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Andrew Robbins,
North Carolina, U.S. Army
Submitted by Alyssa Robbins
June 8, 2003. My mom and I were in North Carolina where our next home would be. We had been there a week, had moved there from a three year stay in Germany. My dad was at war. I woke up to a sound I never wanted to hear. My mother was crying so hard I thought she was sick. She came to wake me up telling me that my dad was dead. I got up feeling dazed. I didn't know what to do or say or even think or feel. I went out into our new living room that was so empty, and sat down. I stared at these two men I had never before seen in my life. I felt so angry right then. I thought, "What right do these men have to come here and give me the worst news in my entire life?" I was 16 years old. I had just turned 16. My dad wasn't there for my birthday. He was fighting in the war. We had just talked to him the other day, only for a few moments. It was brief. I think I told him I loved him, I can't remember. All I remember is the hectic days that followed. People were calling, people coming, plans having to be made, the tears, the feeling of hopelessness. Nothing would be the same or right again. I could only think about how this was it. I felt so numb right then. I wanted nothing more than to see someone jump out and scream, "It's all a sick, cruel joke. He's still alive!" I felt so angry. I hated everyone right then because this should not have happened. We left North Carolina. We held the funeral in Texas at the Arlington cemetery here. There's no feeling, no words in the world, that can describe the feelings I feel when I think of his death and this war. No one knows what it's like when you wake up one day and your entire world has changed. It;s like the end of the world. I felt a destruction crashing around me. That Christmas I cried the entire night. All of the things I got I didn't want. Everytime the phone rang, I ran to it, anxiously waiting for the call that said that my dad was still alive. A movie playing during the holidays told of a fallen soldier whose wife thought he was dead. He came home for Christmas, though, and it turned out it was another soldier dead. I kept thinking, "That's what's going to happen. My dad really isn't dead!" That was the most disappointing Christmas I think I'll ever have. People kept coming here, to our home, to talk to my mom about the situation and what happened. So many people we know are there right now, fighting. I feel a childish anger at everyone. I think that this shouldn't have happened. I'm proud of him, in a sense, for the awards he's gotten. All of them, even when he was alive. But there's nothing to describe the emptiness that settled within me when I woke up that morning and heard that. The day went by in the biggest blur and I keep wishing that he's going to come home, keep thinking it even! I hear his footsteps in our home. I smell him in some of the rooms. Sometimes I think about it so much that I know he's coming home. He promised he'd teach me how to drive that summer. He said he was coming home. He had promised he was going to come home. We were so ready to see him again. To wake up one day and be told that your dad is dead, to be told that he's never coming home again, to be told that you're never going to get to hug him or talk to him or see him is devastating. I keep thinking, "What did I do? What did I do wrong? Why is it he died? What did I do?" I keep thinking that it's my fault. I wake up every day wishing he would come home. I wish he could come home so I could be happy again. It's just not fair. It's not fair and it's not right. I wake up everyday feeling that nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing feels right in my life anymore. To wake up one day out of the blue, when things are going so well, and to be told that that's it, you had sixteen years with your dad and that's all you're allowed, that's painful. That's hard to deal with, hard to bear. I wish and hope and think everyday that it's all a lie. I think everyday that I am going to wake up ad he's going to be pounding on the front door, asking to be let in. I wake up thinking that I'm going to be out somewhere and I'm going to see him and run over to him and he's going to tell me he's been looking for us everywhere, that he's sorry, that he never really was dead and it's all a mix-up, that it didn't happen. I look at all of my friend's families and think how lucky they are. Some of them even have TWO dads. I feel jealous. I feel lost. I feel unequal, because I don't even have one anymore. Sometimes I wake up angry because I remember how he promised he was coming home. I wake up thinking, "I hate you. You promised, you promised you were going to come home??" There's nothing that can ready you for that in life. There is nothing that can make you ready to deal with it, especially when you don't even think it will ever happen. Because no one did, we all knew it would never happen to him.
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