he brought me home a truck…

It never occurred to me when I asked him if he would build me a truck after his Fairlane was restored that he would have a 1965 Ford F250 follow him home, but here it is.

It’s been sitting in a garage for the past 20 years waiting for us to find it. It is a Custom Cab Ford F250 three quarter ton with a beautiful dashboard.

The last two days have found it running like a champ.

This truck was really a diamond in the rough. It’s all original, paint, dash, 352. Time I learned to drive stick since it’s four on the floor.

I used to love the rain…

All day, a song has been playing in my head. Like the Rain, Clint Black. I can hear it as I write this.

I never liked the rain until I walked through it with you.

I’ve always loved the rain, and doubly so since moving to sunny California. The weather’s been sort of strange here in SoCal for the past couple days and this morning we woke to cloudy skies and went pavement.

The morning went on and we realized the need to put one of the tops on C’s jeep. Lightning and thunder. Not too bad, but enough to make C’s heart race and his breathing change. I know the signs.

I was standing in the back of the jeep while we tried to attach the top and a clap of lightning lit up the grey sky. The thunder was immediate. It struck somewhere close, so close sound ceases for a moment.

C screamed out and dropped to the concrete floor. I was so startled I almost fell out of the back of the jeep. He started to commando crawl across the floor while covering his head and screaming.

Get him.

I had to get to him. He was wedged between the wall and the door as I tried to calm him down. Getting to him takes time when he’s in a flashback. It’s like wandering a maze until his eyes light with recognition.

Every thunder cloud that came was one more I might not get through.

Do you know where you are?

No.

Do you know who I am?

Yes.

Like the Rain played in my head while hail beat the garage door and rain poured. Thunder. Lightning. We laid there on the cement, but under him was sand. I know it all too well.

He’s asleep right now, and the sun is shining. I always liked the rain, until I walked through it in the sand.

digging in…

Chris calls it digging in. I just call it very cool.

May freedom forever fly.

painting the garage…

I screwed up. Big time. I wasn’t watching his meds and he ran out. Two days ago he started taking one a day. Now he has none and it’s a long holiday weekend.

Memorial day weekend of all weekends for this.

So, he’s outside painting the garage. It needed it, but it wasn’t something we’d planned. It’s helping, but we only have so much paint.

Guess I need to take a trip to Lowe’s.

9 pounds…

This time it was a new subject, one we’d not really broached before. It came out of the blue while laying in bed snickering and laughing at what, I don’t remember.

We were always happy when we could amputate below the knee.

What an odd statement. But a practical one. An amputation below the joint allows for an easier transition into a prosthetic once the wound has healed. Still it struck me so odd there would be a preference among the medical unit.

He recounted the first time he took a limb to mortuary. See, the amputated limbs are not simply discarded. They are treated with the same respect a soldier who’s died is given. Only they are carried, by hand, across the base to where they need to go.

He spoke of wrapping the limb, the special procedure they took, the feel.

Then, he spoke of the weight.

No one should ever have to do that.

No, they shouldn’t.

I looked up how much an arm would weigh, but I remember reading an article about the newest in prosthetics.

9 pounds.

A soldier fitted with a new prosthetic arm will carry with him 9 pounds. And a thousand more pounds will be spread across the shoulders of him and every doctor, nurse, medic, and buddy who cared for him.

9 pounds, and the weight of angels.

soldier’s heart…

I picked up Soldier’s Heart months ago because the cover caught my eye and the back page synopsis intrigued me. Generally, I like to read outside my comfortable for entertainment genre when I’m a little stuck on my writing projects so I pulled it off the shelf a few days ago.

The book, by Elizabeth D. Samet, is written by a civilian among soldiers about emerging soldiers. She is an English teacher at West Point discussing how the school and the students changed after 9/11. I was amazed after only a few pages. Her insights, and stereotype breaking thoughts on our military, are so poignant I feel every civilian should read this book.

In the first chapter, she begins the book speaking of two friends who died in combat. Her description of the funerals, the snap of the flag, and the way she draws comparisons of every aspect to literature beautifully, gave me chills.

The services for my two colleagues constituted my first experience of military funerals, which have a kind of earnestness for which I was not entirely prepared. On unusually intimate terms with violence throughout their professional lives, soldiers know things that many of the rest of us do not. The most elemental thing they know, or are prepared to know, is death. ……. Whereas civilian funerals seem to cling to the idea that a unique individual has died, military funerals turn everyone into a symbol of epic sacrifice.

She is writing from neither a liberal nor a conservative stance. She is merely a teacher teaching students who will, after their senior year, be officers in the military.

It is so far a beautiful book speaking of the many facets of our future soldiers’ journey through literature and final stages of entering adulthood. She broke every assumption I’ve had of the men and women who enter West Point.

I’m thoroughly enjoying every word in this book. If you get the chance, read it. Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet.

you are not my life…

I should really file this under ANGER, because I am ticked. I’m at the point where if it was possible to pull someone through the phone I’d be punching people I’ve never met in the brain.

