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The Sacrifice of Coming Home

    In the days immediately following Dh’s last deployment to Kandahar, we came on an accident. It was still what I call the ‘shaky days‘ post tour. That was my 3rd time around and I was a little more prepared with what to expect.  The ‘shaky days‘ are when the dust still hasn’t settled on their time away.  Some days I give space.  Some days I hold tight.  But I know that he needs time to adjust to the reality that for the past 7 months life was happening at home without him and that life doesn’t look anything like what he was living. It’s a balance.  Sometimes a hard one. So driving in those ‘shaky days‘ to Costco, we can still see the smoke from the tires on the road, a car on it’s roof is in the ditch just ahead. Dh pulls over on the highway and jumps out.  Getting to the car, it’s clear that the 2 people who had arrived first had good intentions but were unsure of what to do. He took charge and gave instruction for calling 911 and grabbing a first aid kit.  And then broke the rest of a window, crawled into the car and did first aid on the terrified young women lying in the broken glass who was too injured to move.  We learned later her pelvis had been destroyed in the impact. When paramedics and police arrived, it was still quite a while before he made it out of that car while they waited for a hole to be cut big enough to gently slide the broken woman out and safely onto a stretcher.  From where I stood by our…