Seasons

Cookie season has started. I have been Cookie Mom for the past three years and I volunteered again this year. My eldest loves Girl Scouts and I love who they are in Girl Scouts, so I handle cookies. I pick up the orders for the entire troop and dole them out as needed. I write receipts for cookies and cookie money and pick where our troop will have booths. I make sure our booths have enough cookies. Then I take my child from door to door and business to business so she can sell cookies.

Last year they sold 500 boxes of cookies. This year they are less than enthused about selling cookies, which they blames in part on her diagnosis of Celiac disease. Since they can no longer eat cookies, they don't want to sell them they say. I understand, but I don't. Cookie sales aren't about the cookies, they are about a way to earn your troop money to do cool things. Cookie sales are about earning money for the council to be able to send girls who can't afford it to camp. So I am disappointed that they aren't excited about cookie sales because it is something they used to love. I am disappointed because it was something we did together. I am questioning my commitment to helping girls sell cookies if my child isn't interested and then I am disappointed in myself for losing interest in something I have been very passionate about for years.

February just feels like disappointment to me. February seems especially unhappy this year and not just because Grandma B died. Karl's memory seems worse, but it always seems worse so I'm not sure how to tell whether or not it actually is worse. I think maybe February isn't the month for us... which makes me wonder what month is the month for us.

I think summers are okay. No, no they aren't. Summers are when Karl is out of school and grows bored and frustrated with himself. Then he is depressed because he is bored. Then he is mad because he is bored and depressed. Then he is rude and snarly and no fun to be around. I send him to the park with the kids and I sit home savoring the quiet. I miss my solitude fiercely when everyone is home from school for months on end.

I get frustrated with taking the kids to the farmer's market on the weekends, because they want to play on the playground and babble incessantly while I am trying to pick organic produce. I can't decide which shade of red apples will make them happy this week and whether that shade of red apple that is certified organic is worth three cents more a pound than the lighter shade of red apple that is organic, but hasn't finished the certification process yet. I can't remember if my daughter likes Pink Lady or Gala better and I know my eldest doesn't care about the variety, just the depth of the color of the skin. Karl will take the kids off my hands so I can pick onions and potatoes and smoked salmon and sausage, but then the kids will whine and yell that they just want to be with me and eventually we will get home and I will have forgotten to buy any apples at all and I will wonder why we ever leave the house.

 Maybe late spring is best for us. No. Late spring is when Karl moved to Baqubah in his second tour. The funny thing (not the kind of funny that makes you laugh, but the kind of funny that makes you cry) about being married to someone who was in battle, is that I can look up dates I don't remember. March 10 is when Karl moved to Baqubah, where the worst fighting of his 27 months in combat took place. March 10 is approaching quickly, which may explain why February seems to be dissolving into anger.

Easter is when Jesse died, which is doubly unfortunate because both April 8 and whatever date Easter falls on each year are shadowed with thoughts of death. Easter may be about resurrection for many people, but not for us. I don't even know the death dates of the guys from Karl's first tour. I know that his friends' death dates start in March and extend until November, which is especially hard for us.

One day when Karl was in an especially volatile mood, I asked him if anything had happened on that date in the past.

"The problem," he said, "with trying to figure out secret anniversaries is that every day is one."

February is not the problem. Every day is the problem.

Happy Valentine's Day

In my kitchen is this ugly wreath. It is a heart-shaped wreath of dried flowers.

 

When I received this wreath on Valentine's Day 2007, I was a little baffled. If you're going to send your girlfriend something from 1-800-flowers for Valentine's Day from Iraq, wouldn't you pick roses? Everyone sends roses. Maybe you'd send daisies or carnations if you were on a budget, but a wreath? A dead flower wreath?

There was a note with the wreath:

I can't wait to hang this in our house together. I can't wait to move in with you. I love you.

Karl called me that day and asked if I had gotten his gift. I laughed and teased him about it. He asked if I read the note. Yes, I told him, it was very sweet.

 A year and a half later as we packed up to move from Washington to Texas, Karl looked on incredulously as I wrapped the wreath in tissue paper. The wreath hung in our dining room until I wrapped it back up to move it back to Washington. When we were going through things, discarding books, clothes, knick knacks, trying to pare down our possessions to fit into a smaller U-Haul, I delicately wrapped my wreath in tissue paper and taped it into a box marked fragile.

