Broken Promises to a Dying Soldier
Before my husband, Sergeant Jeremy “Jay” Seals, died, his focus wasn’t on himself — it was on me.
Even while he was sick and exhausted, he stayed in soldier mode. He wanted everything in order before he went — the paperwork, the powers of attorney, the will — all the things that are supposed to make life easier for the family left behind. He wanted to make sure I was taken care of.
That phrase — taken care of — would come to haunt me.
We went to JAG at Fort Campbell to get everything drafted: our wills, powers of attorney, final arrangements. He asked the military attorney a question that still echoes in my memory.
“When I’m gone, will you make sure my wife’s taken care of? Will you probate the will?”
The JAG officer, calm and confident, said, “Of course, Specialist. We’ll make sure she’s taken care of.”
Jay relaxed a little. He trusted that answer. Soldiers are trained to trust the system. The Army had always taught him: “We take care of our own.”
Except they didn’t.
The First Broken Promise
A week after Jay died, I went back to that same JAG office — same chairs, same flags, same stone-faced professionalism.
I told them I needed to have his will probated, just as we’d discussed.
The new attorney looked at the paperwork, hesitated, and said:
“I’m sorry. We can’t help you with that. Probate is a civil matter.”
That was it. No guidance, no direction — just a closed door and a hollow apology.
A week earlier, we were “family.”
Now, I was just another “civil matter.”
That was the first broken promise. But it wouldn’t be the last.
The Enlisted Record Brief Error
Not long after his death, I learned about another problem — one that would have consequences far beyond paperwork.
Jay’s Enlisted Record Brief (ERB) — the official document summarizing his entire military career — listed him as single.
He was not single. He joined the Army as a married man, and our marriage was documented from the start. But somewhere in the digital maze of personnel files, that information had disappeared, uncorrected and unacknowledged.
An ERB isn’t just a summary — it’s a soldier’s résumé, their professional identity in the Army system. It lists everything: duty stations, awards, education, promotions, fitness scores, clearances, and family status. It’s the document that determines everything from benefits to death notifications.
And in Jay’s case, it was wrong.
When I asked about getting it corrected, I was told something that still makes my blood boil:
The Army has recently decided that no ERB corrections could be made after a soldier’s death. (per a memo, October 1, 2018)
So despite being married his entire career, his official record would forever list him as single. A Private or Specialist in S1 has a typo, the record is locked at death, and no committee, no board, no congress critter, no one can ever correct it.
That one unchecked box meant everything we had built together, every year, every move, every deployment, every sacrifice, was now a bureaucratic “discrepancy.”
It was as if the system had erased me right along with him.
The Orders and DEERS Disaster
Jay was on Title 10 active-duty orders when he died. I kept copies of them — thank God I did, because they became my only proof that he had been on federal status.
After his death and finding the ERB error, I went to DEERS — the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, the database used by the Department of Defense to verify eligibility for benefits like TRICARE health insurance. I wanted to make sure that Jay was listed as married and I was “OK” in the main system that would determine my benefits for the rest of my life.
That’s when I discovered the next failure.
Somewhere in the system, his orders had overlapping dates. example: Order Set 1 ended May 15, 2018 and Set 2 began May 1, 2018, causing an overlap in orders. Instead of producing an error message, the computer simply canceled both sets of orders. It refused to acknowledge the last set of orders, the ones that he died while on, the ones that would determine eligibility. All because the dates overlapped with a previous set of orders.
In the blink of an algorithm, the system negated his service (and Death) and with it, my entire eligibility record.
Overnight, I was removed from every benefit I was supposed to have: health care, base access, commissary privileges, the works.
According to the computer, I didn’t exist.
To make it worse, this happened just as TRICARE changed its policy on October 1, 2018, requiring surviving spouses to pay enrollment fees for health care after the transition period of 3 years that had been free for surviving spouses for decades.
So while I was already trying to navigate a system glitch that erased me, I was also being told I’d have to start paying for coverage when the first 3 years ran out, but I couldn’t even access it.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like when a computer system, designed by the same institution that promised to “take care of you”, suddenly decides you’re not real.
Jay’s death didn’t remove me from his life. The database did.
After my second trip to the DEERs office to get it fixed, accompanied by my 2nd casualty Assistance Officer (the first was released of duty because he was having family issues of his own), we finally found an office worker that knew enough about the system to find the problem, remove the previous orders, re-enter the orders that he died on, and push it through the system to update all the attached databases…oh and correct the data from single to married.
Oh and after the 3 year transition, when I had to start paying for Tricare, I had to find a good DEERs person again because it reverted back to the overlapping orders problem again.
(so glad I have everything scanned in on the computer to prove Jay’s existence/service and marriage)
The Bureaucracy of Betrayal
That was the pattern that followed me from office to office, agency to agency — each one armed with sympathy, forms, and excuses.
The Department of the Army passed me to the Department of Defense.
The DoD passed me to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Each one claimed to “understand,” but none of them helped.
Every office had a process. None had accountability.
Each time I tried to fix a problem, I was told it was someone else’s jurisdiction — or worse, that “the system doesn’t allow for that.”
The Army that demanded precision and discipline from its soldiers had none to spare for their widows.
Promises in Uniform, Excuses in Suits
Jay believed that the Army would stand by him — and by me. He believed that “we take care of our own” was a promise, not a slogan.
But when he died, the words changed.
The tone changed.
The commitment changed.
When he was alive, they saluted him.
When he died, they filed him.
The same institution that called him “brother” now saw me as a case number.
Every signature, every seal, every acronym chipped away at the illusion that service guarantees support.
Jay wore that uniform believing it stood for integrity. But integrity means keeping your word — and the Army didn’t.
A Widow’s Reality Check
You learn quickly that “we’ll take care of you” has a shelf life.
The JAG couldn’t probate the will.
The Army wouldn’t correct the ERB.
The DEERS system voided his orders.
The VA couldn’t process survivor benefits without documentation that no longer existed.
Every interaction becomes a new test of endurance. Every request feels like begging for help from a system built to delay it.
You start to realize that the same organization that can deploy an entire unit across the world in 72 hours can’t fix a data entry error in 72 days.
They train soldiers to never leave a man behind — but apparently, that policy doesn’t extend to their families.
The Emotional Ledger
It’s hard to explain what this kind of betrayal feels like. It’s grief sharpened by bureaucracy.
You’re already broken, but instead of being lifted up, you’re handed more forms to fill out. Instead of compassion, you get customer service.
It’s exhausting, it’s dehumanizing, and it’s completely preventable.
Because all of this — every failure, every missing document, every wrong answer — could be fixed if someone simply cared enough to follow through.
The Free-Range Reality
When Jay asked that JAG officer, “Will you make sure my wife’s taken care of?” — he wasn’t asking for charity. He was asking for a promise of dignity.
He believed that the Army would honor that.
I believed him.
Instead, what we got was a system that confuses empathy with efficiency and paperwork with care.
So yes, I keep telling this story. Not because I enjoy reopening the wound, but because I refuse to let the system pretend it’s healed.
If the military can demand loyalty to the last breath, it can damn well extend accountability past it.
Because honoring the fallen means keeping faith with the living.
And until that happens, I’ll keep fighting — one broken promise at a time.