A couple weeks ago, C and I went back to the VA finally. I was heartened, excited even, at the thought of him finally getting the treatment he needs and deserves.

Then the letters started. Every day, a new envelope with a new appointment shows up. Appointments we never scheduled and can’t make because of time constraints and promises.

I’ve been trying my best to take care of all of them. This morning I start calling to reschedule two appointments. At this point, I have a thousand numbers and two hospital/clinics I’m dealing with. Ok. No problem, the numbers are on the appointment sheets.

I call. I get a message system. I can deal with this. I don’t have PTSD, I can do this.

Really? Ya think? Nope.

The message system is an ENDLESS maze. No wonder so many PTSD sufferers just walk away. I want to just walk away. No, I don’t, I want to strike someone. Line them all up and three stooges style smack everyone in charge of frustrating those of us who have chosen to seek help from this bloated organization.

I ended up calling Anthony, who is the social worker we spoke with first time. He said the system says we’re agreeing to all these appointments and then canceling them.

What?

Oh, no we are not, we are getting all this paperwork in the mail. I’m sitting with it spread all around me while I try to deal with the mess. We went to the two appointments we agreed to, and will go to any others C needs, but I WILL NOT be scheduled without being spoken to first. We have a life and the VA is not it.

I get off the phone with Anthony who is going to try and get in touch with neurology for me and sit fuming. We’re being difficult? Us. Canceling for no reason I guess because we’re all about taking up the VA’s precious time.

Anthony, who is just as sweet as cotton candy, calls me back and says C needs a case manager. He thought we had this all under control… um, dude, I do have this under control. You have no idea how much control I am exhibiting at this moment in time.

Just don’t send me appointments and assume I’m free for them. We have a life and PTSD is a big part of it, but it is not the only part.

In the end, after two hours on the phone, we were assigned a case manager and given her actual phone number. I’m supposed to get a call in a week. We’ll see.

dropping letters…

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The disorder is an important part of the equation.

I’m seeing a trend I feel is highly foolish, the dropping of D off PTSD and leaving simply Post Traumatic Stress. My C has PTSD. He does not have PTS and I’ll explain why I believe this to be true.

Every soldier who endures time in a war zone comes out of it with post traumatic stress. The difference between them and those who suffer from full blown PTSD is the fact that after several months, those with PTS will recover. The symptoms will no longer rule their life. They will always remember and be forever changed, but it will not impede their life to the point they cannot function.

PTSD impedes a soldier’s life. Stops it dead in fact. The nightmares and flashbacks keep them from living. They hunker down and question their sanity. For years. And without treatment, for life.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a disorder. An injury to the psyche.

The D is important. It is comfort to those who question their sanity.

The D is an explanation. It is the reason they cannot “just get over it already”.

The D is a shield.

My C has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

PTSD.

today I am…

Today I am done. Closing has been pushed back, C is having ill side effects from the meds we’d placed so much hope on, the new upstairs neighbors have moved extra people into their one bedroom apartment, and I am done.

The day has been spent with tears just under the surface waiting to spill and anger just below my throat waiting to explode. I am done today. No more problems, no more noise, no more.

Done.

Check back tomorrow. The store is closed, the shelves are empty.

wrinkled paper and shattered glass…

I have so few real whole memories left. The rest consist of faded snapshots. I’m tired of feeling ethereal, incomplete, broken. I’m tired of walking around in a fog.

Before, I had little problem focusing on my writing. In fact, I had so many stories busting out of my brain, I couldn’t keep up with them. I’d write for hours, helping my characters along their paths. Now I feel like a piece of paper crumpled up too many times. No matter how many times I smooth it, there will never be a clean surface to work with.

I read tonight about some of the things I might possibly suffer from in the future, and the terms are frightening to say the least. One in particular caught my eye.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Dementia pugilistica (DP), also called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), chronic boxer’s encephalopathy, traumatic boxer’s encephalopathy, boxer’s dementia, and punch-drunk syndrome (’punchy’), is a neurological disorder which may affect career boxers, wrestlers, mixed martial artists, and football players who receive multiple dazing blows to the head. Dementia pugilistica, the severe form of chronic traumatic brain injury, commonly manifests as declining mental and physical abilities such as dementia and parkinsonism.

It’s a mouthful isn’t it. A scary mouthful of possibilities, but it comes down to not being able to afford one more head injury.

The condition, which occurs in people who have suffered multiple concussions, commonly manifests as dementia, or declining mental ability, problems with memory, and parkinsonism, or tremors and lack of coordination. It can also cause speech problems and an unsteady gait. Patients with CTE may be prone to inappropriate or explosive behavior and may display pathological jealousy or paranoia. Individuals displaying these symptoms also can be characterized as “punchy,” another term for a person suffering from dementia pugilistica.

The brains of dementia pugilistica patients atrophy and lose neurons, for example in the cerebellum. The pyramidal tract dysfunctions.

The glass is shattered.

My only hope now is to keep the pieces from disintegrating.