The eternal optimist

I had hoped, foolishly, that the world would stop spinning. It didn’t happen, the sun came up with blinding regularity, and the morning came, just a few days ago, when I had to uncurl my fingers from his jacket, and let him go.

I’ve cried, I’ve stayed in bed, I’ve given myself time to be upset, be emotional, and I’ve come to realize how important friends are. Only another military wife can understand where I stand right now, and what it is like to wander around with a permanent lump in your throat.

Then I realized, today, when I let the dogs out into what is a gorgeous, perfect, not too hot, not too cold day, that the sun is still coming up. Time has not stopped, the world is still spinning, the sun will go down this evening, and then come back up tomorrow morning, and it is going to repeat this over and over.

And then, there will come a morning that will find me up before the dawn, counting down the hours, the seconds, until I see him step off that plane, or off the bus that brings him down from the airfield. The world did not stop turning to keep him here, but it hasn’t stopped turning to keep him there either. Time is not the enemy now, but something to wait out these coming months with.

~Jennifer