I was on the road when my cell rang in the very early morning hours of November 10, 2005.
Hello, Sam.
I said where are you?
Paul said we just landed at LaGuardia and I’m sipping hot apple cider. Where are you?
I said I’m in Wisconsin, about an hour out of LaCrosse, I think.
Paul said I’ll see you later today. After he hung up, I had to pull the car over because I was crying so hard. Paul was safely out of Iraq and Kuwait and across the Atlantic. He still had to get to Wisconsin but he was on American soil.
Around 1 that afternoon, a good many family members and I stood on a tarmac, peering into the eastern sky. We waited what seemed like forever for the plane to land and another eon for the doors to open but finally, people in desert camouflage began to come down the stairs. I saw Paul and the next thing I knew, I had my arms around him. He was home….safe…for the first time in 15 long months. That Sunday, we stopped in Gary, Indiana and watched a part of the Steelers game being aired that night.
We spent Thanksgiving alone. It was enough to just be; to sit at home, watch football, read, laugh, and enjoy being within feet, not thousands of miles, of one another.
We spent Christmas in Virginia with his mother and a lot of family. On Christmas Eve, we sat in the tiny, country church his mother's family has attended for over 70 years, in a sanctuary lit only by candles and sang Silent Night. I remember thinking of the gift of God’s Son—the one He gave because He “so loved the world.” I thanked Him again for the gift of my husband’s life. I continue to thank God for his safe, healthy deliverance. When we visited his dad’s grave in the cemetery to the side of the church, I stood with my hand on his headstone and silently thanked all the angels I knew had protected Paul since September 30, 2004.
Paul and I are both forever changed by our experiences during those fifteen months. And we’ve learned that the important things in life are really quite few: each other and the life we share, the people we chose to be our family, good friends, our faith, work which is stimulating, laughing together, good music, good books, our animals.
This song—“our”song--is the song during which we walked to the front of the sanctuary when we reaffirmed our wedding vows seven years ago. When I welcomed him home for the tenth year this morning, I told him that after all these years, even if the times weren’t always good, the company is the best.