Collateral Damage

My family has had several tough years recently.  My divorce from my first husband after almost 16 years, finding out my brother was about as dishonest a person as anyone could be, and my marrying a man with some grave health issues.  Now that Chris and I seem to be settled and safe, my mother and father have placed the house up for sale and are leaving my state.

I’ve never lived farther than a few minutes from my parents so this will be quite a transition for all of us especially since my father has grown quite close to Chris this past year.  They’ve found out they share many interests which has led my pops to give Chris more woodworking tools than I can count.

This afternoon I visited my parents after they showed the house.  We sat and talked about things, about how I’d rather they not leave but I understood.  That’s when Mom said something that broke my heart because I hadn’t understood at all.

She can’t take the stress.  This last year with Chris and dealing with his health and the VA and everything else had been heavy on me, but it had weighed on my parents as well - especially my mom because she understands something very deep about loving someone with declining health.

My father has had rheumatoid arthritis since he was thirty-four years old.  It started the summer we were painting the old two-story farmhouse in Kansas.  At first it settled in his feet and we assumed it was from standing on the ladder.  The following months I watched my father grow crippled.  He curled up as his body betrayed him.  Just as Mom started making plans to have a ramp installed for when Dad became wheelchair bound and looked into a job at the local grocery store, there was a miracle of sorts.  My dad got better.  He found a level of comfort, tenuous as it was, and life started back up again.  Pops is sixty-five and has won and lost when it comes to his disease.  He takes a medication now that controls it, barely, as it destroys his liver.

Mom looked at me today and said she couldn’t take watching Chris deteriorate.  She couldn’t bear to see the pain on my face while I took care of him.  It was a moment of such sorrow and joy I can’t describe it.  Like I said, it’s been a hard couple of years and Chris wasn’t exactly welcomed into my family with open arms.  I more or less tossed him in and said like it or not this is your son-in-law.  And they didn’t like it – at first.

I’d never considered my family when Chris’ health ebbed and flowed.  My son, who spends half his time at our house, my dad, my mom, his daughters.  I’ve tried hard to shield everyone in our lives from Chris’ PTSD, but it’s near to impossible to do.  His symptoms are obnoxious and rude.  They never call before they drop by.  If we have plans, they don’t get the hint when we grab our coat and keys.  No, they squeeze themselves in even when we don’t have the energy or the room.

Luckily, I’ve kept my parents from seeing the very worst, but I’ve confided in my mom on more than a few occasions.  I hadn’t realized what I was doing was inviting his symptoms to her house via my own need to speak to someone.  She’d become an unwilling counselor and because she loves me, her heart bleeds with my wounds.

When she said she couldn’t watch Chris deteriorate, I saw the damage I’d done and knew I needed to remember she doesn’t see the good days. I tend not to tell her when he’s slept beautifully and soundly for more than one day in a row, or about how we were able to go to the grocery store without incident, and how he managed to go to the gas station by himself and not come home in a panic. No, I don’t talk to her about the good things. Maybe I’m embarrassed those are victories to me. But more than likely I was taking for granted my mom understood there were good times as well as bad.

I’m taking her homemade soft pretzels tomorrow. We won’t talk about Chris’ health. We’ll talk about Christmas and all those years stretching behind us with no audible worries of the years ahead of us.

I Was a Combat Medic

For the last few nights, Chris hasn't been able to sleep. Early this morning I woke to find him wide awake looking at me. He'd been up writing. We talked for about an hour then finally he drifted back to sleep. Around the time the sun rose, I was up making coffee and reading an email he'd sent me.  This is what he wrote.

I was a Combat Medic. My guys called me 'Doc'. I died in Iraq.

I don't remember the exact day and time, but somewhere in the dirty rural streets of Iraq I met my fate. What exact circumstance or series of events had finally caught up to me eludes recollection, but I can say with all certainty, at that very instance time ceased to be linear and became a chaotic mess.

There were no letters home.  No sharply uniformed soldiers knocking on a loved one's door. There was no drill team toting my flag-draped carcass off an airplane.  No flag was handed off to my grieving mother by my commander. None of that. Those guys are the lucky ones. They did their job then left it behind to go to heaven or to be reincarnated or whatever construct they had made for themselves in the afterlife. I've held the hand and brushed back the hair of countless men and tried to comfort them as they left my futile struggle with God.  Is it wrong that I harbor a great deal of resentment for not having the same luxury?

I may not have died in the literal sense but I died none the less.  The person that came home was not me. All that remains of that person are faded photographs of some kid with no clue and little motivation for anything. I've never thirsted for innocence as I do now. I envy children. What bliss they must have in innocence.

