Day 81 - Forgetting

Well, we made it through another 10 days - yay!! Al called this morning at 0500 - I was sleepy. We had really, really severe weather here last night - and I woke up about every half hour with the house shaking from thunder. I'll tell you - bad storms aren't very much fun when your "thunder buddy" is playing in the Sand - lol!! Emelia, of course, slept soundly through the whole thing.

Al is still plugging along. He said that the days are getting longer for him - which I feel bad about. I think both of us have our up and down days - thankfully, I am "up" right now and can support him through this time. Things are going to be hard this summer - they have already started having 90 degree days.

This is a care package week. I have been busy baking and packing boxes tonight. Al is getting brownies, a new summertime pillow, clean - good smelling sheets, new flip flops for the shower, some new DVD's and a bunch of other goodies -- in a minute, I have to figure out how to use the vacuum sealer that my best friend bought me for Xmas so I could send Al baked goods - wish me luck!!

I wrote this for Al on my lunch yesterday:

Forgetting:

Starting to forget and forgetting to remember you -
Always in my mind - forever in my heart - no longer in my arms.

Losing your touch has made me lose touch with everything else -the casual brush of a stranger or a friend's embrace shocks me to alertness.

The realization that I am still human - and not the robot that I pretend to be.

Being numb is what gets through the next minute while my love lies dormant in this winter of deployment -
Waiting, waiting, waiting to be fully whole again.

A methodical repetition of days drums by while life goes on without you here -
Filling empty time with stories of other soldiers and the nightly news, "anything" to understand the life that you are in.

I hold your pictures in my hands, look at you with the Iraqi children - see your arm around your buddy and I grow jealous for your touch.

Today I know what the weather is like in Iraq (dusty and hot),
I know the political condition of your area (stable?),
I know what time it is there (early evening) --
I know that as I write this that you will be drifting off to sleep soon,
And I also know that it will be nine more hours until I get to do the same.

If only knowledge could bring me physically closer to you -
if only emails were embraces -
and phone calls were kisses.

The memory of holding you is a shadow on my flesh, a dream waiting to be awakened once again and I write these these words to remember to not forget you.