I don't think Karl understands why I keep the wreath, which I still laughingly maintain is a better gift for a grandma than a girlfriend, but I keep it anyway.

I tease him about the year I gave him a solid chocolate heart. I put it in his car the night before so when he left for work at five in the morning, he would be surprised. The chocolate was frozen solid, but he decided to eat it anyway. It knocked one of his baby teeth loose.  For years after that, I gave him chocolate milk for Valentine's Day, but now he has dental implants and this year I gave him a Reese's peanut butter heart.

Valentine's Day isn't about roses and chocolates, no matter what the television says. It is more about dead flower wreaths and knocked out baby teeth. It is about me washing the dishes because my husband is in Louisiana for his grandmother's funeral. It is about my husband writing "PREP FOR" on February 13 on his white board, because that takes some serious thought on his part - to remind himself to think about me is an amazing gift. Although he also got me a beautiful purple scarf.

Grandma B

My grief over my husband's brain is raw and angry and recurring. It lies dormant only to burst forth in a torrent of tears and curse words. It is my friend - a back up emotion when I am too shocked to feel. I am comfortable with my angry grief.

For the past two days I have been experiencing a different kind of grief. Instead of the fire of one thousand suns, this grief is like fog or mist. I am grieving for my husband's grandmother. She was 86 and she had a stroke. She died surrounded by loved ones. I am absolutely positive that if you asked her to name her 20 closest relatives, she would not name me and I am okay with that. I adored her though.

She could break a banana in half, which was even more impressive before you discovered that she would score the banana peel with her thumbnail before breaking it clean through.

My husband and I would make a game of trying to pay for things for her. She hated to let anyone pay for anything so you had to be really tricky. Once Karl put her bananas on the counter with his things before she noticed. She fussed at him afterwards, but he managed to spend 40 cents on her. Another time Karl and I were replacing her shower hardware and somehow, in the trips back and forth to the hardware store, I managed to buy her a four dollar tool. I was inordinately proud of myself.

When I met Grandma I was already married to Karl by about two months and I was about a month pregnant with our second child. Our eldest was two and extremely shy. As we were leaving Grandma's house, my mother-in-law encouraged my eldest to give Grandma a kiss. My eldest got a look of horror on their face - the kind of look only a small child faced with having to kiss an elderly relative can pull off. As my mother-in-law prodded my child, her mother said, "Leave that child alone," and won my heart. There is nothing, nothing so endearing to me as someone who will stand up for my children. My mother-in-law was well-intentioned and I wasn't angry with her - it was just nice to hear Grandma take my child's side over anyone else's. I was too new to the family to feel comfortable saying anything about kissing Grandma.

When our daughter was two and we went to visit Grandma, our eldest had warmed up enough to hug her goodbye. Our daughter is not shy and she is a hugger and a kisser. So when it was her turn to hug Grandma goodbye, she went for a kiss too. Grandma turned her head so she could have her cheek, but she turned her chubby cheeks to kiss her on the mouth. My mother in law told me later that Grandma didn't kiss anyone on the mouth.

That may have been the same visit that our eldest poured my new purple nail polish all over the guest bed at Grandma's house. I was mortified and offered to buy her new sheets, but, of course, she refused to let me buy anything.

I only saw Grandma once or twice a year, especially since we've moved across the country. I rarely spoke with her on the phone, but I could always tell when Karl was on the phone with her because they were the shortest conversations.

"Alright Sugar, love you, you take care," she would say when she was done with you.

We saw her a few months ago, leaving our kids with my mom because Grandma was nearly blind and our children are very active. We only stayed for a night. We watched Antiques Roadshow and a few cooking shows. I know we chatted but I don't know about what. I know Karl took pictures of her to make a portrait from. I do remember one thing she said to me.

"I love your children, but they don't mind."

Every time I think of it, I bust out laughing. Of course my children wouldn't mind, by the time we get to her house they have always been in the car for at least three hours. I have heard from one of her five kids that he didn't mind as a child either. I love that she always thought she was right and that she always had an opinion. I love that she told me my children don't mind.

I really loved her and I am sad I won't see her anymore.

Jonathon

"How much do you need for a book?" Karl asked me. We were sitting on the loveseat and my feet were draped across his lap as I read him a blog post I had written about him.

"Why?" I asked, then realized, "You want me to stop writing about you?"

"You shouldn't."

"I will if you want me to," I said, crying prettily, one tear sliding down my cheek.

