At War: The Day They Came to Tell Me My Husband Died

When the doorbell rang on New Year’s Eve four years ago, I knew something was wrong. It was 9 p.m. I was alone. I opened the door to three men in uniform. This was something I had imagined many times before, although in my visions they wore Army dress blues instead of the grays worn by the El Paso County sheriff’s deputies.

My husband, Maj. Christopher Thomas, left in the morning to go snowshoeing in the mountains west of Denver. When he did not return after dark I started to expect the worst. He was trained as an outdoor guide and had been to the summits of Mount McKinley, Mount Rainier and too many of Colorado’s tallest peaks to count. Yet the sun was down, and he hadn’t answered my phone calls or text messages all day.

Chris and I were both in the military. Between us we had six deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. We met in 2000 as cadets at West Point. He had previously served in the Army and was two years ahead of me in school. We went on our first date a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks: a picnic at a Labor Day concert by the academy’s band. He brought a blanket, sandwiches and a gorgeous smile over a sophisticated cleft chin. After Chris graduated that December, we kept up a long-distance relationship, including writing letters in 2003 during the invasion and early occupation of Iraq. Chris sent a marriage proposal in one of those letters, writing, “We don’t need a lavish affair, just a ceremony that lets us tell the world how we feel about each other, and that our family can come together to celebrate with us.” Then he jokingly offered to trade vows at home plate at Fenway Park in Massachusetts, where I grew up. He didn’t often show his emotions; I treasured his loving words.

After my graduation and our wedding in 2004, I served in the Army as a Medical Service Corps officer, choosing to forgo medical school so I could deploy as a supervisor of medics. During my first tour to Taji, Iraq, I volunteered at every opportunity to travel outside the confines of the operating base to join my soldiers on community health outreach missions. It was 2006, an especially treacherous period of the war. Our missions were often targeted by roadside bombs; my convoys were hit twice. During our careers, Chris was always a job or rank ahead of me; and because he had been an enlisted soldier I looked to him for advice, especially during this deployment, during which we were assigned to the same base. Once when I was out with his battalion and my vehicle was struck with an I.E.D., he waited at my company area to comfort me after I returned. He followed the action on the radio and wanted to be the first one there with open arms and to listen as I processed through my shock.

Two years later, during my second deployment to Iraq, this time as a medical company commander, my job was a lot less risky. I flew by helicopter to visit my soldiers on different bases. Chris, as an armor officer leading soldiers in combat, lost many of his friends. His four deployments with the 4th Infantry Division took a toll, and he grew more detached with each adjustment home. I struggled to understand his changes since they didn’t match what I understood to be the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He wasn’t angry or on edge, and he didn’t have nightmares. But he became more withdrawn and contemplative, even questioning whether he could father a child and be responsible for bringing a new life into this world.

In 2014, Chris decided to transfer to the reserves and return to school to become a teacher and work as an outdoor guide. Although I was skeptical about him walking away from a retirement pension, which he would qualify for in only four years, I could see his affinity for nature was providing him peace of mind. It wasn’t that he became an adrenaline junkie or a reckless climber; on the contrary, he was always prudent and respectful of nature. He became leaner and stronger and drew me into his new activities, encouraging me to try my first multipitch rock climb.

And then he went out snowshoeing on New Year’s Eve, and he was not answering my calls. My mind made up excuses. Maybe his phone was dead. Sometimes there was no signal in the mountains. When I sat for dinner, I turned on the local news and saw a report about a man who died in an avalanche that day. The details didn’t seem to match Chris’s plans; if only I could remember exactly where he said he was going. The news said the victim died about 10:30 a.m. Wouldn’t I know by now if it were Chris?

More questions formed. Had there been a car accident? Should I call hospitals? I couldn’t report him missing for 24 hours, right? Maybe I could find out whether the family of the man killed in the avalanche had been notified of his death and get reassurance that it wasn’t my husband. Having been in the Army for 10 years, I was familiar with death-notification procedures. After a death in Iraq our internet would be cut and phone centers closed until families at home were visited personally and told the awful news. Dark rumors travel fast. The military took steps to squelch the possibility that a spouse, children or parents would find out informally, through social media or an email.

I called the police and was connected to the dispatch office in the county where the avalanche had occurred. The dispatcher asked for my husband’s name. I told her. “Hold on a minute,” she said. She returned to the line. “Well, we don’t have his name right here,” she said. “I will have the coroner call you back one way or the other.” That should have been my clue. Either she didn’t want to tell me or she wasn’t authorized to deliver the news.

The doorbell rang. I opened the door to the three sheriff’s deputies. I managed to speak first. “It was him, wasn’t it?” I said. My voice was barely a squeak. My tears started as they asked if they could come in. One of them was a chaplain, who sat on the couch and confirmed my fears. Much after that is a blur. Many other phone calls were made: to a friend who would come over so I wouldn’t be alone; to my parents, who would fly out the next day to be with me. The conversation with the deputies came around to informing Chris’s mother. She was in Kentucky. One of them called to Lexington. The police there were busy with New Year’s Eve festivities. The deputy called a fire chief, who said he didn’t feel comfortable with the task. It was left to me.

It was approaching midnight where Chris’s mom lived. I wondered: Should I wait until morning? I dreaded causing her the pain I knew was to come. The wretched cry I had heard from my own mother minutes before would surely be multiplied a hundredfold. For a moment I thought that if I could wait until morning maybe I would think of the right words. There are many gaps in my memories of that night. One comment I do remember was this: “I’m a father,” one of the deputies said. “I would want to know now.” I made the call. I told her that, yes, his body had been recovered and passed on the coroner’s contact information. She responded with tears and devastation and shared in my disbelief of whether this moment was real.

Chris’s urge to be in the mountains was related to his postwar adjustments, and it became central to his regeneration and health. But I didn’t blame the war for his death. His drive to pursue his passions outside of his first career gave me the resolve to do the same. Six months after he died, I left the Army, moved across the country and started medical school. Becoming a physician requires years of intensive practice and study, and in this early stage of my career, I know I should be more concerned with learning drug names or the proper quantity of fluid boluses. Yet it’s the act of communicating bad news to patients and their families that I often ponder. I came to medical school having served around violence and trauma, and having already received and given a death notification. I’ve learned that the worst moments in someone’s life can be a haze with few distinct memories. In these moments it matters less what you say than how you say it. People in pain remember compassion, like the compassion I received from the deputies who sat on the couch with me and didn’t leave until I was no longer alone.

I am trying to apply this lesson as I follow Chris’s example, knowing that as an emergency-medicine physician, it’s inevitable that I will be informing families about a loved one’s death. I don’t view this as a dreaded duty. It is part of being human and connecting with others. I want to pass this knowledge on.