-

The trip home was blur and all I can really remember is waking up in Germany, waking up in Baltimore, and my sphincter biting a hole in the seat of that GSA van as we entered the on-ramp leading from the airport onto the highway. And me with no weapon, no hoards of heavily armed men covering my nearly naked ass.

I remember waking up sweating and freezing in my parents' house. Not really sure where I was, I reached for my Kevlar. It wasn't there. I fumbled for my Level 4. Not there either. Nothing was there, no weapons, no noise, no nothing.

The first cognitive sight I had was of the ceiling fan beating the air above the bed. It looked like home. But there was an oppressive atmosphere that hung over everything. I felt like I was frozen. I couldn't move. Not one muscle. It wasn't easy to chew at the time but I was absolutely terrified for the first time since my first intimate encounter with live rounds.

Rolling out of my rack, I all but low-crawled to the bathroom. Regaining some composure, I turned on the faucet, filled my hands with water and splashed my face, a novelty I had not had for quite some time. Rubbing my eyes vigorously to clear my blurred vision I caught a glimpse of myself. It took a while to sink in, a couple of hours really, but something didn't seem right about my stare. I had noticed it once before when I was in theatre.  I reckon, something inside of me at the time was either fucking busy or subconsciously I had denied it. Anyway, it was there... again.

We've seen it before. That 'ocular emptiness,' if you will. I remember seeing this look on countless faces before. Patients with massive head injuries, those who had an altered mental status, the same look which accompanies the 'passion that kills'. Totally devoid of emotion, compassion, anything. I remember not feeling anything.

As if those notions weren't alien enough, I then embarked on what I can only call a residual haunting. Unlike the ghosts that go about moaning and moving stuff or showing up on surveillance cameras, my apparition only appears at the most inopportune times.  My ghostly embodiment changes but most of the time I become a poltergeist. Throwing things around. Hitting things. Breaking stuff. And immediately after one of these episodes it feels like I'm duct-taped to a flagpole in the town square naked. People all look at you in disgust and everyone is too afraid to try to improve the situation. You try to scream through the tape on your mouth but no sound comes out.

Somehow the whole world has changed. I left my country safe and sound. I left it in good hands. I went off to do the things that would ensure that it would be there when I got back. Hell, that was the only thing that really kept me going. 'One day, I would be back and pick up like nothing had happened.'

No, the world I returned to was totally FUBAR. I remember cursing out loud and commenting on how fucking stupid all these people back here had become. I remember listening to folks talking about things they thought were important with my mouth gaped open. And I remember my first altercation with someone whining about their infantile issues which I thought were little more than a cold pile of bullshit. I'm sure in their safe little stick house they had built for themselves, their 'problems' seemed like a big deal but I wasn't hearing it. There's a lot of sadness in this world and no one really gives two shits that you have to wait in the line for an hour or think your job is too hard. Give me a fucking break. Really?

Since then, the world continues to plummet out of control. It seems like the lunatics are all running the asylum. Hell, I'm waiting for some dickhead to nominate Charles Manson for President in the upcoming election. That would seem perfectly normal in this alternate universe I now live in.

I want my life back. I want my world back.

-

My only saving grace, the ONLY thing I wouldn't change, the singular reason that I haven't run hot lead through my brain before now is my wife. She's not your run of the mill wife. No, she really does sport a big red and yellow 'S' on her chest. And for some unbeknownst reason, she loves me.

Oh sure, we've had fights. We've struggled. I've broken things and acted a complete ass, made her cry over nothing. At the end of the day she still hugs and comforts me. Sometimes, just as now, when I think about the raw deal she was dealt when she drew me, it makes me cry. She deserves so much more than I can ever give her but I pray that somehow I never do anything that would make her go away. I need her. I don't just need her for emotional support and love, but my very existence hinges upon her. Without her, I am nothing.

I can tell the years of dealing with this has caused her to become weary. I can hear it in her voice and see it on her face. I ask her what's wrong and she just replies 'nothing' but I know all too well how taxing taking care of someone else can be. She tells me I'm paranoid for thinking she would ever leave. I dunno, maybe something in me is and I use that as a defense to keep myself in check. After all, fear keeps you sharp.

She shrugs often and just smiles when I speak about her just as a religious zealot would speak about his or her perspective deity. And the notion of someday saying or doing something to cause her harm is a sobering thought. I know within myself lies a monster but unlike most people that carry this specter, as of yet I have not directed my aggression solely onto her. For that is a path taken by a fool. I may be fucking nuts, but I am no fool.

One can go crazy trying to figure out why our situation is so much different than others. Maybe it's the fact that I was a Medic trained to care for people. Maybe it's the fact that my grandfather always insisted that under no circumstance was it appropriate to strike a woman. I can't say exactly and I don't really want to know. All I want is for her to be happy and know that she is loved.