For families with a loved one actively serving in the military, the holidays can be a poignant reminder of their absence.
In New Ipswich, this will be the Lambert family’s first Christmas without their son Cole, who enlisted in the Navy this year and completed boot camp on Thanksgiving.
“It’ll be hard to not have him at Christmas, being his goofy self,” said his father, Matt Lambert.
Cole intends to become a Navy Corpsman, and is now completing Aide school in San Antonio, Texas.
“The couple days he has off on Christmas will be his first days on leave since he started,” Lambert said.
Cole’s girlfriend’s family lives near San Antonio, Lambert said, and Cole will be spending Christmas with them.
The Lamberts have already sent their Christmas presents for Cole to the family’s house.
“If we had a choice, we’d go visit him on Thanksgiving,” Lambert said, as it’s the most important holiday of the year for his family.
However, Lambert said he knows his son will have little control over his schedule as his military career continues.
“It’s not up to him,” he said. “I told him I don’t expect anything, and appreciate everything.”
While separation during the holidays can be hard, for the Lambert family it has also been a blessing in some ways.
“We are so proud, I can’t tell you how much pride we have when we get to talk,” Lambert said, and that he’s seen positive changes in the family’s dynamics since Cole enlisted.
“He just wanted to spend time with us,” he said, when the family attended Cole’s boot camp graduation.
The feeling is apparently mutual: Cole’s siblings tell him they love him when they talk on the phone, which never would have happened when Cole was home, Lambert said.
John Curran of Peterborough has a son in the Army who has been deployed three times in the last four and a half years. To Curran, any of his son’s deployments feel about the same, regardless of whether they’re during the holidays or not.
“The first deployment was hard,” he said, especially not knowing whether his son was safe whenever a death of a U.S. serviceman made the news.
“Statistically, the odds are it’s not your kid, but it means for a week you’re in a blackout, you hear nothing,” he said. “By the third deployment, we just weren’t listening anymore. … It just becomes life.”
Curran said when his son is missing for a family event due to military service, “It is what it is.”
Curran himself was away from home many times, serving as a Marine, when his son was growing up.
“I served. Every guy in the family has served. He grew up with that. … I missed, like, our first 10 wedding anniversaries,” Curran said, while he was in the Marine Corps.
Dublin resident Laura Maxfield is spending Christmas separated from her 22-year-old son Lucas, who is currently deployed overseas as a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps. He’s been in the service for three years, Maxfield said, but this will be the first Christmas he’s away.
“There are times when I feel sad, or worried, but that doesn’t do a whole lot for the person who’s deployed,” Maxfield said. “I’m seasoned at this. His dad was in the marines for 20 years so this is probably a little easier for me than someone who’s going through this for the first time.”
Over the years, Maxfield said she’s realized that she has no control over what happens to her loved ones in the service.
“Spending a lot of time worrying and being upset is kind of a waste of energy,” she said.
Instead, she said she’s focused on the things she can control, like sending letters and care packages, and being available for calls.
“Families should know that their son or daughter is going through difficult changes,” Maxfield said. “They are learning new things, even if they’re in a place with no conflict.”
She said that adjusting to new living situations and the personalities of their colleagues can prompt loneliness, and sometimes depression or anxiety. She also recommended staying in contact with and being supportive to a serviceman’s significant other, if they have one.
For Christmas, Maxfield collected gifts and letters, cards, and snacks, including gifts from Lucas’s brother and sister. She filled a stocking, and wrapped up everything in two flat rate boxes with candy scattered inside.
“I tried to make it festive and as fun as possible,” she said, “So he should have a fun time opening up everything.”
Additionally, Maxfield let her Facebook friends know they could private message her for Lucas’ address. She said that Lucas’ second grade teacher contacted her to say that her entire class was making Christmas cards to send to him.
Lambert also posted Cole’s mailing address on Facebook, and said he was surprised by some of the community members who wrote letters to his son. He said that it’s been important to Cole to receive letters from friends from high school friends and people from his hometown.
“Depending on where someone is, it can take up to three weeks for someone to get a package,” Maxfield said.
Mail for troops requires a specific name and address nowadays, she said, rather than sending a package to a unit like in the past.
“If you’re sending a book or movie, try and stay away from things that involve war,” she said. “They’re already living that on a daily basis.”
Instead, she suggested genres that will be interesting to the individual, that also “takes them away from the world that they’re in for a bit of time.”
She also recommended exchanging photos or video of family members, particularly children at home, so that families can keep up with any physical changes and ease the re-adjustment period when a service member returns home.