Friends across an ocean

Today, I want to talk about my friend Michael. He is a medic in the United States Navy and is currently stationed about 6778.91 miles away in Qal'eh ye Now Afghanistan. I met Mike when I worked at the Quantico Naval Health Clinic as a front desk receptionist and he worked in the Operations Management Department in the warehouse. We would occasionally meet eyes as he passed the desk or asked to pick up incoming packages. I didn't formally become acquainted with him until a few months later when I dropped from being an employee to be a Red Cross Volunteer in the Medical Records Department of the Clinic. At that time Mike was also moved to that department and that is where we first became good friends. Every morning when I would walk into Medical Records, Mike would be fast at work, sitting at his desk going through record checks for Active Duty Military. I don't quite remember how we started talking but I imagine that it had to be something funny and friendly because that is how I remember it being every time I worked with him. As we became better friends, we would occasionally go to lunch together at the Club on base to eat the buffet there. We usually talked about what went on in our lives at the time, what we wanted in the future and what we treasured and learned from our past. I can remember times when I would be done with my work and I would go and help him finish with his because he never seemed to be even close to finishing his work. Records would pile up every hour and eventually there were boxes everywhere full of records that he had to look through and while he did that, he also had actual Active duty come in and speak with him... I'm not exactly sure what for but I always felt so bad for him. One day I noticed that he stayed extra late... when everyone else had left for the day. As I collected my things to leave and said my goodbyes to him, I turned and looked at him once more... sitting there hard at work all by himself. I thought to myself "you have nothing left to do today... if you went home, you'd just be wasting time sleeping!" something that was the opposite of productive. I decided to stay and help him with anything I could. He first looked at me really strangely, a girl who wanted to stay after hours... who wasn't getting paid in the first place, to put away tens of hundreds of records was not something he expected. He thanked me and put me to work. I enjoyed every minute because we would continue our conversations from before. Some were funny, some serious... whatever they were, they were meaningful in some way. That is how I remember Mike, always there to listen to me, always there if I needed a laugh. We stopped talking once I stopped Volunteering but just recently ran into each other on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). We started talking and I found out that he was in Afghanistan and we exchanged emails and we talk every chance we can get either through Email or through AIM. I sent him a care package for Valentines Day yesterday which will hopefully reach him in a week, and I am expecting one from him any day now. I have recently discovered that I never realized how much I valued his company and how much I would miss someone I only spent a few months of my life with. I hope we continue to talk and never let the distance of an ocean get between us. God Bless Our Troops <3

Kelly