"No," he said, adjusting his cap, "you shouldn't."

Even if I had enough for a book, then the book would be out there and his stories would be everywhere and he would be more exposed than he is now. Even if I had enough for a book, I would keep writing.

I told him that I had been chatting on facebook with his best friend from high school. I read him the messages:

The fondest memories I have of Karl and I were the carefree days of hanging out, riding bikes, listening to music and reading comics, along with whatever stupid whims came to mind.

Reading your blog is extremely eye-opening to me, and it rips my heart out because that man isn't the little guy I grew up with and remember so fondly.

There was no transition period. It was just Jonathon, then after a long period of time, it was a grown man who had seen war and been radically changed by it. Going from one to the other like that is heartbreaking. 

"Yeah," Karl nodded, "his mom cried when I saw her at his wedding. She asked me what Iraq was like, so I told her. Then she started crying."

I guess that's why I write, why Karl thinks I should write, not to make as many people as possible cry, but to let them know what happens. Jonathon is Karl's middle name. It's the name he went by from birth until the Army. Even though I met Jonathon in high school, I have not known Karl since then. Karl didn't exist. Karl is a "grown man who had seen war and been radically changed by it."

Jonathon was quick. He was a classic gifted underachiever, one who made Bs and Cs in high school with a bare minimum of work. He was funny and good-natured. Everyone liked him. People like Karl and Karl is funny, but he isn't good-natured. He is grumpy. He is sad. He couldn't pass remedial math with any amount of effort. He is not who he was.

He took pottery last semester but couldn't finish the required amount of work in time. The instructor, who is amazing, is letting Karl have this semester to finish his bowls and morphic vessels. Actually, when he gave Karl the incomplete, he told Karl he could have until midterm to finish his pieces. When midterm hit and Karl, despite all his time spent in the studio, had almost nothing new, the instructor extended his deadline. The day before his pottery instructor extended his deadline, Karl told me he didn't even know why he was taking pottery.

"I know. You're taking pottery because shards of pottery are how people know civilizations existed," I recited what he had told me six months ago about how excited he was to be taking the class. "You're creating things that will exist after we've died. You're making things that will be passed down and held onto and one day dug up to prove you existed."

I think he lets me write about him, because he wants a record of what's happening to him and what has happened to him. I write to prove he was here, even as he disappears. It's as much for me as for him or for anyone else. I want proof he was here. I want a record of how much I loved him when he was putting knives in the blender.

It seems so silly, because women always ask "How do you do it?" or better, they sigh that they "just couldn't do that," but they could. They just don't want to imagine it any more than I want to imagine being a woman in Iraq whose husband is suffering just as mine but who doesn't have the resources I do. There are spouses everywhere who are watching their loved ones disappear through Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or brain cancer or TBI. They signed the same papers I did.

It's just what happens sometimes... except that in our case sometimes meant during a war started by war profiteers. In our case, nature didn't just take it's course. In our case someone used a national tragedy to ramp up patriotism and start a war for profit. In our case someone decided that my husband and thousands like him weren't as important as money... and that is why the government really pays my mortgage every month. It is blood money for Jonathon.

I know that there are some people who believe we needed to go to war in Iraq. These people probably wouldn't appreciate the jokes Karl and I make about Team America: World Police! I don't know whether or not we helped in the end, although Karl believes we helped the oppressed groups. I don't believe that the war in Iraq was ever about protecting the US... unless you mean protecting our oil interests. I don't believe that anyone who wanted the war has ever had to pay the price for it and I don't believe that people know what the cost of war is.

I grew up in an extremely liberal household in Texas. I was anti-war from birth. I knew what PTSD was, not because I knew anyone who had it, but because my mom told me about Vietnam. So when Karl and I got back in touch before his second tour, I thought I was prepared. After his second tour, when we moved in together, I expected occasional angry outburst and nightmares. I knew war took a toll.

Karl has very few angry outbursts and his nightmares rarely wake me up. He checks for snipers and exits. He is agitated in crowds. He interprets litter as bombs. He wakes up in the middle of the night to fight with intruders who don't exist. I expected something similar, although I didn't appreciate the scope. These things are so normal though. If you are conditioned that someone is always after you, then you will act as if someone is always after you.

