Sometime in August 2025, I hopped online to book my routine — yet always highly anticipated — haircut and color during my lunch break on Friday, Oct. 3. Then, a lot of life happened, as it does, until late September, when my husband relayed that his last flight in the C-130J was scheduled for the afternoon of — you guessed it — Friday, Oct. 3. No one was more disappointed than I was that I hadn’t seen this change of plans coming from a mile away — classic Marine Corps.
I canceled my appointment. I shook my head and rolled my eyes while doing it, but I canceled my appointment. We asked the kids if they’d like to miss an afternoon of school to watch Dad land the Herc one more time; we got one all-caps “YES!” from our middle schooler before we could get the words out and one cautious “OK” from our high schooler, who wanted to make sure we could return him to school afterward so he didn’t get behind or miss soccer practice.
And that was that. An otherwise normal day — I’d just pop out, pick up the kids from their respective schools, zip over to base, and be back before the end of the workday.
Reality Check
As the day approached, I shared the date with my go-to text chain of two fellow Marine Corps friends who turned into family. You know those friends — they’ll go to bat for you without even knowing the details because you are always right, and when you’re wrong, they tell you.
One of these friends just happens to be local (not sarcastically: thanks, Marine Corps) and accepted the invitation to be there for the last flight with almost as much enthusiasm as our middle schooler. The friend on the other side of the country (sarcastically: thanks, Marine Corps) matched the enthusiasm and asked if I would have a photographer there.
Well, that honestly hadn’t occurred to me. For months, our family’s focus was on planning for the upcoming retirement. The last flight — even though we understood the significance — was more of a box to check versus a separate occasion. I assumed we’d be there, snap some pictures with our phones and carry on with our Friday.
I overthought it, as I do. And just to squash the what-ifs, I asked the photographer booked for the retirement — another fellow Marine spouse — if she could be there for the final flight too. I lathered the email in the typical way: I know it’s short notice, no worries if you can’t, just wanted to check, etc.
Turns out, she was available. Turns out, I am glad I asked.
Approach and Landing
Friday, Oct. 3, arrived. The kids went to school. My husband left for work. And I switched on my computer to start my workday.
I left when it was time to head to base and picked up both kids. Everything was going according to plan. We were even met at the squadron turnstile and swiped through without having to wave people down or text people in the building. Maybe not a first for me, but a rarity.
I made small talk with the kids, my in-laws, the photographer, and the friend I’d invited via text days earlier. It was uncharacteristically windy that day on the flightline — it seems I was never meant to have good hair that day. Conversations would pause as jets took off. It all felt so normal.
As the time approached, I watched as every instructor and student from my husband’s squadron filed onto the flight line.
To my left, the station fire trucks stood by, ready for the ceremonial water gun salute.
The buzz and the normalcy carried on without me as the significance of this moment started to hit me.
This was the very same flight line where I stood — absolutely freezing — waiting for my husband to return from Iraq. It was the same flight line where our now high schooler and I took photos together in front of the Herc, commemorating his first Christmas, the first of a few he would spend without his dad over the years. It was the same flightline where I stood with our son — both of us absolutely freezing . . . can a girl get a summer homecoming? — waiting for my husband to return from his second deployment.
Since then, there have been too many takeoffs and landings to count. Years of changing plans, moving, flexing, doing more with less, making friends, losing friends, all the best days, all the days that tried my patience — it was all about to be punctuated as soon as those wheels touched down one more time.
So there, in an admittedly poetic bookend moment, we waited for his plane to come into view.
When it did, my brain hopped in the backseat and my emotions took the wheel. I fidgeted with the charms on my necklaces as he approached and did his fancy banking maneuvers.
He touched down one last time in the Herc as planned. Tears pooled in my eyes (must have been the wind), and I let out an exhale that had been building for the past 17 years. Bittersweet — somehow too early and long overdue at the same time, it was over.
Even then, fully conscious of the significance, the moment flew by — a blur of activity, like so many milestones in life. But, forever, long after the little details fall out of the memory of that day, I can look at the photos, remember the butterflies in my stomach, pride in my heart, wind in my hair, and tears in my eyes.
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