When I Wake Up

I am sharing a post my friend Kama left on our Battalion facebook page. She is an incredible lady with a lot of strength that really gets what is important when your husband is deployed. Not allowing yourself to wallow in misery and keep going to honor what your husband is doing by keeping yourself strong. I was so incredibly moved by her writing I asked if I could share it all with you. So here it is..I hope you like it as much as I did.


When I Wake Up.

When you left, I wanted nothing more than to fall asleep. Not the quick-20-minute-I-forgot-my-coffee-this-morning-catnap kind of sleep, but more along the lines of Forever Young, Mel Gibson’s 50-year-long, deep kind of slumber. The kind where you sleep through the hurt, your body only registering a pang of hunger when it shakes the dust off, instead of the longing it aches through now. The kind where you wake up and everything is better, different. You have skipped the hard stuff, the sleepless nights filled with worry, and awaken like Aurora to your prince charming. It would be a nice dream you had instead of the nightmare I feel like I’m in now. I would tell myself it was worth it too – worth the aging on the other side for the relief right now. No delayed gratification here. I want the easy way out.

When I wake up you will be there, by my side, the valiant hero coming to get me – the princess in waiting. When I wake up you will be home safe, and that will be enough for me. But wait, no, I didn’t get your letters. Sorry, I was sleeping. And oh, I am sorry I missed your calls to check in on us. We’re fine, don’t you see? We meant to send you packages to let you know you were loved, but we figured you wanted us numb to the war you wage across the planet. I’m so very sorry you felt like we weren’t there for you – we were, but just with our eyes shut… heart barely beating… brain stagnant. I also meant to do so many things; paint you pictures, read you stories, hike new trails to take you on when you got home, raise our daughter to remember you and make you her hero, take a class or two. Wow, you’re right, I am thirty now. Asleep through the end of my third decade. Well, yes I guess there are worse things. Like the fact that our daughter is three. How could I miss that, knowing now you don’t even have pictures of her happy day? And I’m sad that she doesn’t know who you are because I wasn’t there to teach her that, yes, you are away fighting for our country and our freedom, but not far from our hearts. I missed so much while I slept through this, and was it really all worth it? No. I take it all back. I want to fight with you. For us, for our love, for our daughter and her unshakeable love for you I don’t ever want her to lose. For adventure and growing while we are apart so we fit better when you get back. For the knowledge that anything worth having is worth the struggle, the heartache, the pain.

So I will be there when you get home, arms tanned with the sun of summer days spent teaching our daughter to swim, legs made strong with the weight of her in a backpack on the trails of our new town, a heart built up with love and pride and strength that I played my part in this fight and met adversity with the gloves off – ready for anything that came my way. I will be there for you like you are there for me; even when the phone doesn’t ring and the postman’s bag is empty, I know what we have is worth it all.