What I was completely unaware of and unprepared for was the brain injury. I think a lot about how Karl called me to tell me he drove over a bomb. Even now when I tell other people that he drove over a bomb, people are shocked that he is alive. I guess alive or dead were the only possible outcomes when he drove over a bomb. There was no "all of the above," but that's exactly what it is. He is alive and he is dead. He came home but he never did.

I don't write for Karl or I. I write for Jonathon, because he certainly deserved it. He deserves someone recognizing that he is lost. He deserves to have his story told.

Iraq in his eyes

My brother's yard is dirty and dusty. In December, my mom hired a dumpster to throw away all the random junk in his yard and house. My husband tried to help. My husband was very helpful until he had a panic attack about how much my brother's dirty, dusty, trash-filled yard reminded him of Iraq.

My mom called to ask me what to do with my husband, who then refused to talk to me.

"Tell him if he doesn't get on the phone, I'm coming there," I said as my husband yelled "tell her not to come here either!" in the background.

He got on the phone and locked himself in a car to feel safe while he talked to me. I put on my shoes and my contacts.

I wasn't really sure what the hell he was saying, but I told him I was coming to get him.

"No! No! I've had therapy. I can talk through this. I just need to rationalize it," he repeated a few times.

"Yes, I agree, you can talk through this," I said, finally interrupting, "but let me come get you. You can talk it through and be safe with me. That isn't the place for you to do this."

He agreed and we hung up.

I told my eight year old to be in charge and not bug my step-grandfather, 85, who was the only adult present. I told my five year old to be nice and listen to her sibling. I told them both that Daddy was having a bad day and I needed to go get him.

I cried on the way there. I am not equipped to calm someone down who is having panic attacks or flash backs. I don't know when to take someone home and when to take them to the ER. He said he drank too much coffee, which he reacts strongly to, but who knows whether he would have had a panic attack anyway.

When I showed up, Karl was sitting in the dirt with no shoes on, ranting. I tried to be nice, gently asking him to please come with me.

"No! I need to be here. I need to say this -"

"Karl," I said, loudly, "I need to get back to the kids and I need you to come with me."

"Well -"

"I need to get back to the kids and I need you to come with me," I repeated, interrupting him again, no longer caring about being gentle but only about getting him out of the dirt.

Later, my mother, an ER nurse of 30 plus years, told me I had handled the situation perfectly. I don't know why my mother thought I could somehow get through to my husband, but I did. I know that his episode reminded her of when my brother was diagnosed bipolar and would have similar bad days. Apparently watching my husband lose his shit was good for my brother, who told my mom that he understood now why we were sometimes wary of him being stressed out.

I got my husband home (to my mother's, where we were staying for the holidays), in bed, with strict instructions not to talk to our children or I would put him back in the car and take him directly to the ER, where I could probably get him placed on a psychiatric hold or sent to the VA hospital an hour away. An hour or so later he had recovered and was completely calm. That was when he realized he had left his glasses at my brother's house. He had also left his gloves, which looked like his Army gloves and helped turn my brother's dusty yard into a war zone in his eyes. Feeling like you're in Iraq without any gear is terrifying. My brother had given him a camelback though, one Karl was issued and had left at my brother's house years ago, and that seemed to help serve as a security blanket.

I went, alone, to my brother's house to get Karl's glasses. As I turned to walk back to the car, my brother stopped me.

"Hey," he said, looking a little sheepish, "I had no idea."

"I know."

No one has any idea... especially about the panic. It doesn't happen often, not nearly as often as the sniper checks. Karl and I are pretty good at keeping him out of situations that will be too stressful or trigger him.

"I think I underestimated you," my brother, who has known my husband one year longer than I have, told me.

"Karl can't come over here any more," I said, my eyes welling, "not if it reminds him of Iraq."

"Yeah... is there anything else I can do?"

"You can stop making jokes about putting one over on the government."

"Yeah, okay," he said with a sheepish laugh.

Maybe he thought it was a in-joke, not knowing that if he is joking about Karl putting one over on the government, he is denying Karl's daily life experience, but he gets it now and he won't joke about it anymore.

It was nice to have my brother recognize that there is a reason I talk to my husband firmly but calmly, a reason I avoid crowded places with him, a reason the government pays for my mortgage and everything else in my life. It was sad to see my husband in such a panic. Also, that panic set the stage for months of anger, which we are still embroiled in.

