bombs after being in Iraq for a week.
Sgt. Shawn P. Martin and Staff Sgt. Stephen J. Wilson of Duluth, Ga., tried using a bomb robot to search for a secondary explosive device around a major transport route.
Martin volunteered to help Wilson inspect the area on foot when the rough terrain prevented use of the robot. A hidden insurgent bomb exploded. Both Marines were killed.
Six days later, Mimi was on a plane to Albany for the funeral. Her reading material was a booklet called "Military Widow: A Survival Guide." Among other things, it gave advice on when to take off a wedding band.
She also had a military-issue, 5-inch-thick binder with colored tabs marking sections for insurance, taxes and the casualty report. It was called "The Days Ahead."
Shawn The days surrounding a funeral pass quickly. There is so much to do.
Hundreds of people came to services at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Delmar to share stories about Shawn's lasagna, his dancing ability and his devotion to his wife and the Marine Corps. He was buried in Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery.
Mimi doubled over in sobs when a Marine handed her the folded American flag that had been draped over Shawn's coffin.
Two months later, time crawled by as Mimi and one of Shawn's friends drove his 2006 Nissan Titan pickup from her home near Camp Pendleton to Herkimer County. Mimi was heading back to her hometown of Ilion to a house she had just bought. Near the front door, a bookcase holds Shawn's medals, his favorite hat and a cigar humidor with the Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor.
That such a memorial would someday be in her home was inconceivable on May 1, 1999. That was when Mimi first noticed the guy in a black T-shirt and jeans sitting on her roommates' couch at SUNY Oneonta. The muscular landscaper from Delmar smiled a lot.
"You know in cartoons when the hearts pop out of the eyeballs?" Mimi asked. "That's how he said he felt. It was kind of the same for me."
As Shawn and his friends prepared to leave the next morning, Shawn told Mimi he'd see her again. She didn't believe him, until later that night.
Shawn drove 83 miles home to Bethlehem with his friends and then turned around and came back. After that, the two told their friends and family they had each found "the one."
"Everything was Mimi," said Dawn Martin, describing the way her son had changed after meeting the woman he would marry in November 2002. She said Shawn and Mimi's relationship was "magical."
Now, Mimi is back home where her two brothers -- her best friends -- are minutes away. They're on call when the passage of time becomes crushing.
Bill Thomes, seven years older than his sister, said she is a "rock" in public, but struggles alone.
He holds his sister and remembers funny stories from childhood when she's balled up on the floor. He brings her baked potato chips and tries to make her laugh while choking back his own grief over the Marine he came to love like a brother.
"I try to not let her focus on what happened because that's not going to change," Bill said.
Mimi spoke publicly for the first time about Shawn in November when she accepted his Bronze Star medal. Her voice cracked as she told the audience of family, friends and Marines about how Shawn taught her to drive in California traffic and how his big heart won over her family after their initial shock over his piercings and tattoos.
One day, a few months after Shawn died, before getting into the shower, she took off her wedding ring. She couldn't put it back on.
She cried a lot about that. The ring didn't feel right on her hand. "Military Widow" had prepared her for that feeling. For some it comes soon, the book said, for others it takes years.
Her wedding ring is now on the bathroom counter so she can see it every morning and night. She wears his wedding ring on a necklace.
"I have to let myself feel this -- it's the only way to get through it," Mimi said. "Most days I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
Last month, Mimi marked her fifth wedding anniversary at Shawn's grave.
A cutting wind whistled through the Saratoga cemetery. Seeing Shawn's name carved into a stone was like having the terrible news broken to her all over again.
She knelt at the grave, holding his dog tags, the ones he was wearing around his neck when the bomb went off.
"I remember thinking it must be cold for him and I couldn't help him," she said.
Mimi wonders how many people hide such sadness. She caught herself picturing other passengers on a recent flight as secretive mourners.
Shawn's death wounded so many that she could see similar waves of grief spreading throughout cities all over America. Everyone on the plane, she imagined, could have lost some piece of themselves in the Iraq war.
Time is something from which she has learned to seek relief. She distracts herself by driving Shawn's loud truck, with the exhaust he altered right after buying it, around Ilion. She wrestles with 95-pound Brutus, their dog, when he drops a slobbered-on doll at her feet. Using a laptop on the kitchen table she buries herself in her work doing analysis support for Verizon. Early next year she plans to become a certified financial planner.
Her greatest escape, though, is on the volleyball courts of Gregory B. Jarvis Junior-Senior High School in Mohawk, her alma mater, where she coaches the girls' varsity team. Mimi has been a volleyball player and coach for more than a decade, first in her hometown and then on the beaches of southern California with Shawn.
"It's the greatest feeling in the world when I'm out there," Mimi said at a recent game. "When I'm doing it, that's all I'm doing."
The team hasn't won a match in a year. When they're down, she encourages them to rally "one ball at a time."
Some days whiz by like a volleyball spike. Others seem like a slow lob over the net.
Mimi still has a video on her cellphone of Shawn opening presents last Christmas. She watches it sometimes, but it doesn't comfort her. She just wants to get through the holidays so the year can be over.
Shawn's personal effects are in boxes in a Syracuse warehouse. She didn't want them to arrive in the mail like presents, so after Christmas, she'll drive the 70 miles to pick them up.
The boxes hold Shawn's Xbox, hundreds of pounds of his gear and possibly some gifts he bought for her on his way to Iraq.
She wants to keep it with her, because it feels like him. The last time she saw the gear from Iraq was in April, as Shawn unloaded it from the trunk of her car when she struggled to stop counting.
She wants to hold that moment again, have it so close she can touch it. She wants Shawn near for the days ahead. Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.
Ellie