Saturday, September 1, 2007

Battle in the Mind

The sun has gone down and another beautiful day in Wisconsin is over. In a few hours I will be wrapping up my night and heading to bed. For the whole night I will toss and turn. I will constantly wake up to see if J.R. has crawled into bed. I will walk into the living room to check on him. I will watch him stare at his computer or the tv screen all night. Desperate for sleep but unable to shut off his mind. Around nine am I will wake for the day. J.R. will crawl into bed and sleep will finally ease his mind. He wont wake up until three or four in the afternoon.

So goes life at the Salzman house. A constant battle in the mind. A never ending movie that repeats over and over, unable to be paused. I wish I could take away the memories, somehow make them less painful. I can't. All I can do is be ready to listen when he wants to talk. I thought coming home would be wonderful. In many ways this has been the hardest part of the whole ordeal.

Today is his official retirement day from the Army. He hasn't said much about it. I made a nice dinner and a couple of my girlfriends came to celebrate. It was, as is everything in life right now, very bittersweet. The men will be missed. One weekend a month, two weeks a year will become part of our past and the constant worry of deployments will be off our minds. That is priceless.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

Life has been constant change for you two for quite a while. Maybe settling into a rhythm at home will help JR be able to turn off his mind at night.

I am praying that JR will be able to turn his brain off and sleep at night!! I struggle with insomnia and it is such a difficult thing to deal with.

Kat said...

((((hugs))))