I wanted to share this with everyone. The author of this is an amazing gold star child who since this day she wrote about has grown into an amazing young woman following her passion and dreams. We did not have the opportunity to send her to camp though our foundation. We would like to honor her Dad, her family and the village that help her through the good and bad times. If you have never understood the “knock at the door” this will open your eyes to what Gold Star families deal with. Thank you, Katie, and your amazing family for allowing us to share this with our followers.
Life: a hurricane
KATIE CONNER· SATURDAY, JULY 2, 2016
Life can change in an instant.Your world can turn upside down at any moment. Many people know this, but only few actually experience it. People hear about certain tragedies and sympathize with them through friends’ situations, media coverage and Facebook posts. The news covers celebrity gossip and crooked political campaigns before they ever shed light on the people giving them their freedom to even talk about those things. The media is silent to our military heroes and their surviving families. The public may be saddened by our fallen heroes and may experience a sense of pride and patriotism through it, but there are few who actually feel the effects and experience the world altering change.These sudden changes alter lives and make people who they are, giving them an identity. But what truly defines us isn’t a situation, but rather they way we react to it.
It was an ordinary Wednesday on May 9, 2007, in Fort Lewis, Washington. My brother, Aaron, and I went to school like any normal day. Mom handed us our “made with love” lunches and kissed us goodbye as we walked to the bus stop. We are not, nor have we ever been, morning people, so we never spoke on our walk to the bus stop. Instead we would listen to our new iPods, since we just upgraded from CD player Walkman’s (mine said Princess on it in rhinestones). This day was ordinary, and it surprisingly didn’t drizzle its usual cold rain. Aaron and I rarely sat next to each other on the bus since he was the tough 8th grader, which is obviously uncool to hang out with your 7th grade sister in public. Today we were excited. Mom had told us we could each have a friend over after school. To this day, I don’t remember why they were going to come over, seeing that it was a school night, but we were anticipating the dismissal bell at end of the day.
An announcement came nearing the end of the day instructing us to ride the bus home without our friends. Confused and disappointed by this change of plans, I asked my friend why she couldn’t come over anymore. She was just as curious as I was about this new piece of information, causing me to think mom might have changed her mind about having company.
No. Mom wouldn’t do that. She’s a planner. She would’ve baked cookies and stocked up on Mountain Dew by now in anticipation of two more preteens at her house. She is a hospitable Southern Bell, after all.
When the bell rang for the end of the day, I staggered to the bus, annoyed that I would now have to be bored at home with no friend to mess with my brother and his cute friend. Thoughts of dread crossed my mind, as it would for any child in the military community, but I pushed them aside. I was an invincible kid, nothing bad would ever happen to me. When Aaron got on the bus, we immediately locked eyes, where our brother-sister telepathy set in.
Dad.
We both befriended this feeling of fear and impending doom, causing him to sit next to me on the bus, which, as stated, was a rare occurrence. This day was no longer ordinary. The bus ride home was usually my turf. I was that kid who would start “Hollaback Girl” or “Don’t Stop Believing” until all the kids chimed in, causing a choir of middle school kids and snarky looks from the bus driver. Not today. As big brother sat next to me, not a word was spoken, our eyes did not roam to look for our friends nor did we bother getting out our super-cool iPods, which is weird because Aaron needs music as a sort of soundtrack of his life.
The usual 20-minute drive lasted what seemed hours. My mind wandered and my eyes were unfocused. As we reached our stop, we hesitantly gathered our backpacks and thoughts and began the 2-minute journey home. Today, I did not race Aaron home to get on the computer first. We walked, unwillingly and gently, for every step we took we could feel the increasing tremors in our hearts and decay of our patience. At this point, we were unsure of what was to come, since we had no information of what had happened, but we could feel in every ounce of our being that something was about to change.
Aaron held his breath as he opened the door and walked in, not ready to face what was ahead. When we saw the image of our living room, we needed no explanation. It is an image, like a painting, that will forever be burned in my memory and my heart. I don’t even know if what is in my memory is completely real or the truth of this actual scene. It is a scene from a movie on replay in my brain.
