When I began this blog the other morning, the subject was the damper that the impending stormy weather would have on that night’s bunco game, the one day a month that I’m guaranteed at least three hours of unbridled hilarity. But as the day went on, other facts much more serious came to light. Funny how everything can shift in the blink of an eye.

Like many groups that meet regularly, a quorum is needed for bunco…at least eight. Our group of twelve women is a mixture of ages (ok, generations), family composition, and occupations. It’s a great group of ladies, and even though I wouldn’t say that we are all friends, we all care about one another very much.

I’ve experienced living near a military installation on several occasions, and it definitely puts a different spin on nearby towns and communities. It seems that everyone in town is connected to the military somehow, either by relation or employment or some other way, and certainly touched during times of conflict. Particularly when are are casualties within a unit from that base.

So when Linda, one of our players, texted that she would not be coming to bunco that night and apologized for the late notice, I replied that I hoped everything was alright. It was not.

I believe that most people in the United States, and certainly those who don’t live near a military base, aren’t even aware that there is still a war going on in Afghanistan, let alone that there are more than 30,000 American troops there fighting the Taliban. They are, for the most part, young kids, albeit soldiers nonetheless. On Monday, five troops assigned to a special operations unit with Fort Campbell’s 101st Airborne unit were killed by a U.S. airstrike called in to help them after they were ambushed by the Taliban. This is called “friendly fire.” Their average age was only twenty-six years.

Linda’s husband is in that unit and he survived, but no one will really know how much he and the other survivors were affected by so horrific an encounter. To add to her own emotional toll is that Linda is the point-of-contact for the unit’s Family Readiness group (FRG), a support group for the troops’ loved ones left behind, so it was she that fielded the brunt of calls from the families wanting information. I can’t even begin to imagine the angst and the fear being felt by the family members.

As it turned out, there were enough players to play bunco, but it seemed that a degree of unusual seriousness overshadowed our group’s typical mirth. For my part, I just couldn’t get Linda, her soldier-husband and their five-year-old son off my mind. I know that life goes on despite whatever happens, but sometimes you just can’t help but wonder, “Why?”