FOR WIVES AND FAMILIES
Lynne Sibley
back to Wayne's page
This is Lynne. Wayne said I could have a page of my own on his web site, as long as I didn't make him read it while I was in the room. So he'll read it on Saturday morning after he gets back from the river, and I'll be at the grocery store.
I'm writing this for the wives. And the husbands, and the sons and daughters, and anybody else who loves a veteran and has been living with something they couldn't put a name to. I lived with it for twenty-two years before I knew what it was called.
WHAT IT WAS LIKE
I met Wayne in 1970, a year after he came home. He was quiet and polite and he had the saddest eyes I'd ever seen on a twenty-six-year-old man. I thought I could cheer him up. I think a lot of us thought that.
We married in 1971. He was a good provider. He never missed a day of work, and he never raised a hand to me or the girls. I want that said plainly, because people assume.
But he wasn't there. He'd come home, eat supper, and sit in his chair with a beer, and then another one. He'd go out to the garage for hours. He worked every Saturday he could get. If the girls got loud, he'd leave the room. If a pan dropped in the kitchen, he'd be on his feet before it stopped ringing.
He had bad dreams. The first time I touched his shoulder to wake him, he came up out of that bed so fast and so frightened that he scared us both, and he was so ashamed afterward he couldn't look at me for two days. After that I'd stand in the doorway and say his name until he woke up.
The Fourth of July we spent at a lake with no fireworks. Any war movie on TV, he'd go to bed. When our older girl, Nicole, was about twelve, she asked him at supper what he did in the war. He put his fork down and went out to the garage, and she cried for an hour because she thought she'd done something terrible. She hadn't. Neither of them had.
I thought it was me. For years. I thought if I were a better wife, a better cook, quieter, more fun, he'd come back. I covered for him with his mother, with the neighbors, with the girls. I was lonely in a way I didn't have words for.
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FINDING OUT IT HAD A NAME
In 1992, sitting in a doctor's waiting room, I picked up a magazine with an article about Vietnam veterans and post-traumatic stress. I read it twice. Then I tore it out and put it in my purse, which I have never done before or since. It was Wayne. Every paragraph. The drinking, the nightmares, the jumping, the being gone. It even described the wives.
I sat in the car in the parking lot and cried, because it wasn't me. And because there was a name for it, and if there was a name, maybe there was help.
It took me most of a year to work up to it. I called the Vet Center myself first. The man who answered talked to me for forty minutes. Then I put the brochure on the kitchen table. Wayne tells that part on his page.
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WHAT HELPED ME
The wives' group. The Vet Center had a group for wives on Tuesday nights. I went the same month Wayne started on Thursdays. Six or eight of us around a table. The first night a woman named Martha said, "Does yours check the locks three times before bed?" and every one of us laughed, and then half of us cried. I wasn't the only one. I had never once in twenty-two years thought there might be anyone else.
Learning not to take it personally. When he goes quiet, or gets short with me, it usually isn't about me. Knowing that doesn't make it not hurt. But it helps me not to make it worse.
Setting some limits anyway. Understanding something isn't the same as putting up with anything. I told him I wouldn't live with the drinking anymore, and I meant it. My friend Donna from the group told me, "You can love him and still say no." I wrote that on an index card and kept it in my wallet for a year.
A life of my own. I went back to singing in the church choir. I took a quilting class. I made friends who knew nothing about any of this. It wasn't running away. It was keeping myself in one piece.
Telling the girls the truth. When they were grown, Wayne and I sat them down together and told them what PTSD was, and that none of it was ever their fault. Nicole cried. Margaret said, "I always knew it was something." They're closer to their dad now than they've ever been.
Going to the Wall with him. In 1995 we went to Washington. I hung back and let him walk down the Wall by himself. When he found the names, he put his hand on them, and he cried. I had never seen my husband cry in twenty-four years of marriage. I walked down and stood next to him and didn't say anything. Afterward he took my hand and didn't let go of it the whole way back to the hotel.
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WHAT I'D TELL ANOTHER WIFE
1. It is not your fault. You didn't cause it and you can't love it away.
2. It has a name. It's real. And it can get better with help.
3. Get help for yourself, even if he won't go yet. Vet Centers help families too. Call them.
4. Don't wake him with a touch. Say his name from across the room.
5. Make a plan for the Fourth of July, New Year's Eve, and anything else that's loud.
6. Let him have his quiet places. For Wayne it's the river. Don't take that personally either.
7. Don't ask for war stories. If he ever tells you something, just listen. Don't fix it. Don't tell anyone.
8. Tell your children it isn't about them. Say it more than once.
9. Take care of your own health. Go to your own doctor. Sleep when you can.
10. If you or your children are ever not safe, get yourselves safe first, and call for help. Everything else can wait.
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IN A CRISIS
If someone is in danger, call 911. If your veteran is talking about hurting himself, take it seriously and get him to an emergency room or a VA hospital that day.
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We were married twenty-eight years this past June. I'll be honest: the first twenty-two were hard, and the last six have been the best of my life. He's here now. He talks to me. He laughs at the grandkids. Last Saturday he brought home two trout, cleaned them himself, and cooked them for supper, and we sat on the back step afterward until the stars came out.
It can get better. I promise you it can.
If you'd like to write to me, wife to wife, I'd be glad to hear from you: [email protected]
back to Thursday Nights at the Vet Center
Last updated Friday, September 24, 1999
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