My husband wanted a solid, Kelly green tie. We looked in half a dozen stores and couldn't find one. He settled on a black tie with red stripes that he pinned down with a gold shamrock tie clip. He wore the black pants, black dress shirt, and black and red-striped tie to the funeral and again to a wedding later that week. The 40 pounds he'd lost in the six months he'd been deployed in Iraq stood out as he cinched the belt around his child-sized waist.
After his two weeks of leave he went back to Iraq. His flight left the airport just as the sun was rising. The corridors were antiseptic and empty. His dusty boots clapped a steady rhythm along the linoleum as we walked through the terminal. The woman behind the counter gave me a boarding pass so that I could follow him to the door of the plane. We embraced behind a large pole, trying to find some privacy in the crowded waiting area. I remember pressing my face into his uniform and wondering if I'd ever see him alive again. I mustered up a smile when his row was called to board and waited until he'd disappeared in the tunnel toward the plane before I allowed tears to slip down my cheeks.
He spent Christmas in Iraq that year. I was shopping for gifts when I found a solid Kelly green tie in Filene's basement. I practically skipped toward the check out counter. As I was leaving the store I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I took it out and checked the caller-ID. It was a long number, more than ten digits in length, it was my husband calling from a satellite phone half-way around the world. My finger was on the answer button a fraction of a second away from pressing firmly down when the phone stopped ringing. I pressed the button again and again even though it was too late. I wandered out into the mall and began walking to circles, slipping quickly into a panic attack.
He left me a voice mail saying that he was leaving on a mission that he didn't know if he'd return alive from. I imagined him dying in a fire-fight without hearing my voice one last time. I started to cry, uncontrollable choking sobs that shook my whole body. I kept walking around in the same small squares of tile in the crowded mall. A man approached me to ask if I was okay. I looked up at him with wild eyes and he flinched, took a step back and left me in distress. I left the mall, got into my car, punched the center console, the dashboard, the steering wheel. I screamed and cried and cursed everything. I got lost on the way home from a nearby restaurant where I bought a gift certificate for my brother and his girlfriend. It took me almost an hour to get home that day when it should have been a fifteen minute trip.
He didn't end up dying on the mission, but it was weeks later before I heard from him. Someone in his unit was killed on Christmas so communication was forbidden on the holiday. I walked around in a daze of worry, never letting my phone leave my side. I perched it on the edge of the bathtub as I showered, kept it tied to my arm with an rubber band at work where I wore skirts without pockets, and held it in my hand on my way home from the train station. I changed my voice mail everyday before getting on the train and losing service, asking him to call back in ten minutes, telling him that I loved him.
The tie, handkerchief, and cuff links pictured above were a gift to my husband from his mother one Christmas before Iraq. When he unwrapped the box and looked inside he half-snorted, half-laughed when he said, "Do they come with a dress shirt?" "No," my mother-in-law said angrily, "don't you have one?" "Nope," he said, pinning the cuff links to his ripped and frayed flannel. She frowned and my brother-in-law who had received the same gift in a different pattern smirked quietly to himself.
My husband left the tie and cuff-links in the box in my bedroom before he left to return to Germany. I kept them, but in the frenzy surrounding his return home on leave from Iraq, I didn't think to pull them out for his grandfather's funeral. I'm sure he wouldn't have worn them anyway, even if I had remembered. He did wear the green tie at every occasion after that required a suit and tie and each time it reminded me of the day I thought I'd let my last chance to say goodbye slip through my too-slow fingers.
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