I can still remember vividly the day I was notified that my husband had died. I was sitting at the kitchen table supervising a game of Monopoly the kids were playing with a few of their friends. Gabby was playing too, so I didn’t have to pay a ton of attention. She’d partnered with Trixie, who was too little to do math or read the cards, but she loved the camaraderie. She also loved to heckle her brother and his friends.

I took a sip from my glass of wine and hitched a hip on the corner of the counter. I was the luckiest wife on the face of the planet. After our youngest two children were born, we’d decided that only Jeff would remain active in the military. I still was in the reserves, and I had to give one weekend a month to my country, but I didn’t get deployed the way Jeff did. He was on his second tour, and it got harder every time he left.

I walked to the calendar on the wall and marked off another day. Jeff would be home in two weeks. I couldn’t wait.

I bent over to take a baking dish loaded with chicken nuggets out of the oven. I started to flip them all over with a fork and would have to put them back in for a little more cooking.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Gabby said as she set Trixie on the chair they both had been occupying.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“Mom!” Gabby yelled a moment later. She was always so composed. She’d grown up way too fast. It was the bane of having two younger siblings and a parent who was absent; she’d taken on way too much responsibility, but she always handled it gracefully. Until now. “Mom!” she yelled again, and I heard her feet pounding down the hallway. “Mom…” Her voice quivered. “There are two men at the door.”

I kept flipping nuggets. “What do they want?”

“They’re military,” she said. “In class A’s.”

My hand suddenly felt numb. I dropped the fork I was holding and it clattered to the floor. “Stay with Trixie and Alex,” I said quietly to Gabby as I walked past her.

She grabbed onto my arm. “What do they want, Mom?”

“Probably nothing,” I said soothingly. “Just wait here. Watch your brother and sister.”

One of the officers introduced them. “May we come inside?” the chaplain asked. I identified him by the insignia on his uniform and the Bible he carried in his hand. I stepped to the side and they walked past me.

“I have been asked to inform you that your husband has been reported dead. He was wounded by a roadside bomb and died en route to the hospital. We regret having to impart this news to you. On the behalf of the Secretary of Defense, I extend to you and your family my deepest sympathy in your great loss.”

I wanted to drop to my knees and sob, but I had three kids who had just lost their dad. They’d lost their hero. They’d lost their future as they knew it. There would be no father to walk my girls down the aisle; there would be no father to straighten Alex’s tie before he stood at the altar. He wouldn’t teach them to drive a car. He wouldn’t be with me to supervise dates. He wouldn’t teach Alex to carry a handkerchief or to open doors for ladies. He would never arrange Trixie’s hair in uneven pigtails again.

He would never call me in the middle of the night just to say hi. He would never hold me again, because his body was being shipped back to the United States. His dead body.

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” the uniformed officer asked.

“I can do it.” I needed to call my parents, and I needed to call Jeff’s parents and his sister. They needed to know. But first, I had to tell my children.

The officers left me a few minutes later with a packet of information and details about the retrieval of the body. They would fly Jeff home with honors, and we could be there when he arrived. We could watch as they lowered the flag-draped casket. We could only wish he was getting off the plane and running toward us, like he normally did. He’d scoop the kids up first, and then he would grab me and spin me around. He’d whisper sweet words of love to me and my heart would swell with pride at the way he served his country, and the way he still served us. The way he loved us was pivotal. It was moving. It was perfect.

And it was no more.

Jeff was dead. He was never coming home again.

I walked into the kitchen on shaky legs. “Hey, kids,” I said quietly. My voice squeaked. I cleared my throat. “Kids,” I said again. “Let’s clean this up. Unless your last name is Stone, you need to go home.”

“But Mom,” Alex complained. Then he saw the look on my face. “Go home, guys,” he said. He was only seven, but he was so grown up in that moment. He looked over and saw Gabby standing by the stove and there were tears streaming down her face. She was fourteen the day we got the news that Jeff had died. But she may as well have been two. My stoic daughter was grieving, and I hadn’t even told her yet that her father was dead. Somehow she already knew.

Trixie slid her hand into Gabby’s. Gabby held it tightly, but she couldn’t stop the tears.

Once the other kids had gone home, I walked over to Gabby and pulled her against me. “You know,” I said. She nodded into my neck, her sobs nearly choking her.

“He’s gone,” she whispered.

“Yes.” I laid my forehead against hers.

“Did he suffer?”

“I don’t think so.”

She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Okay.” She steeled her spine and pulled her shoulders back. Then she picked Trixie up and set her on her hip. Alex took my hand.

“Who were those men?” Alex asked.

“They came to give us some really bad news,” I said. Then I took a deep breath and told my children that their father would not be coming home. I had to tell them that life as we knew it would never be the same.

We did watch the casket as it was removed from the airplane when they brought Jeff’s body back to the United States. It was almost as though time stood still. Soldiers who were there slowly saluted, their arm movement so precise that it looked almost like someone had slowed time. The airline employees doffed their caps, and when I looked up toward the area where passengers patiently awaited their flights behind a solid glass wall, they too were honoring my husband’s life. With their tears, with their reverence, and with all the feelings in their hearts, they paid their respects to my husband and to our family.

After the casket was loaded into the hearse, we followed it to the funeral home, where I would undergo the worst and best two days of my life. Family and friends showed up in droves, their fear and their worries thick enough in the room that it could choke a mortal person. But I was no longer a mortal person. I was the widow of a soldier. I was no longer a wife. I was a widow. I was suddenly super-human. But beneath it all, I was also flawed. Though I didn’t find that out until much later, a little more than a year, when the loneliness consumed me and someone new entered my life.

Cole was confident and charming. He was nice to my children and they had fun with him. He brought me flowers, and more important, he took me out of my grief and made me feel like a woman again.

Until the day he didn’t.