Facing the Widow Possibility

by Allison Perkins 

“We didn't even talk about it"

Lee, Wersel and other widows say you just don’t realize how difficult it is until it happens to you.

Rachelle Arroyave says she was naïve when her husband left for his first tour in Iraq. “We didn’t even talk about it,” she says of the possibility that he could die. “As a military wife, you don’t think it’s going to happen to you.” Before his second deployment, the fighting in Fallujah was intensifying. Arroyave says she thought about it, briefly, but her husband’s job description was utilities.

“You don’t think it’s going to happen because he’s utilities and [combat] is not in his job description,” she says. “He said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be taken care of.’ I assumed the same thing.”  Arroyave’s husband, Jimmy, was killed in April 2004 in a non-combat related vehicle accident. She was at home with their two daughters and was almost three months pregnant with the son “he always wanted,” she said. Jimmy knew she was pregnant, she said, but he didn’t know it was a boy.

Both Rachelle and her husband assumed she would be taken care of upon his death. She soon learned that Jimmy had left his SGLI benefits to his mother in what she thinks was an effort to take care of her, as well. Jimmy, she says, probably had the best intentions, but it left Rachelle in a bind, and with very little income to care for her children.

“I had no idea that my husband’s paycheck stopped the day he died,” she said. “When you look at a piece of paper at the benefits, it looks good, but it’s not that cut and dry. There are always stipulations. Not all widows are included in all benefits.”

Like Wersel, Arroyave realized she was being left out. Some benefits paid widows whose husbands died only after the new benefit was established. Widows of 9-11 and the early days of the war were not grandfathered in. “That’s such a horrible message to send. The government is sending the message that yes, there are these benefits out there, however, we’re not going to cover all war widows, which is just wrong.” Arroyave said.

As Arroyave struggled to care for her three children, with the help of family and friends, she picked up odd jobs, returned to school and began serving on the Gold Star Wives legislative committee — writing to members of Congress and focusing on the flow of money.

Her efforts paid off last fall when President Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2006. It includes a law requiring the military to alert spouses when their military husbands or wives sign paperwork that disperses their SGLI to someone other than the spouse.  Arroyave says it’s still unclear how that process will happen and who will be responsible for alerting the spouse, but she says it’s a start.