If your family members are overseas in the war effort, how do you cope with this?

I now view this as more of an honor of sorts than a "coping" sort of thing. Although I have no family members in a war zone, I do have a very close friend in Afghanistan. When he first told me he was deploying, in December, I cried for a very long time that night. The war was finally here for me. And then I was miserable for the next three days. Afterward, I realized that crying solves nothing and people deploy all the time.
Although I don't talk to him very often (perhaps once every week or two), I now find that the most difficult part is finding things to talk about. I have a million and one questions (which, I suppose, is a good thing since I want to be a war correspondent), but I refrain from asking any of them, partially because I don't think he can answer them anyway, and mostly because I don't want to be callous or too inquisitive. I've learned not to worry too much and not to dwell too much on "what ifs."
I also keep the Kabul time zone clock on my cell phone, so that I can compare times on occasion. It makes the world seem a bit smaller.