Stars and Sky

It’s not so much that he’s gone. Well, let’s be honest, it sucks that he’s gone, that a month of precious time, before he deploys, is being spent with an entire continent between us. What truly bothers me though, is that this month means. It’s training for a war he will be fighting, in a short period of time. This is the big step, before he deploys. And it means we are that much closer to that dreaded day, when he steps out of my life, to fight.

Standing outside on the porch, watching the dogs run in circles out in the grass, and listening to the song that it is ringtone, I found myself in tears. Again. For only the fourth or fifth time today, I lost track this afternoon. I don’t like that he’s gone, I don’t like that he won’t be here, I don’t like that I face an empty bed, a quiet house, a month of this sits before me, and again, it’s a reminder of what I will have to face in a fairly short time. It got hard to breathe, the dark shadows of night got harder to see through a veil of tears, and I wanted nothing more than to be able to lean against him.

I tilted my head back, to look up at the stars. And I remembered, the very first night we were married, after dinner, when we drug a blanket out to lay in the grass, and he pointed out the constellations to me, showing me which one was which, and we talked about the stars, and the history behind the constellations, and all that good stuff. It’s not much, that tiny memory, it’s something I’m sure we will do again, it’s something fairly ordinary. But it was enough, to quiet my tears for a moment, to slow my heartbeat, which was matching the pace of a Thoroughbred, and was pounding so hard I couldn’t hear above it. The stars that I so love to watch at night… those twinkling little pieces of light, spread across a dark, velvety looking sky, are the same stars that are tracing paths over his sky right now. And for now, that’s enough, I’ll sleep through the night.

~Jennifer