While You Were Gone: Grocery Store

Red-faced, wailing, and inconsolable, the baby’s cries cut above the din of Walmart’s food aisles on this Thursday afternoon. Mary Brazie, mother to Aubrey and Aidan, has resigned herself to the constant protestations of her youngest child, who is calm in the car but disconsolate once forced into the child seat. Mary scans the aisles for the bread, peanut butter, and apple juice on her list, and contemplates whether a five pound bag of apples fits into her weekly budget, or if she should just pick up a few for now. She puts the full force of her small frame into maneuvering the shopping cart through the store, anxious to get the shopping trip over with as soon as possible.

“One look from Tyler, and the’d both be smiling,” sighs Mary Brazie, whose husband Tyler Brazie, a third class petty officer, is deployed with the Truman. Their first deployment has proved difficult for Mary, especially since Tyler is such an active father to her two children. “He’d be smiling, the kids would be happy, and he’d be making choices about what to buy because he loves to cook. When I first met him, I thought to myself, ‘this is the man that I love.’ It is harder than I expected to be without him, even for just the little things, like grocery shopping.

The day he deployed, he left a towel on the floor of the bathroom, and normally that would bother me, but for the longest time I didn’t even want to pick it up, because I missed him so much. I would give anything for him to be home right now, leaving towels all over the floor.”