Then 9/11 happened, and everything changed. I remember waking up to Jesse knocking on my window. I rushed into the living room, opened the door, and he said, "They got the Pentagon! We’re going to war!" I turned and realized that the TV was already on, my grandma, who I was living with at the time, was already up and had turned it on. During the time between Jesse leaving his house, about a mile from me, and arriving at my house, the second tour had fallen. We just sat there, watching the TV and clinging to each other.

By Sept. 12, Jesse was talking about joining the military. War was inevitable, and he wasn’t about to let other people fight while he sat at home. I was completely against the idea—I cried, we argued, I told him repeatedly that if the military needed him, they’d reinstate the draft—they had plenty of people already! He had just started college, and the last thing I wanted was for him to drop out and move away!

Jesse stopped talking about the military after a while, and I thought he’d given up on the idea. I studied abroad in Costa Rica in January 2002, and while I was gone, we didn’t get to talk too often. A couple of times, in e-mails, he mentioned that he was praying and thinking about making a big decision. I had a feeling what it was, and my feeling was confirmed when I called home during the third week in January, and Jesse told me that he had decided to enlist in the Army!

I remember very clearly asking Jesse if this meant he was going to break up with me. "That will be up to you," he told me. I hung on to that statement for the two weeks until I came home. I thought about it, prayed about it, and decided that I was definitely going to stick this out—that I wasn’t going to throw away a relationship with the man I loved just because it was going to be hard.

When I got home from Costa Rica, Jesse told me that night that he was breaking up with me. He said he didn’t want to put me through military life, and that he felt this was something he needed to do on his own. I was crushed, but determined to hang on. I knew this couldn’t be the end for us.

Of course, Jesse didn’t do so well at the breaking-up thing, either. We still acted like we were dating the entire time he considered us "broken up," and as far as I was concerned, we were still a couple. When he left for basic in March 2001, we were on somewhat-uncertain terms, but I was determined to make this work.

Needless to say, basic training convinced Jesse that our relationship wasn’t something he was willing to give up. By the time he finished basic, we were definitely on more certain terms. I was really disappointed when I found out he would be stationed in Fort Benning, Ga., but we decided we would figure out a way to make this work. On the drive home from Fort Knox, Ky., after he graduated, we talked a lot about the future—about getting married, and what our plans were.

When Jesse got to Fort Benning, his unit was in the middle of a six-month routine deployment to Kuwait. Because the Army is the Army, he didn’t get sent to join them for a month or two, but eventually, he headed to the Middle
East for the first time. At the time, we knew things were beginning to brew in Iraq, and the rumor was that his unit’s deployment would be extended. As it turned out, it wasn’t, so Jesse’s first jaunt to the Middle East was just weeks long.

The big question
I flew down to visit Jesse for three days in October, and we had a wonderful time. While I was there, he asked me to marry him. We knew he was deploying again soon, and we decided that if he deployed before the holidays, and didn’t get to come home first, we would tell our parents that we were engaged before he left; but if he got to come home first, he would "officially" propose then.

After a lot of false alarms, Jesse came home Dec. 21, to stay until Dec. 28, before being deployed. That night, he proposed to me. He totally surprised me—picked me up after work and took me to his parents’ house. His family had helped him by decorating the back porch with four- or five-dozen roses, flaming Tiki torches, white Christmas lights, holly and an adorable figuring of a mouse asking another mouse to marry him. Jesse got down on one knee, pulled out a beautiful ring, and asked me to marry him.

Of course, I said "yes," and the next week was a whirlwind! We had the most wonderful visit; it was amazing.

Jesse left the first week in January for Kuwait again. This time was different—we knew he wouldn’t be home without visiting Iraq first.

Sure enough, Jesse was among the first to cross the border into Iraq when the war began in March 2003. Jesse’s first trip to Iraq was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gone through. I knew he was in danger every day, and to make matters worse, he was unable to call me from mid-February until June.