An unexpected start

In the first weeks of marriage, a couple is supposed to be adjusting to living together. They're supposed to be still in the honeymoon phase. They're supposed to be picking out furniture for their back patio.

Not us.

No, today, as I sat unsuspectingly at my desk, catching up on the blogs I haven't read in over a month, I got a call from K. He needed a break (from work), he said.

He asked me for my dad's address. I thought it was weird, but I gave him the address. I asked why he needed it, and he said something about some deployment paperwork. He explained it a little more: If something were to happen to me while K is in Iraq, he had to give the information for who would take care of things here.

Fine.

But then, he asked who would be here for me if something happened to him. Only the way he worded it was confusing; I didn't get it. "What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Well, God forbid, if something happens to m--" he started.

"No no, I get that part. I don't need that part explained," I said. "The last part." Did he mean someone in the military? Did he mean a specific person, a specific rank, or someone from my (read: non-military) life?

He told me he needed the names of anyone who I'd want there with me to help me or to support me. I told him that's a phone call I would make, that it would be weird for someone in the Army to be contacting my close friends or family if something like that happened.

"Well, sometimes the wife just mentally shuts down," K said.

"I can't imagine why," I said sarcastically. I gave him ER's phone number, and I told him I didn't have her address. He said that was fine.

He asked who my religious adviser would be. "I don't have one," I said.

"Well, would it be ---?" He named off the pastor at ER's church, the church where we'll be getting married when K gets back from Iraq.

"Well, that's kind of a big thing," I said. "That's a member-of-a-church kind of thing."

He persisted on the idea of the pastor. He was talking about it all so casually -- he's done this several times before. My eyes were flooding over and I was wishing I was anywhere but at work when we had to talk about something like this.

At that point, I asked if we could finish this form later tonight.

I needed a break.