if wishes were fishes

I know two women whose veteran spouses have committed suicide in the past year. I think that couldn't happen to us, but I wonder how it could have happened to them, guys who were "doing so well." Sometimes, for a moment, I think I might get it.

Tonight at bedtime our daughter punched and kicked Karl, who decided that meant our daughter couldn't watch Power Rangers for two years. Yup, two years. Our eldest child practiced some words for the spelling bee but when I left to deal with our daughter, they decided they didn't want to practice with daddy. So they started acting up and ignoring him.

I calmed our daughter down and went back to our eldest and told them it was bedtime.

"You can just go straight downstairs," I told Karl who was close to the end of his fuse.

As I sat in our eldest's bed, I told them they needed to try harder.

"But Daddy's a jerk!"

"Well, he has better reason than you," I said, trying to be gentle.

"There's no good reason to be a jerk!"

"Maybe not... but he has lots of bad memories of war and it's hard for him sometimes to be nice."

"But! The war was so long ago!"

I guess it seems so long ago because he got back from Iraq (the second time) when they were 2.

"Have you ever seen one of your friends die?" I ask, already knowing the answer, sighing at myself for asking this simple question, wondering if 9 is old enough to hear what I know I'm going to say.

"No."

"Okay, how long do you think it would take you to get over it if you watched one of your friends die?" It hurts me to ask them this, my baby, my tiny child, but I know they need to think it through if they're going to have any compassion for their father and the things he carries.

"Stop asking me this!" They have already realized that my questions are too hard, that they are out of their depth, that they don't want to spend a single second trying to imagine what their daddy has been though.

"Then," I continue, because there is so much more, "how long do you think it would take you to get over people shooting at you every day for a year?" I am simplifying things. He was in Iraq twice, for a year once and 15 months once and people were never shooting at him every single day for an entire year straight, but it is easy to imagine that out of 800 days in Iraq, he was shot at, at least once, for at least 365 days total.

My baby had pulled a blanket over her face, and they pulled it back down now and looked me in the eye.

"I wish Daddy hadn't driven over a bomb," they said in a thick voice.

My life flashed before my eyes - the medicaid and food stamps; the C&P exams; the award letter we received when he was finally rated 100% PT; the retro-payment; the house we bought; the days when we send the kids to school and have the luxury of sitting at home doing nothing; the financial security - and tears filled my eyes and slid down my cheeks.

"Me too, honey, me too, so much," I said, picturing Karl in high school, quick-witted and easily able to remember everything, the Karl they will never know.

They sat up and hugged me and we wiped away our own tears.

"I love Daddy and I think you love him too," (here I was interrupted with their incredulous "of course I do!") "and I know Daddy is trying his hardest. Sometimes our best sucks. Sometimes my best sucks," (here they wanted an example so I reminded them of when we were on vacation and I smacked their stomach because they wouldn't stop shrieking at me. For some reason both kids let me off the hook and forget my bad moments much easier than they forget Karl's.) "Sometimes Daddy's best sucks. Sometimes your best sucks. But we're all in this together and we just need to try a little harder."

They exclaimed "I'm sorry!" a few times. They are willing to give Karl a break when they remember that his life has been scary. I hugged them again and went downstairs.

Karl asked if I was okay and I tried not to cry as I told him that they had said they wished he hadn't driven over a bomb. At that moment, I thought about how hard it must be to have your wife and your children wish you were normal; how hard it must be to wish, every day, to just be normal, to be who you were before you drove over a bomb, or got shot, or became some new person that no one knew, least of all you. I thought about how it could sneak up on me when I thought we were having a normal day and I thought how it must sneak up on men and women who struggle with being damaged. I thought maybe I might understand how fucking hard that must be.

I don't though. I know how hard it is for me and how sad I think it is and how sad I think I would feel at trying, every day, to come to terms with who I am when maybe I would be someone slightly different, slightly worse, every day.

I don't know if war is courageous. Sometimes, I'm sure it is. However, I know that waking up every day, knowing the world is a terrifying place, and putting one foot in front of the other (if you still have them both) is courageous.

Today, before I cried about Karl's brain, I laughed about it. A new friend came over to pick up her son, a friend of my daughter's, and we were talking about brain development.

"Brains are pretty important," she said.

"You can't live without them," Karl said.

"I don't know," I said, turning to Karl, "you seem to be doing pretty well."

He made another joke, one about his brain leaking out his ears every night as he slept and I told him he wasn't allowed to sleep anymore.

To clarify, I asked my new friend if she knew Karl had a neuro-degenerative brain injury. We travel in some of the same circles and she did know, but, she said, it made her more comfortable when I joked about it. I told another friend about this conversation later and she said she would never joke about Karl's brain the way that I do, but she understood that we joked about it and we seemed to have it figured out.

I don't think we have anything figured out. I wish he hadn't driven over a bomb.