You’ll never realize how much you miss someone until they’re away. The days that you spent with them talking, and having a good time, are gone. Everyday when you would walk in the house and get to ask them how their day was, it turned into not getting to talk to them at all.
On Feb. 19, my brother left to go to basic training for the Army. He was stationed 8 and a half hours away from my home town in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
A little bit about basic training is that every soldier is to bring their items that their sergeants gave them a list of, and themselves. You are not allowed to have your phone, and you are not allowed to have something that was not on the list. If you do, this will be contraband. Contraband is something that is prohibited in the U.S military.
Since there were no phones allowed, sergeants gave their soldiers a single hour each Sunday to talk to their loved ones. But they didn’t always receive it. If you, or people within your platoon do something to upset a sergeant, you can get this taken away from you. That means that you could go multiple weeks without talking to your loved one.
It sounds like it wouldn’t be too bad, but it’s worse than it sounds. A person that I got to see every single day, I now didn’t get to see or talk to. Many times it occurred that my brother would call my family from basic, while I was working, This meant that I didn’t get to talk to him for that week.
The good thing is that basic training is only 10 weeks, because now that those 10 weeks are over, he is now graduated from basic and is going on to AIT. He is allowed to have his phone at AIT so even though he is still 8 and a half hours away, I can still talk to him.
As a little sister I can’t even put into words how proud and happy I am for my brother Matthew. Not only has he done something that is so hard mentally and physically, he never gave up. All the times he could’ve walked away or quit, he didn’t, and that is what he gets to live and see everyday.
