Back to Normal?

Tomorrow will be 3 months since Micheal’s death. I’m still having nightmares; I still get antsy seeing Bradley play guns and hold the toy the wrong way. But I have Royce home and it’s been an amazing week. I’ve taken the week as a break from everything really. I’ve tried to steer clear of Facebook so much, slacked in picture uploads, and I’ve not blogged. I’ve been trying to get back to normal.

Have I said what an amazing man I married? He may not be perfect, but he’s perfect for me. Let me be frank though. We’ve not had the best relationship, nor is it a fairytale by any means, but it’s the best we can make it and after this week, its heaven to me. We’ve been married a little over 7 years, 2,663 days to be exact. I figured up the numbers on how much time we’ve actually spent together. In our first year of marriage we spent 155 days together. We were only together for 42% of our first year together. In that year we moved to another state, readied for our first deployment, lost our first child before we ever held it in our arms, and lost my uncle. He returned home and being a young couple without children it didn’t take long to get back to normal. But it was 7 months later, after we moved back to Oklahoma to another post, took our nephew in to live with us, and he was assigned to a new unit that had such in experienced command that even I tended to know more then most, that we experienced our first bout of PTSD.

Royce was in an area of Iraq that was so dangerous it was referred to as the triangle of death. He was there at one of the most dangerous times Oct 2005 when the Iraqi’s had their first election. His unit lost 7 men in those 12 months. Royce was friends with some. Even more guys were injured, a good friend of ours at the time sent to another post to heal and recover.  He had a tendency of waking in the night reaching under his pillow and then frantically looking around the room for his weapon. The first few times I tried to help calm him tell him he was home. It did no good. In August after his return home it came to a head. Royce doesn’t remember what happened. I do. He wasn’t the man I married, but he was the man I still loved. Things were said and actions that reminded me of the stuff movies were made of. But let me say this first off, Royce never physically hurt me; thankfully he was able to snap out of it before then. But Dr. did test him to TBI and diagnosed him with PTSD.

Two deployments and another move later, here we are. Today is day 2,663 in our marriage. We’ve been separated by deployment, schooling, and training for a total of 1,388 of those days. We’ve spent 53% of our marriage kissing through the phone and the computer.  He returned home the first of this month.  Nineteen days later I think things for us are getting back to normal, but in a different sense then I thought they might.

We’ve lived in our own little Timmons bubble this past week. Not thinking about much more then each other and the kids. We’ve spent time as a family. I’ve sat back and watched him with the kids and thought “Wow we’re really a whole unit again. Look at those grins on the kids, the even bigger grin on him. This is what I was dreaming of as a kid. This is the happy family in the movies. Wait where is the bad news, the rain for my happy parade?” I’ve sat back all week and it has yet to show up. We’ve managed to just sit and relax. We’ve worked as a team keeping the house cleaned, doing the laundry. He spends more time playing with the kids while I cook. We’ve sat down and eaten our dinner every night as a family. I can sit here right now and smile with a goofy grin of my own while I think about this past week. Have we really gotten back to normal? I didn’t think it would be possible.

Today though looking at the calendar helps me to realize our life together will never be normal. We’ve been through so many test of love, so many losses that they heavily outweigh the good. Today I also see more of this happiness on the horizon. My depression seems less and less. My tears fewer and fewer. Even thinking of the losses over the years I feel a sense of resolve. I don’t think I’m ‘over’ anything, but I’ve reached a point that I won’t let it hold me back from being happy. I want to move on and keep my sense of normalcy, well as normal as we can be in the Army. We have so many things happening in the next 4 months that I want to stay focused and look to the new chapter we get to start when we get to Georgia. So many things to look forward, I have to soldier on.

We have Kenzie’s birthday party next month, which I must say is going to be super exciting and fun to plan. Then a short trip to Oklahoma right after her birthday. Mackenzie and Royce are both happy, seems we timed it perfectly, and turns out its hunting season when we get there. Then we’re planning our first Thanksgiving together as a family in our own home. We won’t’ be traveling for it. Royce will be hunting locally here and I will be shopping. Kenzie’s big enough to babysit Brad right? (Just joking). We are planning to spread the vacation out across Christmas and New years and spend it in Oklahoma I think. Then after the New Year we have about two and half weeks to prep the house to be packed up and loaded on a truck. We are looking to leave this house around the 20^th of January. He has to report to Fort Benning on February 12^th. Goal is to clear post and housing and be in Oklahoma about the 23^rd and then head to Georgia around the 5^th of February so we can find a house before he starts back to work.  Like I said lots going on in the next 4 months.

So getting back to normal. May not seem like that’s what we are doing, but this is normal for us. Playing with the kids in the evening, watching movies on the couch and catching up on the dvr, it’s what is normal for us. Packing and moving yet again, normal for us. Inevitably preparing for another deployment after getting to Georgia, seems possible, and yet normal for us.

This is the life Royce and I’ve chosen, for us and for our children. Yes he’s gone, yes it takes him a bit to get out of NCO Soldier mode, but he’s home and we get to keep him here for a little while at least. We conquer and adapt, it’s our way of life. It’s what I love most about my family.