Reasons?

I don't know everything that happened to my husband in Afghanistan, I doubt I even know half of it, but that doesn't matter.  I will never ask him.  Any information that he wants to volunteer will be welcomed but other than that, I leave it alone.  I know that most people ask him if he's killed someone, does it matter?  If he did, then it wouldn't have been the man who sleeps beside me every night, it would have been the infantry soldier.  We had a long conversation last night about just that.

When he was upset one day, probably a year ago, I told him what my grandfather had said to me about his military service.  He was a WWII vet and as with most WWII vets, he didn't discuss it.  I had asked him about it once and I will never forget what he said to me.  He told me that a man in a war is not the same man at home.  He told me that the man I saw before me was not the same man who participated in military actions against Hitler's army.  He also told me that the things a soldier does in times of war are things that they would never even think of doing at home.  This is the training, it becomes auto-pilot.  The man in front of me was the man I loved and adored, my grandfather, and he was such a loving, caring teddy bear of a man that I couldn't imagine him hurting another human being, but I know that to be standing in front of me, he had to.

My husband is very much like my grandfather was and if I could have any wish come true, they would have had a chance to meet before he passed away.  I deal with PTSD every day and I don't know what caused it, nor does it matter.  We were out running errands a little while ago and some idiot cut into our lane, narrowly missing us, to go around another car, my husband shrugged it off.  We saw the same car 5 minutes later and the guy swerved into the oncoming traffic lane that we were in, just to prove a point.  We pulled into our destination, the dreaded grocery store, and I could tell that my husband was seeing red.  He was waiting.  Waiting to see if this guy was going to come into the parking lot for words (thank God, he didn't!).  We sat there for a few minutes, neither saying a word.  I asked him if he just wanted to try again tomorrow for the groceries, he agreed that it was a better idea to go home as he knew that any small thing would send him over the edge.  That is never good!

We came home, and will try again tomorrow.  Sometimes, this is what we have to do to make things a little easier to handle.  Compromise is a very important thing in a family like ours.