Mourning Pops

The Grieving Process Finally Begins

My Mother Dragging Pops Away by the Ear — True Story! (Personal Photo)

I never mourned the death of my father. After 4 1/2 years downrange, I’m an expert at compartmentalizing trauma. Losing my father while fighting a losing war is a moral injury whose time has come.

Approximately 72 hours after I returned from my fourth deployment, my stepfather, a man who had adopted me at the age of 55, became mortal. He had a stroke.

I immediately flew to see him. This giant figure in my life lay helpless on a hospital bed. Hoses and wires littered his body. The man who towered over my life had finally met a foe he could not bulldoze: death.

In 2013, I was numb to such things. After speaking with the doctors, I realized he only had a few years left. I was overly optimistic. Less than two years later, my father, Joel Mark Selber, died with the love of his life sitting watch. That’s as good of a death as a man can ask.

I had missed his death tilting at windmills at Resolute Support. During my fifth deployment, America’s impotence was on full display. Ignoramuses littered senior-ranking positions. We were losing—and everyone knew it.

I had a chance to walk away from that deployment, but the war beckoned, like it always has, with its siren song of purpose. But my leadership's incompetence was staggering. That’s when I thought for the first time that perhaps we would lose.