Faith Cowart just wants her Marine Corps husband to be home one year before he leaves for another deployment to Iraq.

Audra Krueger has seen her husband three months in the past two years. Christine Donnellan jokes that she lives in Hawai'i and her husband just visits.

"He's been home five months in the last two years," Donnellan said.

The three women are tied to an O'ahu group dedicated to helping Marine spouses cope with long stretches of deployment.

While military tours are under way, the spouse left behind often shoulders more family responsibilities and worry. In addition, military wives maintaining households thousands of miles away from their husbands as well as other family and friends sometimes struggle with loneliness and a sense of isolation.

Among the sources available to help is the Key Volunteer Network, which is made up of spouses of Marines.

Both Cowart and Krueger are "key volunteers" for the Marine spouses' group. Their husbands are in the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment stationed at Marine Corp Base Hawai'i at Kane'ohe Bay.

Krueger said the most common need articulated by military wives is to simply have someone to talk to — to get together with others, just to vent. Activities also are important for the families. So, Krueger and Cowart plan events such as pizza parties, game nights and holiday get-togethers.

Raising children while a parent is away can be a daunting challenge. At one point, Cowart's 13-year-old daughter's grades slipped dramatically. Kreuger said her teen son and daughter find solace in a tight-knit circle of friends.

Donnellan, who has weathered seven deployments and four combat tours in her sixteen years as a military spouse, attempts to shelter her children from news pertaining to the military.

"I keep my girls away from all media," Donnellan said. "I don't watch the news, and I don't have the paper delivered to the house."

One communication line Donnellan strives to keep open is that between her husband and their children.

Her 11-year-old daughter, for example, connected with her father when he was deployed to Afghanistan by sending him school supplies to pass out to children there.

Kreuger said she communicates well with her kids while in the car, going to and from activities. "They talk more when they are not facing you," she said.

The prospect of losing a father or husband to a roadside bomb or some other combat-related incident looms large in the lives of military families.

Marine Corps Base Hawai'i last month honored 23 fallen "Island Warrior" troops who served in Iraq in a deployment from September to April with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.

Scores of families with ties to the O'ahu base were touched by the fallen troops. Kreuger's daughter, for example, had been a baby sitter for the children of a Marine killed in a helicopter crash.

Cowart said heartbreak that comes with the news of injuries or deaths can leave individuals who attempt to comfort mourners with a sense of compassion fatigue.

"You want to make everything right," Cowart said. "Your heart wants to help them."

But while consumed in helping others, Kreuger said, spouses struggle with their own worries. "They're thinking it could've been my husband," she said.

Even when deployment is not a factor, understanding how tight-knit Marines are as a group can be a challenge. "The Marine Corps is very much a brotherhood — wives have to cope with that," Krueger said.

The Marines offer seminars for spouses that focus on what they can do to make the home life more harmonious. And knowing that key volunteers are there to help reassures Marines that someone is looking after the spouses.

Donnellan said, "I consider myself the old mamma bear," adding that it is important to her to use her years of experience as a military wife to help the others get through long and sometimes frequent deployments.

Lisa McLean is a freelance writer living in Hawai'i. Her husband is an active-duty Navy officer.