Plans to give you hope and a future

It is uncanny how things have fallen so neatly into place this past year. A year ago, I was going through the motions, living on borrowed time, certain against hope that all this rush of good luck was all much, much too good to be true. A last desperate fling at a "wetting down" (promotion party) I refused to postpone, overshadowed by a preliminary diagnosis I whispered to no one but the nagging doubts in my head. Maybe it won't be, maybe it won't...

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

It was, of course, all much too good to be true; and it vanished suddenly, irrevocably, one cold March afternoon in a sequence of phone messages, less than two hours apart, blinking at me in blatant violation of secure-space policy from a silenced phone. Dissolved around me as I sat, sobbing, locked in my car in the parking lot of Navy Surface Warfare Officer School, frustrated, exhausted, spent. What had seemed so limitless now choked in around me. This had been my chance, my golden ticket, my unrealistic and unexpected top pick, my way out, my validation that a born-and-bred intellectual with a degree in medieval English and 15 years of classical violin training could really, against all odds, in defiance of nature, nurture, and family expectations, be at heart a salty sailor, a shipdriver. My payback for sacrificing pride and personal life watch after watch, week after week, patrol after patrol, two boards and thirteen months later, all for a qualification letter and a captain's trust and a hard-earned recommendation. And now, all at once, all gone.

But from the beginning, things fell into place. My command urged me to tell the detailer where I wanted to go for treatment, instead of letting HQ pick. Unbelieving, I picked the Bay Area, and to my shock ended up back on the West Coast, centrally located between family members, and, incredibly, living just an hour's drive from my best friend, whom I'd lived far away from since high school. I went to one of the top civilian hospitals and received top-notch care. The first people to respond to my house-rental ad have been fantastic renters: my house looks better now than it ever did when I lived there. I ended up in a job - intended to be nothing more than a holding pen while I recovered - which was ideally suited to me, where I could draw on my experience, knowledge, and connections and really make a difference at a critical juncture. My command was exceptionally supportive of me. I was able to take large chunks of leave, including an unforgettable trip to South Africa. I landed this irreplaceable deployment opportunity. My latest PET/CT scan came out completely negative. I've seen more of my family in the past several months than in the five years previous. I had few lasting side effects, none seriously disabling. The Coast Guard paid for every penny of my treatment. And, to top it all off, somehow two captains who barely knew me negotiated to get me my top pick this summer, an assignment twin to last year's canceled orders.

Why?

The whole series of uncannily fortunate events has conspired to make me wonder what manifest destiny awaits me. I am certainly no perfect and upright person. There are undoubtedly those far more perfect and upright than me who were touched by far worse. And I wasn't just spared; I was blessed; I've been returned tenfold.

Why?

What burden now must I carry, what torch do I bear, for those who failed to make it this far? What debt must I pay?

Why?