Our house always smelled good, it was warm and welcoming. It was something I always noticed. It was May, and it had smelled like lavender for the days prior. As I forced myself into the house, I smelled nothing. There was no sense: I felt nothing, I heard nothing. I was numb and had not yet been informed why, but at this point, I needed no explanation. Mom was sitting on the couch with two of our neighbors, both army wives, and in the corner, there he was. The chaplain. I was hoping he was a figure of my imagination or an angel or a ghost or something. But I knew he was very much real and he was my worst enemy. Bracing himself for a crash landing, Aaron dropped his things and sat in the rocking chair adjacent to the couch. He sat with his hands crossed in his lap and made no eye contact. He stared through everything. I stood next to the rocking chair, knowing that Aaron and I had to do this together.
Aaron was a 14-year-old spitting image of dad, but with mom’s coloring. He had red hair, and kept it short to resemble dad’s manly army flat top. He held himself high, wanting to represent his family as the man, starting deep thinking conversations that were way above his maturity level. I was a 12-year-old spitfire, making people notice that I was strong and independent. I was a good mix of mom and dad, except with crazier red hair.
As mom knelt down to get to his level, she grabbed Aaron’s hands. She was reluctant in explaining the situation, because she knew the words she would tell us would hurt and add a burden that she couldn’t take away.
Mom was and will forever be our role model and inspiration. She always put her kids first, even before she had kids. She married dad at a young age and was the one who held down the fort when dad was deployed. Mom and dad were sweethearts. They knew they wanted kids, and mom was meant to be a mother. Mom was a strong woman. To be a Special Forces wife and raise three children through many deployments takes some kind of bionic superhero woman. That was mom already.
“Sweetie, daddy’s convoy was hit by a roadside bomb and he died.”Boom. There it was.
Now the exact words she said left me the second she said them. Every time I think of this day, I never remember exactly what she said because I drowned it out. The words were spoken and there was no time machine to unhear it. I watched the innocence and childhood leave my brother’s eyes in an instant. What replaced it was this urge to step up and be the man. He cried with mom and hugged her.
I did not cry. I searched the room for some kind of escape, some way to say, “I don’t want that to happen,” “This doesn’t work for me.” I felt as if I had taken a baseball to the throat, causing me not to speak. I felt this tension behind my eyes, giving me a headache and tunnel vision preventing me from crying. I wanted to run back to school because I was safe there earlier that day. Now I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t take away the hurt we all felt. I was helpless. All I knew to do was give a consoling hug to mom as the neighbor ladies were crying on the couch. The chaplain said my 6-year-old sister was being walked home from school, and Aaron volunteered to tell her the news, exhibiting his already changed person. At that moment, I ran outside, mounted my bike and rode away, for I did not want to see the childhood stolen from a toddler. I was gone for a few hours, and to this day, I do not remember where I went. I rode around and blocked out what I was thinking, as I felt whatever ounce of innocence and childhood I had left until it ran out like an hourglass. I was hoping I would crash or fall so it would wake me up from this nightmare like it does when you’re asleep. I remember returning home and it was nighttime. My sister, Rachel, and Aaron were watching Spongebob on the couch, reassuring the smallest bit of normalcy we could comprehend. She wouldn’t understand death until later in life.
The next few days, weeks and months were a hurricane. The rains of emotion: breaking down in anger, sadness, fear, loneliness and numbness. The suffocating flood of attention: the “I’m sorry for your loss,” “He was a great man,” “I’m praying for you,” “Stay strong,” and “I know how you feel” was drowning me. The winds of despair telling me that I am knocked down and won’t be able to get back up because I’m not strong enough. The debris of everything else in my life: school, friends, hobbies, sports didn’t matter anymore; it was all a mess. The fear of change: not knowing what would happen next or how you can move on when everything is crashing in on you.
But here’s the thing about hurricanes: they clear up. They cause damage, loss and pain, but you know it ends when the sun shines through. When it’s over, there is still the memory of the pain and the damage. The damage takes a lifetime to get through, but you become a stronger person through it.
