Time Stops

In the midst of cleaning and organizing, but really making a bigger mess, I decided to stop and blog. While the mess sits. It has been a little while since I've updated. Though, there really aren't too many updates these days! We're just your run of the mill working family!

Anyway, I found these three things while going through stuff today. Every time I run across them, I kind of stop in my tracks and it all just flashes back to that moment. The moment my husband got blown up to be exact. Not the moment I learned about it, but the actual physical explosion. Because these items just make me wonder what it looked like exactly. I have played the actual event over and over in my head, but I will never really know what it looked like. He has told me multiple times, and in detail, but you know how peoples perceptions are. What I see when he tells the story is completely different than what actually happened, I'm sure!

So these three things, plus his bloodied wedding ring sat in that ziplock baggie on a shelf in our hospital room for the longest time. And now I find them in a box under our bed. He can't use the rank or nametape anymore because they're in multi cam and that's only for deployments. I'm not sure why the watch has sat in that box for two years though. What really made me stop today was the fact that this watch still works. The date is correct, and even the time is correct. How weird is that. A deployment to Afghanistan, a land mine explosion, two years later, and it's still going!

The baggie still has Afghanistan dirt and dust in it, and I will probably never get rid of it. For some reason, this tiny bag that contained all of his personal effects that day, is very special to me. It's so small. But the things inside of it say so much!

He wears his wedding right on his right hand now because he can't get it over his broken left ring finger. But I remember giving that to mom to have her clean it. I should have taken a picture of its condition first. One day I could look at it and think nothing of it, but other days it just says so much about all the events of that day - the blood, sweat, and tears our marriage would endure.

I could get really metaphorical here, but I think you'd rather me not.

I just cannot get over this watch. It's still going. And so are we. Strong.

Love him.