CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Wendy Derkits stood in front of the camera to deliver a holiday message thousands of miles away.
She wanted to tell her husband at war that she loved him and wish him a merry Christmas, but with the camera running and people watching, her words were replaced by tears.
Hours later, she sat in her living room trying to figure out how to tell her Marine husband what she wanted him to hear.
So she set up her own video camera and just started to talk, telling him everything a wife tells a husband: about their children, the family, their Christmas plans. She showed him the house, the tree and the decorations.
“It was an hour of nothingness. But it was me, normal. Me, everyday. He doesn’t need to remember me sad and crying. That’s not what he needs. He needs regular me,” said Derkits, 24, of Oceanside.
For some Marines and soldiers, this is their first Christmas away from family. For others, it is a second, third or fourth missed holiday season.
But unlike wars past, many deployed military personnel will have an opportunity to connect with loved ones: from sending Christmas wishes in a video message to participating in a two-way videoconference or using a webcam.
“Twenty years ago, you sent a letter,” said Navy Chaplain William Kennedy, who counsels Marines, sailors and family members about overcoming the lost holidays together. “Now it’s instant messaging and three e-mails a day.”
This is the fifth deployment — the second at Christmas — that Dina Gutierrez, 37, and her two sons have been without the boys’ father. The first Christmas, she and her husband used webcams to talk about gifts for their two sons, now 2 and 4. This time she has had to rely on recorded video messages because her husband is at sea with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
“It’s like a lifeline for him more than us,” said Gutierrez, of Marco Island, Fla. “Just being able to see the boys is good for him.”
The vivid yet fleeting nature of the connection can make it hard on families.
“Sometimes it’s hard when you get that 15 to 20 minutes of seeing the family and you have six or seven months left on your deployment,” Kennedy said. “There’s a little bit of letdown afterward.”
