The writer’s husband, Rey Navarro, was deployed to Iraq last November, just weeks after the two married. A naval officer who had already spent time in the Persian Gulf, Rey had been volunteered by the Navy for a yearlong tour in Iraq. He is now stationed in Balad, a city 50 miles north of Baghdad.
The couple exchanged simple vows in a back room of the San Diego county clerk’s office, surrounded by a handful of friends and family members.
The bride wore a satin dress that she had worn to a friend’s wedding a few months before. The groom stood tall in a crisp black suit, its pockets containing two matching rings.
A video camera captured moments the pair failed to notice. The groom’s parents fighting back tears. Friends circling around them with digital cameras. The heavy-set commissioner wearing white sneakers and a plastic, orange flower pinned to her black robe.
In less than 10 minutes, the pair cemented a seven-year journey that began when they were college students.
They relished a sweet moment that for a short time masked feelings of uncertainty and dread. In two weeks, the couple would be split apart for nearly a year.
He, a 27-year-old naval officer, would start combat training to prepare for a deployment in Iraq just months after he had returned from a six-month tour in the Persian Gulf. She, a 26-year-old journalist, would remain in California and count down the days to her husband’s return.
That girl — scared and dumbfounded — would be me.
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As a newspaper reporter, I’ve interviewed family members of Sept. 11 victims; I’ve written about women who have made it their personal mission to send hundreds of care packages to random U.S. soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, just recently, I met a family dealing with the loss of their 20-year-old son who was killed by a homemade bomb in Baghdad.
My personal feelings about tragedy and the war in Iraq were detached from my job. My emotions didn’t muddle the stories of the people I met. I was an outsider looking in, though on some level, I could relate to everyone I interviewed.
But I never imagined that I would be able to link to their stories. I never predicted that I would be in this situation, wondering what had just happened in the past months.
Rey and I got engaged last September during a getaway in San Francisco. We were excited about the prospect of starting our life together and told everyone we could about our engagement. We had finally solidified our relationship, which had endured previous deployments, a breakup and a reunion.
Just a month later, Rey broke the news that the Navy had volunteered him for a yearlong tour in Iraq. The phrase was “individual augmentation,” or military jargon that described plucking active-duty individuals out of their current jobs and placing them in Iraq to help the Army folks.
Rey was a damage control assistant on the USS McCampbell in San Diego and taking night classes. A San Diego native, Rey was happy to be back in his hometown after years of being separated from his family and living on the East Coast.
