love is no big truth

Brother Keller,
It took a flag waving at me that someone in the middle of early morning on my block had placed in my front yard for veteran's day to remind me to write you. Of course that proud, stout beautiful thing standing in my lawn can't replace the loving arms that I have been parted from. As it stood, I sat down on my front porch and cried like a child.

The first call Brandon was able to make from out of the country was in a small telephone booth in Romania. I couldn't hear him very well and could hear the echo of my own words too loudly. We had fifteen minutes to figure out the delay, make small talk and then openly declare with the timer running out that we love--- and then the phone died.
There was one other element to the conversation that existed and until I opened the door yesterday to mail a letter to Afghanistan that probably wont see him for four months, I had forgotten. Brandon said this to me;

Please, will you get on my computer and log into my byu email and write Brother Keller back? Will you tell him that the internet isn't functioning and that I am safe?

Again, my husband astounded me with his love and relations with the people around him.

My character is more reserved, I have an acute fear of social interactions, mainly in groups. I've always been this way, and in many aspects it is what kept me from being at least approachable to Brandon for three years.

In many ways, he tells me that it is this war that has brought us together.

He says that it has given him courage to be with someone like me.
I am still discovering who someone like me is and my mind revolts against the possibility that my life will be anything without his.

This war has brought us together.

This is something that I understand, but I don't feel it in my heart yet. The days are long and the nights are longer and I wonder selfishly if this conflict in another world from ours is worth a man like Brandon's life.

It must be.

And each day I fight the battle of thought here, of accepting the choice of someone I love more than I care for myself.


Sir, I can't tell you if he is always going to be safe, but I want to tell you that he is doing his best. I want to thank you for always offering your kindness and knowledge to his insatiable mind and heart.

I know it is because of people he knows like you
that he will come home.

Fondly, sincerely, with regard and sickly-grammar, fragment sentences and small paragraphs,

Jacqueline Junelle Cochran


pee ess
Brandon contacted me two days ago for two minutes. His news was that he has arrived in afghanistan to his camp called COP PAYNE (sounds painful). Except that he was leaving immediately with his platoon to go south (which, I know he wasn't supposed to tell me, but he did.) for two months on a recon. assignment. Don't worry, he has three seabags and almost half of one is filled with a myriad of books on poetry, sentence structure and a latin english dictionary he conned me into buying him with kisses and promises of a new language. Also, before he left we celebrated christmas. I got him a Kindle device and uploaded 110 books and works onto it. I just finished Jane Eyre so I recommended that to him. Hopefully he will have a head full of Eyre more than a mind full of fighting. I'll let you know when I hear from him again if you would like.