Karl is angry that he needs someone to diffuse him sometimes. Karl is angry I don't want him to use the stove. This morning we got in yet another argument about the stove. I told him I know that he won't stop using it until he recognizes he needs to stop. It has been over two years since I recognized he needed to stop using the stove, the first time he left food cooking as he left the house to go to the grocery store. He said he knows he shouldn't use the stove. He is angry. He is not angry at me.

I feel like he is angry at me, for not having brain damage... but I know not everything is about me. He is angry at himself for having brain damage and panic and anxiety and for leaving food on the stove and for not knowing when he can trust his brain and for not getting better and for getting worse and for being irrational and for being a burden and for yelling and for crying and for putting a knife in the blender.

That was this morning - he put a butter knife in the blender. While he mumbled, bewildered, at himself, not knowing why he put a knife in the blender, the kids and I laughed. I am glad they laughed. I am glad it was funny when the butter knife broke the plastic pitcher by flinging out the side, spilling coffee all over the counter. The alternative to laughing at a knife breaking my blender would be for us to join Karl in puzzling over why and how the knife got in the blender or for us to be quiet, not wanting to draw attention to poor Karl.

We don't do that. We don't pity him. We aren't easy on him. I'm not easy on him. I expect Karl to make accommodations for himself. I expect him to figure things out. If he can't, I'll help him. I am not always nice about it, but if you saw him sitting in the dirt, with Iraq in his eyes, you would understand that too.

Today I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything

Sometimes I feel
my job is not as a mom or a wife
but as an administrative assistant in a very small office.

When the kids are home,
it is obvious I am a mom
by the amount of yelling I do
and cooking
and occasionally even cleaning.

When my husband is home
and the kids are in bed
and he brings me a glass of wine
and I pick what show we're going to watch on tv -
or rather -
what show I'm going to watch on tv because he hasn't done the dishes again -
it is obvious I am a wife.

But when everyone is
gone,
at school,
learning things,
pursuing things,
doing things that don't involve me except peripherally,
I am a secretary.

I don't file my nails because the sound makes me crazy.
But I text and check email and read and sometimes watch tv,
and while away the day waiting for my life to start back up again.

When I am a secretary or an administrative assistant
(administrative assistant sounds so much more professional),
I wait for the phone to ring
while I deal with mounds of paperwork.
I authorize purchases.
I file.
I organize.
I check the mail.


I deal with the crises of being
a mom
and a wife
and a caregiver
from far away
with the guise of not doing anything.

My experience of war

"Let me read you this poem I wrote in high school about war," I said to Karl, after digging through old journals to find it.

Karl raised an eyebrow, "based on your extensive experience of war?"

This is the problem with me writing about Karl: I am making it up. I have no experience of war. I have exactly the same experience of war now as I did in high school.

I was still laying in bed this morning when Karl started a monologue about an interpreter they called Jack. Karl was wearing a neck gaiter because it was cold and it made him think of interpreters who hide their faces so their families won't be killed. Jack wouldn't leave Iraq because he was saving up money to get his family out of Iraq... but someone kidnapped his family and he spent all his savings to save them.

I could try to dramatize Jack's story, add in details about his savings and his tears, but I can't. Not only am I awful at fiction* but I don't want to put myself in Jack's place. I don't want to think about risking my life to give my kids a better life, only to find out that everything I worked for had to go to keep them alive in the place I was trying to save them from.

I don't want to know what it's like to be a soldier brandishing a gun or to be a mother facing a gun with her children, trying to keep them quiet while our house is ransacked. I like living in a nice American suburb with two children who go to school and have enough food.

I do not know what it is like to wait in line for men with guns from another country to give me an allowance of rice. I do not know what it is like to be a man with a gun giving rice to a woman who may or may not want to kill me. I  know what it is like to be on government assistance to buy my own rice from the grocery store in suburban America with no guns in sight.

Anything I write is the garble at the end of a game of telephone. My experiences of war are not experiences of war. My stories about strykers and IEDs and interpreters and explosions are not my stories. I like my running water, my wifi, my safe commute to take my kids to school, that my kids get to go to school, that my daughter gets to go to school. That is not to say this place is safe. I know from the stories I tell that no place is safe... but I like to pretend we are safe. I can pretend we are safe because I have no experience of war.










*true story! If I didn't have an interesting life, I would probably spend my days describing my dogs' snores.

