THE FAMILY MEMBER EXPERIENCE

Occasionally I have made reference to the Family Readiness Group (FRG) to which I belong. The FRG is an alliance of willing military spouses banding together to handle issues that pop up while our soldier-spouses are deployed.

To be honest, many spouses have little regard for the FRG, and choose not to participate in the meetings and cookouts that are designed to create a bond between one another. But some of us do...and every now and again it pays dividends.

Case in point: My phone rang at 11:00 pm last night. It was one of our active spouses, Maritza. She told me that a German ambulance was in her housing area picking up a spouse from our company. Let's call the injured lady "Susan".

Susan had been hit by a car while rollerblading in the housing area. She had multiple fractures, dislocations and abrasions.

Forty-five minutes later I was at the hospital. Expecting that I would have to sit and wait for information I was surprised to find Susan's 15 year-old sister absolutely alone in the emergency room waiting area. Sister is visiting Susan from Bulgaria. I speak no Bulgarian. But in pidgen English and German we were able to communicate a bit.

Of course, I needed no linguistic skills to recognize that Sister was distraught.

I also knew we needed a plan to touch a lot of bases...to include what to do with Sister.

Sister thought she wanted to sit in the hospital overnight...though I tried to get her to understand that Susan was already on morphine and would be given sedatives once the bones were set. I wasn't getting through.

I conferred again with Maritza, the one who called me originally. Told her about Sister, and gave her an update on Susan. Ten minutes later, Maritza calls me back. She and Jolie would be leaving for the hospital just as soon as Jolie could arrange for someone to watch her two young sons. (By now it is about 1:00 am).

Who is Jolie?, I asked.

Oh - she is another military spouse who comes originally from...Bulgaria.

Two spouses from Bulgaria on the same block??? Only in the Army.

Long story short...Maritza and Jolie convince Sister to come home (no doubt helped by Jolie's language skills), and by 8:30 this morning we had notified Susan's employer, begun the notification process to let her husband in Baghdad know, had also notified everyone in the Family Readiness Group - so that visits and flowers and cards and caring begins flowing to Susan today.

And I'm confident that by this afternoon Maritza and Jolie will have devised a plan for taking care of Sister.

In a word, the FRG did exactly what the FRG is designed to do.

Now, I don't know...because I've never worked there. But do you think the employees at Wachovia bank have such a safety net, should something happen to their loved ones while the employee is on the road?