Far-Away War Takes a Toll Along the Home Front Too

Susan and I are having lunch in an elegant Irvine restaurant.

She is dressed for success, the suit, the silk, the discreet gold bracelet, and as other diners pass our table, she greets them by name. Susan works in one of the sleek glass towers nearby.

She is cool and she is charming.

She is falling apart.

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she tells me. “I feel ashamed. . . . I find it very disconcerting to realize that I cannot handle everything and that I place a stigma on myself because of that.”

The words come out slowly, with a sad, measured tone. Susan, who asks that I not use her real name, has thought about this before, mostly when she lies alone at night in her home in Dana Point.

Her husband, the handsome man in the uniform, and her 12-year-old daughter, the dark beauty in jodhpurs and a riding cap, aren’t there anymore. Susan holds their photographs in a white business envelope.

She and her family are casualties of war.

“I was just so determined to be a strong Marine Corps wife, not like all those wimpy, whiny wives in base housing. I’m a professional woman, doing well, putting my child in private school.”

Susan is mocking herself now. Her tone is sarcastic. She is not used to this. She feels, somehow, that she has failed. She is not tough enough for war.

By talking to me, Susan says she hopes to wake people up. The United States is at war, even though here, in this nice restaurant, in our nice homes, it hardly shows. The air raid sirens come from the TV.

Still, not all wounds bleed.

Susan’s husband, a staff officer with the Marine Corps, has been in the Persian Gulf since September. Her daughter, who has been diagnosed as hyperactive, has been having a harder time than most in accepting what that could mean.

“We had been in therapy, both individual and family, and there was some progress,” Susan says. “Then in August, my husband was told that he would have eight hours notice before he would have to leave. . . . So we sat (my daughter) down, and told her what that meant. The first thing she wanted to know was, ‘Are you ever coming back? Can you die?’ ”

Susan and her husband, her daughter’s stepfather, told the truth. Yes, there was a chance that he could be killed in war. We don’t think so. We hope not. But you never know.

The message sank in. Since her husband left, Susan says, her daughter has withdrawn, she has lashed out, she has become desperately needy. She has lost all the friends that she ever had. The private school that she had been attending in Newport Beach asked that she not come back.

In the middle of the night, Susan would awake to find her daughter standing over her in bed, silent and staring. Then she began sleeping on the floor of Susan’s room, afraid that her mother would leave her too.

The child also began eating inordinate amounts of food, hiding it, hoarding it and bingeing in secret on sweets. Nightmares started. Susan says her daughter told her of a recurring dream in which she is running down a dark tunnel toward a light as voices call her back.

“That’s what really scared me,” Susan says. “She had never read or seen anything about death and dying before.”

Earlier this month, on the advice of her daughter’s psychiatrist, Susan confined her child in a psychiatric hospital for the first time.

“When I had to put her in the hospital, I went off the deep end,” Susan says. “I would just cry all the time. I would see couples shopping together and I would cry, or if I’d see a mother and her 12ish-looking daughter, I would get this stab of jealousy and hurt and start crying.”

At the office, too, the stress began to sabotage Susan’s facade of inner strength. She recalls a colleague complimenting her on how terrific she always looks and then joking about what the hell had happened to her that day. Superwoman Susan convulsed in sobs.

Finally, Susan asked for a two-week medical leave from her job, what she calls one of the most difficult things she has ever done. Her boss, however, couldn’t understand. She told her the timing was an inconvenience to her.

Susan left anyway, and her superiors have since supported her decision to try to unwind. Today she is back on the job.

“Looking back, I’m sure part of (my daughter’s) deterioration comes from my own deterioration,” Susan says. “I thought I was being a pillar of strength, but I wasn’t. . . . I made (my daughter) assume a lot of responsibility. I realize now it was too much for her.”

Still, Susan says, she feels “that sense of shame.”

“It’s like nobody taught you how to be a parent, and you just do it. Nobody teaches you how to be a war wife either. . . .

“The actual reality is lying in bed, alone, and your stomach twists into knots and the tears pour uncontrollably and you feel guilty. You know you should be supporting your spouse, your child, your job, and you are lying there because you are so scared and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Susan stops here and takes a sip of water. It is really time for her to be getting back. Her phone is probably ringing right now.

The next day, Susan sends me a letter that her daughter wrote her from the hospital.

“Mom,” it starts. “I’m so scared that something is going to happen to (my step-dad). I know that he can take care of himself but I’m still really worried. I am also scared that terrorists will start bringing bombs and other horrible things over to the U.S. and try to hurt people here. . . .

“I wish that this whole mess was all a bad dream and soon everyone would wake up and the whole world would be at peace and be united. I wonder if Saddam will give up after he realizes his (days are) numbered because then everything could go on like it had before this started.

“I miss (my step-dad) very much and I know you do too but I know that he has a job to do, just like all the other men and women out there. I love you.”

Then she drew a heart.