I have no idea

This morning I woke up to my husband slamming on the hood of his car. I had somehow slept through our kids getting ready for school. I had somehow slept 10 hours. He was slamming on the hood of his car to see if he could get what he suspects is a loose lightbulb to start working. I don't know if it worked, although he did come in and kiss me goodbye before going outside to slam on his hood again before driving off.

Then my mother called. We haven't spoken in several days because she was on a trip and she wanted to check in. She asked if I could discourage Karl from taking classes he won't succeed in. I told her that since subtlety is my strong suit.... we laughed.

"No," I said, "I can't do that. I have to let Karl fail."

I can't protect him from the world and reality. That would be more damaging to him than just letting him fail. Assuming he's going to fail is even more damaging. Because we know so little about brains and what is going on in his brain, we really have no idea what he'll fail or succeed at. Some people believe in miraculous recoveries. There is some evidence that marijuana can help brain cells regenerate. So maybe one day when I think he's going to fall and he thinks he's going to fly, he'll fly. While it hurts to fall over and over and over again, I think it would hurt more to give up... I have no idea.

I don't ever have any idea what I'm doing or talking about. I'm just trying really really hard. I've discovered that this is pretty common. It is so common that most people just assume everyone else does actually know what they're doing. So as long as I am doing something, that's good enough.

As soon as I hung up the phone with my mom, a California number called me. It was UCLA asking if I had time to answer some screening questions about Karl for their brain studies. Since I was still sitting in bed in my pajamas, I said yes.

We talked about blasts and mood changes, anger, paranoia, PTSD, how long he was in the service, whether or not he was involved in medical trials or had recently had surgery. He is the right age for the study they're doing. What they're doing is trying to detect CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy - a degenerative brain disorder caused by trauma previously only detectable on autopsy) with brain scans. She explained that if Karl gets accepted, they will pay for two nights in a hotel while he spends two days being evaluated and scanned. They are going to have a meeting within the next few days to pick veterans for the study.

I hope Karl gets picked.... and I don't. I'd like to know what we're up against, but I don't really want to be told that his brain is going to keep degenerating until he goes insane and there's nothing anyone can do to help. Hopefully that isn't the case and he doesn't have CTE but then what is going on in his brain???? I want answers but I don't want bad news. I want confirmation of what we know, but I don't want to be right.

Maybe

Today I cleaned
and had a glass of wine
and took a bath
and read a book
and talked to my husband about who would pick up the kids.

I have a luxurious life
because I have enough money
and food
and a roof over my head
and some time,
not enough time.

I have enough time to clean the house
and take a bath
and read a book
and drink a glass of wine,

but

I do not have enough time with my husband.

Or maybe I do.

It's hard to tell.

He is no longer doing very well in his art classes,
but maybe that is not indicative of his brain's status,
except that it probably is.

I do not have enough time to grasp what is happening,
because something else is always happening
and I have to attend to the newest thing that is happening.

I do not have enough time to write,
there is never enough time,
because there are no words for the loss I feel
for the boy I knew
who was left in Iraq
and replaced with a man
who will probably forget who I am before I am very old.

I laugh about it though.
I tell him it is a good thing he married someone he knew as a teenager,
I tell him he will remember me -
but he will not understand why I am so old.

Or maybe he will not forget.

Maybe when he has forgotten 1 + 1
(some days I wonder if he has,
math is hard - even the facts he knows by rote memorization),
he will still know who I am.

Maybe he will never forget me or our children,
just like he will never forget Iraq.

Maybe when he dies,
his soul will finally be at peace,
in Iraq,
with his friends who wouldn't come home.

Maybe he doesn't have a soul,
maybe he lost it or maybe he never did,
maybe none of us do,
so maybe when he dies,
he will go back to being part of the universe,
part of Iraq,
part of the enemy combatants,
part of the energy and life force and dust we are all made of.

Maybe he should have married someone who knew about souls.

Maybe a wife like that,
a wife who prays,
a wife who knows about souls,
a wife who is saved,
could save him.

I know better.
I know we cannot save anyone.
We can only save ourselves
and offer ourselves as a crutch to others who are trying to save themselves.
We can hold cups of water on the sidelines of the marathon,
but we cannot run the marathon for anyone else,
we can only cheer.

Or maybe not.
Maybe I am just the wrong kind of wife,
the kind who cannot save,
the kind who can only watch helplessly
as the marathoner leaves the path to run with his demons.

Maybe there is a wife who could follow and beat the demons back.
But I think they would probably eat her.