090112
Day 107
A MEMOIR
We had freedom for two weeks.....or the sense of it.....before we would have to walk together, our eyes filled with tears, our hearts filled with dread, our shoulders hunched over baring the heavy load, weighed down with the heavy burden of WAR for uncle Sam......
I said "Man I don't want LEGS to leave......" And somebody said "that's life...." No. No it isn't just life, its life and its death.....and its not any ordinary life. This life cannot be summed up and cast away and generalized with the ordinary. When we make up such a small population.....this is not just a ordinary LIFE.....how we wish, it were......
The wind picked up our last night together, the trees flailed noisily and big gusts pounded the house causing it to creek and groan in protest. I cursed the wind, damned it for making our last night so sinister and restless.....I felt like the house....I felt like a hundred years old.....And still the wind pressed on...still blowing in violent fits, my senses are heightened....I crouch in bed like a frightened child telling myself if I get closer and hunker down farther that no harm will come.....muttering obscenities...why must it feel as if the supernatural is sending me a message?
And here we are again...in this non-spatial continuum...counting down the hours, counting down the minutes....counting down and down and down......I have to mentally coach myself through every second, I watch you look at the clock and I feel like air is being snatched out of my lungs, I non-committed, smile, when you look at me.....I hold your hand and try like hell not to get lost in those pools of blue.....I tell myself.....just place one foot in front of the other, just breathe, just deal, just cope.....I have to forcefully drive my psyche into handling the inevitable and violent separation......
Your hiding it too.....but I can feel it....I can feel the pain, the panic....I know that this time its hard for you.....you have to face me, and only me....there are no other men around to share and show bravado with, no distractions.....and I feel badly for this....so I make jokes and I laugh, and I pretend its a normal day......but this isn't normal.....forcing yourself to do such a thing isn't normal......
Our conversations are choppy, but wistful and significant....we speak on the future.....we speak on the future, and the past, we talk about the people we know that have overcome the worst, we talk about overcoming and living, surviving, we talk about dying, we talk about living....and how when you return we are gonna start.......
The room we shared is a disaster.....and I start cleaning it and packing things, I tell myself to keep moving....keeping moving and it will all wash through with my momentum, instead of a gory, frightful massacre left behind....it will be a clean, organized massacre.....I look out and there you are lacing up your boots....such a poignant, dramatic scene....straight from the best films I have ever seen, except this is you....this is me....this is our life.......
Still the room is a disaster, left empty with relics of this slice of heaven that were shared between two people......When I returned home.....it was like the wind came and captured it all.....taking with it all that remains.....the only proof you were ever here is the ink on my skin......and the permanent proclamation on yours.......
We are in the car.....the signs, and the trees, and the cars, with normal people pass by us.....and still I hear our hearts beating hard and fast.....and its all happening so fast....your standing there with your bags in your camouflage, and we begin to walk....
People are starring at us, with pity in their eyes and shock on their faces.....they look at us with pity.....it makes me angry....don't pity us! I think in my mind....we don't need your pity.....this is not a regrettable act, or some embarrassing scandal.....this is life.....right? No. But this, is, reality, and you should see it, but don't pity us.....not before we say goodbye.....before we say good bye, you should look at us with PRIDE!
We sit down for a minute....and take silly pictures, and you record messages for me.....always the awkward moments, always those moments where we try to speak but the words are cut short by tears....always trying to fight the complete breakdown......
And now its time......TIME....the time is now.....now is the time.....its the last minute, the last moment, the last second we could spare, the last one that we could hold tightly onto, before the bravery must show, the courage must come, and the resistance to this exact thing must be quieted.....
We embrace each other.....I try to remember the smell and the feeling, the vision.....FOREVER....we say the words that we always say.......I will meet you....you know the place.....I will come back to you....please come back to me...I love you to infinity for eternity......I found you, you who my soul loves and I held you and I will never let you go......
It feels different this time though....more desperate, more intense.....and as you pull away...I see it....something I never see, a small tear.....running down your left cheek......and there it is.....the last blow.....the kill shot.....I am fractured into one trillion pieces.....
I watch you go through security......getting further and further away from me...smaller in image but larger in my heart.....I cling to the plastic partition to steady my broken soul....you keep looking back to see if I am there.....and I find myself telling you though you can't hear me "I'm HERE! I am still here! I am waiting.....I'm here waiting......" And I think of this poem.....and I read it when I get home....and I think my waiting WILL indeed save you......
Wait for me and I'll return, only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain.
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts.
Wait in the sweltering heat.
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays.
Wait even when from afar no letters come for you
Wait even when others are tired of waiting.
Wait for me and I'll return, but wait patiently.
Wait even when you are told you should forget.
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more.
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory
Wait and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.
Wait for me and I'll return defying every death.
And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.
They will never understand that in the midst of death
You with your waiting saved me.
Only you and I will know how I survived:
It was because you waited as no one else did.
-Konstantin Simonov
Just another day....in the life....of an unlikely military wife......**
(to INFINITY....for ETERNITY.....I am here waiting LEGS.....)
No comments:
Post a Comment