Out of the Blue

I watched 'Out of the blue' tonight it's about the Aramoana massacre in 1990, exactly 20 years ago today. I was about six months from being born when all this happened, and as a women looking towards having her own children soon I thought about all the children killed in that massacre. What my mother and others must have thought watching the news reports, how they must have felt. That made me cry, and it made MrsSteph cry too, when we saw the young police men go in. Men the same age as ours, wearing a similar uniform.
What would happen if our partners went out to a similar situation tomorrow, what would we do? Would we even know about it till we read it, heard about it, or saw it on the news? I am not my partners contact, since we are not yet married, and MrsSteph isn't her partners either. My partners mother wouldn't be able to contact me, and I would sit there waiting until he came home, or someone let me know what had happened to him. It's a terrifying thought but something defense force wives'/girlfriends'/partners' face every time when their men roll out on ships/ cars'/ planes/ tanks. That something will go wrong, someone might too fast and hit a cop car, or they might get shot out in 'peaceful' land on an overseas posting, or a wave might roll a navy ship, or a air force helicopter might crash as was seen earlier this year. They leave behind women, mothers, sisters', girlfriends'. Sitting their worrying about there men.  Leaving behind broken hearts of the worrying women, that makes me worry, that keeps me up at night. But it makes me stronger, me and many other women.
So many girls,women and partners of defense force men have nightmares about losing them to a defense force accident, like the airforce incident earlier this year, like Aramoana, like Hans Molenar in 2009, like the rainbow warrior back in the day, so many men, so many women, so many lives lost in keeping New Zealand safe.
I pray that there are no more defense force widows. But I know there will be more, I just hope my name and MrsSteph's never become household names as defense force widows.