Dreaming
I think that part of why I'm grieving so much over the loss of my military career is that it was as Andie put it, "my only rival for your affections." She meant it. It was the cause of our ten year estrangement and the cause of our reunion. Like many career Soldiers I told Andie that the Army would be first for twenty years and after that the rest of my life would be hers. Were it not for breaks in active service caused by either political expediency or injury/rehabilitation, 1996 would have marked the end of my career. It would have also marked the beginning of a new career.
Ben would have been 26 then and had she lived Deborah would have been 8. So, by now with Deborah at 23 we'd have been "empty nesters" We used to talk about that far off day and what we'd do when it came.
This evening when I got home, I dropped my Class B pants at the dry cleaners, then stripped my uniform blouse, fed and walked Winston and fell into a deep slumber. Normally, I can't recall my dreams but tonight was an exception. I sensed a very comforting presence and thought for a moment that with the cooler weather maybe Winston had joined me on the bed. But then it felt too soft and too long I could almost smell Andie, fresh from a shower the smell of her shampoo/conditioner on her hair. I heard her soft voice she was talking about the rest of our lives and the things we planned, Things like taking her to see Paris and taking the boat cruise of the Rhine and how it would be fun late in the fall to do that and to sample the wines along the way. I smiled inwardly, as she'd become a bit of a German Rhine wine snob and we used to sample a glass or two with cheese as dinner sometimes. She wriggled and turned to me and gave me that "you and me" smile that was half conspiratorial and very unlike her usual public smile. I love that smile. She talked about visiting Poland now that the wall was down and how she wanted to visit Auschwitz where almost all of her father's family that survived Bergen-Belsen had perished. It was then that I awoke. Damn my inability to suspend disbelief, that conversation was part of one we had in the late 1980s just after the wall came down and just before we discovered she had ovarian cancer. It had felt so good to have her in my arms again, to smell her and to hear her. It was comfprtable and it was about the time I was almost at the point of dropping the precautions I'd taken to isolate my family, all of my family not just Andie and Ben from each other and hopefully from the various groups of terrorists and drug cartels that I'd been tasked to work against. It was a happy time soon to be joyous that would turn into sadness. It was the time I'd planned to spend my retirement with my wife and to have the time and money she'd saved up for us to spend on showing her the best parts of the world.
It saddens me to think that in a few days I'll have no career to lose myself in and no wife to share my retirement with. Maybe that's why I woke up.
Ben would have been 26 then and had she lived Deborah would have been 8. So, by now with Deborah at 23 we'd have been "empty nesters" We used to talk about that far off day and what we'd do when it came.
This evening when I got home, I dropped my Class B pants at the dry cleaners, then stripped my uniform blouse, fed and walked Winston and fell into a deep slumber. Normally, I can't recall my dreams but tonight was an exception. I sensed a very comforting presence and thought for a moment that with the cooler weather maybe Winston had joined me on the bed. But then it felt too soft and too long I could almost smell Andie, fresh from a shower the smell of her shampoo/conditioner on her hair. I heard her soft voice she was talking about the rest of our lives and the things we planned, Things like taking her to see Paris and taking the boat cruise of the Rhine and how it would be fun late in the fall to do that and to sample the wines along the way. I smiled inwardly, as she'd become a bit of a German Rhine wine snob and we used to sample a glass or two with cheese as dinner sometimes. She wriggled and turned to me and gave me that "you and me" smile that was half conspiratorial and very unlike her usual public smile. I love that smile. She talked about visiting Poland now that the wall was down and how she wanted to visit Auschwitz where almost all of her father's family that survived Bergen-Belsen had perished. It was then that I awoke. Damn my inability to suspend disbelief, that conversation was part of one we had in the late 1980s just after the wall came down and just before we discovered she had ovarian cancer. It had felt so good to have her in my arms again, to smell her and to hear her. It was comfprtable and it was about the time I was almost at the point of dropping the precautions I'd taken to isolate my family, all of my family not just Andie and Ben from each other and hopefully from the various groups of terrorists and drug cartels that I'd been tasked to work against. It was a happy time soon to be joyous that would turn into sadness. It was the time I'd planned to spend my retirement with my wife and to have the time and money she'd saved up for us to spend on showing her the best parts of the world.
It saddens me to think that in a few days I'll have no career to lose myself in and no wife to share my retirement with. Maybe that's why I woke up.