"A Soldier's Night Before Christmas"

 

 

Well hello my loyal readers, and to my newest readers. Hope my words find you with a smile on this fine Tuesday morning. Course for some of you, your time zone could be ahead of me or behind me, but welcome just the same. I wanted to share with you a quick story about an observation and why I feel that if we could all just hold within us, just an ounce of compassion, life could be ever so much easier. After what I saw yesterday, I realized that there are people in this world that need this true life lesson.

I had been sitting in a patient waiting area in the Walter Reed National Medical Center, waiting for my appointment in the Dental Clinic, watching people walking by as they make their way to and from the various clinics on the floor that I was on. I noticed that all of them wore the same look of frustration, stone cold, anger, and some even tried to wear a painted smile to conceal the sorrow that consumed the rest of their body. It was obvious that people were not happy, until I heard the sounds of little feet running. I saw a mother and her young son making their way to the same clinic check-in desk that I had just been standing at. I never noticed her husband that was with her until he rolled up to the counter in his motorized wheelchair. My thoughts paid no mind to his disability, but what did catch me was the dozens of people who walked by wearing a frown with the exception of his sweet son, who was probably no more than two, and his father’s face that wore a genuine smile. It was when he turned his chair around that I noticed that the jacket that he had to conceal his legs had slid off revealing the extreme redness of recent scares of his double amputation and the loss of two fingers on his right hand. My mind pondered what he may have had to endure that the end result was this extreme, until I heard him tell the staff member at the desk he had recently been in the ongoing war overseas. I felt a rush of tears making their way onto the surface of my face that was soon turned into a smile after what he did next. His wife worked with the staff to get appointments that did not go as smoothly as she had hoped, but hung in there as their son became restless and was working on a bit of a crying fit. Without hesitation, her husband lifted his son up and placed in him in his lap, and then took him for a quick spin around the hospital on our floor. Both dad and son smiled and laughed as their wheels made a unique rhythm on the tiled floor as they wooshed by.

Wow, here is a father, a dad, a Soldier who has fought for our freedom and has suffered the loss of his limbs, and yet without missing a beat, reaches out to his wife to help her by entertaining his son, with laughter and smiles, while other onlookers displayed their disgust that their wish for library silence, had been broken by their sounds of joy. For me, their laughter helped me realize that no matter what we all may have endured in our lives; we never know the stories of others and what life is like for them. I wish citizens out there that feel that being negative and mean is the way life would realize - IT'S NOT!  We can't let the sorrow take hold of us and bring us to such a low, that we can't bring ourselves up.  We must rise up and move forward with love and happiness in our hearts and be blessed that we are still alive no matter what the challenges we have faced or the ones that await us. Life is too short.

As these feelings rushed over within me, a song began to ring out in my mind and touched my heart as if it were cradled in the palm of my husband’s hand being held ever so gently. “A Soldier's Night before Christmas," This is my husband’s favorite Christmas Song and it was this year when I really learned why it means so much to him. After all that I have learned this year about my Seabee Veteran, I look up at the heavens and thank god that he and his unit came home after their time in the Gulf War from 90-91. Like the song, they too had been Soldiers that had missed Christmas, with friends and family because of their duties as a United States Soldier, yet even thought they are home, there is a part of their souls that has been taken from them and remains overseas. I have never come face to face with the destruction of war or have been on the front line, but with all of his unit members who have been willing to share their personal stories of war, I have a better understanding and a deep seeded respect and appreciation of what, my husband, the soldier in the military hospital yesterday, and our men and woman in our armed forces go through when they come from war. I am thankful that at this time, my husband may not be in a wheelchair, or needs walking aids, but he still deals with pain both physically and other times mentally of his time during the war. I will never know everything about this man I love, and what he went through, but what I do know - I love him with all that I am and here for him no matter what.

 

 

Merry Christmas Ron & Merry Christmas to our military members and the families that wait patiently for their loved ones safe return home and to those who have come home and are trying to put the pieces of their lives back together as their family lovingly waits. This song I dedicate to all of you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdEFaOoSBsw