27. Card Dealer

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.  These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.  Beautiful people do not just happen." 

~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

There are some days when I look at myself in the mirror and want to scream.  I look for the big sticker I think must be plastered across my forehead that says, "take advantage of me!  I'm vulnerable!"  It's not there...though for all intents and purposes, it might as well be.  What I do see, however, is the physical toll of the past few years in the deepening wrinkles that appeared across my forehead one day without warning or invitation.  I try to smile encouragingly at my reflection, but the smile falls flat and never quite reaches my eyes.  The longer I look, the more I want to smash my fists into the glass of the mirror and yell, "no!!!!  I don't want to be a widow!!"  But even if I gave into temptation and smashed that mirror, I'd still be a widow - a widow surrounded by broken shards of glass, like the broken pieces of my heart.


The latest and greatest thing that's really been getting to me is when I see photographs of my friends and their children and I can't help but think about how that should have been us.  As I stare at their happy faces, I reflect wistfully on how much I wish I could insert Jon and I's image into the silhouette of their beautiful life.  I guess the traditional happy family picture just isn't in the cards for us.  This is the hand we got dealt, but I swear there are some days when I'd do just about anything to throw caution to the wind and gamble on trading a card or two for the chance at a better ending.  Or maybe we could just go back and restart the last round so I could change a few things and beg Jon not to go out on patrol that day in April of 2007.  If only...


Another thing that drives me crazy is listening to couples fight.  I literally have to get up and walk away.  The more I listen, the more I want to yell right back at them and demand to know if they have any idea how lucky they are.  I get it - life, kids, work, stress - it all piles on and catches up to you and people end up fighting about stupid things.  But I just want to ask them if they know what I'd do to have a fight with my husband.  In our four years together, Jon and I never had a single door-slamming, glass-shattering, no-holds-barred screaming match...or anything even close to it.  But when I hear couples argue, I wish so much that I could bite his head off for something ridiculously mundane and then hold him in my arms and laugh at how pointless it was to fight about whatever it was in the first place.  Oh, to have the ability to kiss and make up - or, better yet...well, I'll let you figure out how the rest of that one ends.  


When it comes to picking on the most vulnerable and unsuspecting of players, the card dealer of life certainly seems to know how to select his targets.  Yesterday I learned that one of my Soldiers from my old unit at Fort Bragg - a sweet, selfless young woman, not to mention an outstanding Paratrooper -  lost her beloved husband to an IED in Afghanistan.  They were, from what I understand, deployed together at the time.  Until a few days ago, she was happily married to the man that represented her whole world.  Today she finds herself a widow.  I didn't know her husband, but as I looked through the photographs of their beaming smiles, the love they shared emanated from the images that will now be more precious and invaluable to her than anything money can buy.  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized she is exactly the same age I was when I lost Jon - twenty-two, about to turn twenty-three - and, sadly, life as she knows it will never be the same.  I pray she finds strength and comfort in the fact that she was lucky enough to find that can't-stand-to-be-apart, don't-ever-want-to-live-without-each-other kind of love - it's rare, and on the worst of days, I try to remind myself that many people never find it, much less experience it for a lifetime.  Sometimes that thought provides me with comfort; on other days, it takes everything I've got to refrain from smashing my fists into the mirror.  Five years later and I'm still reeling from the loss of my last round; I can't imagine how it would feel to only just be starting the long journey of recovery that inevitably follows such a devastating blow.  


So please, card dealer, consider this my plea:  for her sake and for mine, please give the deck a good shuffle and go a little easier on both of us in the next round...