The Birthday

I had a slice of chocolate cake in the fridge I shared with a suitemate I never saw. Chocolate frosting enveloped and glued together two thick, moist layers of chocolate cake. On sale at the commissary, as luck had it. I took it out and set it on my desk, then lost myself in feelings and memories.

My phone chimed and vibrated, announcing a notification. I checked my phone. Nothing from her. Of course, why would there be? No text this year, no call, just a Facebook memory. I scrolled through my list of voicemails, to the very end. The two oldest ones remained at the bottom of the list. I’d never receive a new one again. Those were the last ones she’d left me. One good, one less so, a lesson learned too late. Life’s funny like that. I set my phone aside.

Not yet.

I had the day off, a rare enough thing when you work on a submarine. Whenever you’re not at sea you’re still stuck there. I cherished feeling sunlight come through my window, bathing my barracks room in a gentle glow. We worked eighty plus hours each week, which minimized free time. The joke ran something like “That’s why we get pro-pay.” Always delivered with utmost sarcasm.

I had joined the Navy with everything to gain. In my naivety, I didn’t know what I’d lose. Some things I didn’t even have when I left home. Even so, it wasn’t just a normal day. No, far from it. Nineteen years and fifty pounds heavier, my retirement loomed. I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d managed to put it off this long. Procrastination owned me. Now I had six months to choose where to go, what to do, and how to support my family.

This afternoon, I was alone, like I so often had been. My wife and kids lived in a few states over, while I executed my orders to the last submarine of my career. Outside my window, some hotshot revved their new Camaro or Mustang, disturbing the peace I sought to achieve. Nothing in my room could distract me. I sprawled on the single mattress twin bed, my glasses on the adjacent nightstand next to a cheap brass lamp. My computer desk took up the opposite corner, along with the cake next to my keyboard.

I tossed and turned on top of the sheets, not even knowing why I layed there. I just didn’t feel like reading or playing computer games. I’d experienced more luxurious conditions when “sleeping” in an engine room bilge than on that lousy excuse for a bed.

Melancholy is probably the best word to describe what I felt. That lingering sadness that just sits in your gut and you don’t know why. Just can’t quite pin it down. I knew why, deep down. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Regret. There, I said it. Still didn’t want to acknowledge it.

I ran away from home. Joining the Navy seemed like my way out. Within the span of three months, I’d broken up with my girlfriend, totaled my car, and quit my job. College didn’t suit me; I attended because my parents expected it, not because I had any desire. I’d been so tired of school. Being only a year removed from high school, I was a prime candidate for the military. My father and grandfather had both served, so when the Navy recruiter called me while I was feeling my lowest, I took that chance and left home.

I stared at the ceiling, remembering doing just that same thing nineteen years ago in the phone booth as I twisted the phone cord with my fingers. She’d given me a prepaid minutes card from AT&T, and I used it every Sunday to call family. I didn’t have a cellphone in those days. I don’t regret leaving home. I regret missing my family. Missing my brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles. I’m an uncle now myself, to nieces and nephews that I’ve in most cases only seen once or twice.

I spent five years in Pearl, with my wife and kids living near the in-laws back home. To this day my kids default to their mom when they need something. I’m just an afterthought. There’s just not enough time to spend with them on my free weekends before I come back to this sparse room. To serve. And do my duty. My sarcastic attitude and bad dad jokes conceal my regret.

No one spends a career in the military and comes out of it unscathed. While I don’t have PTSD or tinnitus, there’s still a hole in my life that has grown, a gap between myself and all others in my family. Growing up, we had family reunions and get-togethers, and camping trips. That doesn’t happen anymore, and even if it did I wouldn’t go. Nowadays I prefer the solitude of my barracks room.

My heart keeps getting broken. I don’t relate well to the ones I love the most. That’s what I had run away from the most: my broken heart. Now there’s just a numb feeling when I think of the experience of love.

Just a few years into my first sea tour, my girlfriend and I visited my parents for the holidays. She met my grandparents and I proposed to her. A week later I departed on my first deployment. All well and good, my life couldn’t be better. Within a month, my grandfather passed away.

I shouldn’t have even found out about it, that’s for sure. The Navy has protocols for it, and people who read emails when they get to the boat before being forwarded to you. And filter them. One from my dad slipped through, saying grandpa was gone, that mom was with grandma spending time.

I let my chain of command know what had happened, and they did what they could to accommodate me. I cried at night in my coffin-like rack between watches, hoping the Navy would let me leave to go home. Nope. Too expensive to take a submarine off station to let one guy go home for a funeral. Like the meme, the best they could do was a phone call.

While it was no cost to me, I imagine it was probably the most expensive call I’d ever make, using a satellite phone from the bridge of a surfaced submarine to call my mother and grandmother. Of course since we were on the other side of the world, I woke them up in the middle of the night. It was worth it, but all too brief.

I wasn’t there when my mom buried her father. He’d been a hero of mine, the retired Lieutenant Commander and Engineer who, for a few years at least knew exactly what I was going through. The man who took me out to the beach of the lake, where we lit off fireworks in the middle of the night, only to kill the truck battery and we had to yell for help until someone having a similar party nearby came over to help us out. Like that, he was gone.

My love for the Navy I think died in those days. That’s when I learned how unforgiving and impersonal it was. It gave me too little. Now here I was, finishing up a final tour - of course for only one year, because it was “part of my sea-shore rotation” despite it being easier to not move me for one year from my shore command. Retirement now served only to provide me recurring mortgage payments. All these memories, all these regrets.

I was already feeling morose, what more could it hurt? I turned on my phone and looked through those voicemails I had. My three oldest ones are there for a reason. The oldest she sent me the day after my birthday.

“This is your grandma, happy birthday. It’s a day late but I thought about you yesterday, so let me hear from you. Send me your address. Love you, talk to you later, bye!” There’s that familiar voice, and the constriction in my chest. I’m instantly choking back sobs. It was rare enough that she’d leave voicemails since we’d just talk on the phone on birthdays and holidays and weekends. I don’t remember the particular instance why I missed her or she missed me. I think I was underway, preparing for deployment.

The only other call was one where she’d forgotten to call at Christmas. Time had gotten away from her, so she wanted to check in with me. I’m sure I called back as soon as I could. I never wanted to keep her waiting! But of course you know where this is going.

During my final shore duty, a few years later, grandma’s health began to fail. I kept meaning to call her but never did. Over the course of a few months I missed opportunity after opportunity to get ahold of her, wrapped up in life, rotating shiftwork, and video games. I expected things to get better. My mom and aunt spent a lot of time with her then, updating me when they could.

One night, mom informed me. They’d placed her into hospice care. Come home now! I talked to grandma, but I could tell grandma was out of it. Her last words to me were “I love you too.” I remember going to work the next day, waiting until after our shift brief to inform my Chief and let him know. Within thirty minutes I had an approved leave chit and out the door, but couldn’t get a flight out until the next morning, so I packed my bags and tried not to worry.

When I got up early to leave, I saw I had a missed call. This was from my mom. “Hey hito, it’s late. Mom passed away about a half hour ago. We’ll see you tomorrow. I just want to let you know I love you, bye bye.” With the time difference, I’d been deeply asleep and dreamed right through it. I woke my wife, blubbering like a child, “Grandma’s gone, grandma’s gone,” and I cried into her shoulder before departing for the airport for a crack of dawn flight.

I don't remember if grandma liked chocolate cake, but I know she didn’t like broccoli. Her roasts and potatoes were things of legend. I felt her there, when I was alone, and she kept me company. In one week, it would be my birthday. But today, I celebrated hers.