While I am grateful for all that I have learned and the improved health I have experienced on a plant-based diet, I am so much more than what I eat. Believe it or not, I don't spend that much time in the kitchen. I don't sit around all day trying to come up with new recipes - I'm just like everyone else: glaring at my husband when I ask him what he wants for dinner and he responds with, 'Food'...at 6:30 p.m. No. Help. At. All.
I haven't been posting much because I wanted to break out of my tunnel vision, and that has proven to be more difficult than I thought, mainly because of all of the life-changes we have been experiencing.
But, since today is Memorial Day, it was easy for me to know what to write. Instead of looking forward, today, I look backwards. Back to April 8, 2006. Back to the day my husband almost went from being by my side, to a tear in my eye. (Those are his sweet words, by the way.)
In the Fall, after my husband completed his Basic and Advanced training as a medic with the US Army, he was stationed with an infantry unit in Germany. Before our son and I could move there to be with him, he found out he would be deploying to Iraq. By January, they were in Kuwait and then on to one of the most volatile areas of the war, at that time - al Anbar province. Since it was so early in the war, communication was sparse and difficult. They didn't have any Internet access or cell phones. They had a phone that the guys got to use occasionally. I heard from my husband once every three weeks. More often, if he had been able to make time to write a letter.
I wasn't too worried for his safety, even though I knew that he was a line medic, which meant being out in the field with infantry soldiers, instead of sitting in a hospital. But, that's what he lived for: the opportunity to care for his guys, where they were, in the moments they most needed it. Even as the world was coming down around them.
It was about 11 p.m. when my phone rang. I'm not sure of the exact date because of the time zone differences. I was in bed, but awake. It was his voice. He had never called that late before, so I was definitely confused at first. He was in Ballad, Iraq. 'What?' He was injured, but was going to be all right. 'What?' His Humvee was hit by an IED. 'OK.' He would be leaving Iraq and not going back. 'Really?' Was I going to be OK? 'Yes.' He would call me again as soon as he could. He loved me. 'I love you, too.'
I sat there for a second. Taking it all in. Then I called his parents, and then my parents. And then I went to sleep. It was a couple of days before the Army called to inform me that my husband was injured, but they didn't offer any details. I was thankful that he had been able to contact me first.
They were returning from patrol that night in a Humvee. An IED (Improvised Explosive Device), made of three stacked artillery shells, detonated. His guys, who weren't injured, had to play medic to the medic. One of them accidentally shot himself in the thumb with the automatic morphine dispenser, trying to give it to my husband. But, they got him on a helicopter, which took him to another part of Iraq, where surgery was performed to remove shrapnel. A piece larger than a quarter entered his body from below his scapula, narrowly missed his lung and was embedded just under the skin of his chest. Several more pieces ripped through his right arm and spattered across his face and neck. The impact of the blast caused permanent floaters in his right eye and Traumatic Brain Injury. From Iraq, he was taken to the hospital in Germany and from there, to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C.
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| My husband's Humvee following the attack. |
Thanks to family, who took great care of our son, a wonderful airline pilot, who overnighted me a free plane ticket and a sweet couple sitting next to me on the plane who drove me to the hospital, I arrived to be with him and oversee his care, until he was released to come home. He was able to recover at home for three months before we all traveled back to the base in Germany. We joked about having a t-shirt made for him that said, "IEDs are da bomb". We were just happy to be a little family again. It took the Army over two years to process his medical discharge. He retired just months before the end of his four-year enlistment.
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| A memorial located at Fort Bliss, honoring those lost in Tal Afar, Ramadi and Hit in 2006 and 2007. |
By the end of the deployment, the Ready First Combat Team had lost 94 soldiers, including the man who took my husband's place. Many, many others were wounded. Six years later, my husband still experiences crippling nerve pain in his right arm, cannot have an MRI due to shrapnel embedded in his skull and is currently being re-evaluated by Veteran's Affairs for all of his injuries. But nothing could ever overshadow the fact that God chose to let him come home to me. And that, together, we have so much more to give.
Our prayers, today and always, are with those who have lost a loved one, dedicated to preserving our American freedoms and those freedoms, that, under God, are to be extended to every human being.