At that point in my life, I was a kid who never thought I would see the sun again. I thought the rest of my life would be a grey cloud focused solely on what I had lost. As I have grown, I have realized something. You never get over it, you never stop missing him and the pain never goes away. You choke back tears seeing those soldiers coming home videos on Facebook. You celebrate Veterans Day and Memorial Day to the fullest. You appreciate the good things in life and don’t take things for granted. You never miss and opportunity to tell someone how much they mean to you. You move on and get stronger.
I was mad at God for a long time. I was selfish and wanted to know why he would do this to me. My realization is that if I had not gone through this tragedy, I would not be who I am today. I would not be able to relate to those in similar situations and share my testimony or mentor them. I would not be as humble and thankful for my family. God wasn’t punishing me, he was pushing me: Pushing me to reach my full potential and make me stronger.
My point of this is to say that there is light in the midst of darkness or positive from a negative. It has taken years to get to this realization, with lots of love and support along the way. I used to be seen as “the girl who lost her dad” or something similar. It was not an identity that I wanted for myself, nor did I give to myself. I did not want that to define me. I did not want to be seen as the girl with the dead dad and have people walk on eggshells around me thinking I’m fragile and weak. Absolutely not. So I did something about it.
I was a top cadet in my high school’s JROTC. I was a top actress in the drama club. I was a youth leader in church. I graduated in the top 30 of my class of over 550 students. I had a 4.3 GPA. I was accepted into every college I applied to. I wanted to prove myself. I wanted people to know me and what I was capable of before they knew my story. I wanted to define myself. It’s been a long road, and will always be challenging. I graduated college cum laude with a degree in public relations and Spanish. I was the president of my sorority. I had the opportunity to study abroad in Spain. I have owned a legally established business for nearly four years. All of this, I owe to my dad’s sacrifice.
The core of my testimony is to show that after the rain comes a rainbow. I’ve experienced a horrible tragedy, but chose to make something out of it. I’ve been able to mentor kids who have also lost their fathers in combat, which is the most rewarding thing I can do. My testimony is a defining part of my identity, but it does not define me nor hinder who I am. I am better because of it.
My favorite quote speaks volumes to me. It is from Lord of the Rings, my favorite books and movies. “…Sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think; I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something…there's some good in the world, and it's worth fighting for.”
I’ve learned that no matter what, I have to keep going. I will not be defined by what has happened to me. I will define myself by how I have reacted to it, and continue to hurdle over all obstacles I may be thrown.
My father was SGM Bradly Dean Conner. He was a green beret in the army. He was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on May 9, 2007. He went on five deployments for the war on terror. Dad was an inspiration to all who knew him. He kept his military life and family life very separate. He was the best dad and an awesome husband to mom. We all knew he loved us. He was a man of God. I miss him everyday, and I can’t wait to see him again soon. Not a day goes by that we don't miss him or think about his strange habits: the way we could hear his joints crack when he walked up the stairs (blame the special forces for that one), or how he always had to eat a bowl of ice cream before bed, how he'd watch horror movies by himself because he was a badass, how he'd take us out of school to go see the Star Wars movies, how he'd pay us a quarter to give him back rubs, or how no matter what we could always tell he loved us and mom. Even though we lost him, he still sets the example and continues to inspire everyone with his legacy and God-fearing testimonies. I thank God everyday that I was blessed with this awesome dad, even if it was only for 12 years.
I would not have gotten this far in life without my family. Mom Cyndi Gunter Conner, Aaron and Rache constantly make me want to be a better person.
Thanks to organizations like Special Operations Warrior Foundation for making it possible for kids like me to go to college without the worry of financial strain. Thank you to the kids with the same background that I share that special bond with. You all continue to inspire me.
Mentors and staff of Special Operations Warrior Foundation, 2016
Thank you to our military: Those serving, those who have served and those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. We all owe our freedoms to you. Paul Sasse Brendan Hay Jason Inman
Thanks to God in every aspect of my life. "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me!'" Isaiah 6:8