MAJ Carmen Decker-Smith, U.S. Army

I would like to preface this entry by saying that, as you know, it was hard for me to do. The questions are good ones, and the answers are revealing. I am generally a private person. Very, actually. To readers, I will admit that I dragged my feet with this blog entry for a month. And might have for longer if Jenn and I weren’t friends and if I didn’t respect her work, and if I didn’t support her fantastic project. However, we are and I do. So, here goes!

I used to want to do everything. As in, if you asked what I wanted “to be” I would tell you, Everything. If you asked where I wanted to live, well, I would tell you everywhere. I’ve narrowed it down some since then. I’ve been a bank teller, a waitress, a truck mechanic, a substitute teacher, an ICU nurse, a nurse practitioner. I’ve also been a stay-at-home mom, a single mom, a high school dropout and university faculty. I don’t think I’ve ever had a job I didn’t enjoy, by the way.

I have one sibling, a sister a year younger than me; she has been in the Army for 26 years. We’ve been neighbors for 6 duty stations over 20 years. Can you imagine? What a blessing! Our children are like siblings and, as children, my boys have memorized her number before our own at a new duty station. She commissioned me as a captain and promoted me to major, then lieutenant colonel. She was a sergeant when I was a specialist. We shared maternity BDUs and, for a long time, Class A’s. When my middle son was injured and I moved on post for ADA housing, her husband and her sold their home and moved on post, too, living four doors down.

Six years ago, my middle son, Aesop (Ace), fell while hiking in Colorado. He was 20 at the time; my snowboarding, water skiing, camping, skateboarding, irreverent joy. Tall and thin, known to answer questions by singing lines from songs of all genres until I went from angry to laughing. He sustained a profound head injury and a complete spinal cord injury. And many other injuries, but the enduring deficits fall into one of those two categories. He was in a coma for 5 weeks, and the medical story is too long for this blog. But it sucked. And it was amazing. We were lifted by prayer and family and friends. I must have whispered, “Don’t leave” in my boy’s ear a million times.

My oldest son, who was in the Air Force at the time, came to hospital from Monterey the following day; I had told him to bring his dress uniform. After he returned to DLI two weeks later, his brother still in a coma, he called me and said, "All I can think about is Ace. Can I come back home?" He took a hardship separation and has been his brother’s caregiver since. My sister and I stayed at the hospital 24/7 during his ICU stay. Someone was with Ace 24/7 for the entire time he was in the hospital; we eventually enlisted the generous help of friends and family and rotated “shifts,” but for those first few weeks my sister and I never left. She went for days without seeing her own kids, and the only time I could sleep was when she was there.

There is a book-long story to tell, so I’ll summarize by answering the question, How did you overcome it? by saying: with unfailing hope.

Oh, and my boys—all three of them—have punched each other since.

Well, when I met you in 2014, it was a year and a week after Ace got hurt; he had spent about 6 and a half of those 12 months in the hospital. I had moved to ADA housing, re-ordered my life and learned how to ask for help. (A hard lesson for me!) I was tired and wound up tight. I did terrible in school, but the experience was exactly what I needed.

I had no—I mean zero, zip, a big goose egg—balance in my life when I showed up, just in time, to sign in for school. Of necessity, my whole family’s lives had revolved around my son’s care and recovery, and I didn’t do much else. My head was at home while I was work, I was near anti-social; exercise and sleep were fading memories. I am smiling as I write this because it’s sounds so…dramatic. But it was. One of my dearest friends told me that Aesop’s recovery was going to be a marathon, not a sprint, and that I needed to pace myself. Wise advice, which I promptly disregarded.

So, what happened since? Well, first of all, a three-and-a-half month TDY hit a reset button for me. I went back to church and the gym and out to eat and the occasional play and spent more than a minute on my appearance for the first time in years. I also spent time with friends, new and old, and every conversation didn’t start and end with how Ace was doing and with how I was “holding up.” Simple things, I know. And then I took those simple things home with me and sustained some of them. It sounds so easy. (It wasn’t easy!)

I’ve been moving around with the Army for longer than I haven’t. Previously, as a spouse, and a Reservist and on active duty. I have been compelled to serve, and am proud to serve; it’s difficult to articulate, but I think most of us who have get it, even with my inability to write it well.