When I was thirteen or so I asked my mom how dad’s homecoming was. She smiled and thought for a moment before replying, a look of melancholy spreading across her face. “It was bittersweet… I guess. Life outside of the Marine Corps was a hard adjustment for him. The Corps was drawing down due to budget cuts and could not use a first lieutenant with one arm. That didn’t stop him though from fighting the medical retirement tooth and nail. When he lost the fight it really broke his heart. He wanted to stay in the Corps forever - he loved being a Marine.” Recalling that time all those years later was still hard for my mom. I remember her tearing up as she told me about it. She told me that Dad still had pieces of shrapnel in his chest that they had been unable to remove. As she told me she placed her fingers on her chest softly stroking where the scar tissue marked on his body where the shrapnel resided - a constant reminder of how close he had come to death. I was a bit surprised to hear that he missed the life of a deployed Marine. She told me about how much he missed having the steadiness one can only experience in the military when deployed. You don’t have to choose what clothes to wear because you wear the same uniform every day. The chow hall served three healthy meals a day. You had very little distractions and only one job to do - what you were told. There was always someone higher than you giving direction. You slept when you could, and you did not have to worry about bills, planning vacations, or yard work. If you need to see a doctor, you could at any time day or night without waiting months to be seen. In short, life was simple and nearly devoid of the intricacies of civilian life that make it so stressful. Civilian life, on the other hand, was complicated. My mom told me that he was pretty angry when he came home. The littlest things would set him off. Conversely though, the smallest things could also make him happy. Things like getting ice out of the fridge whenever you wanted. Not having to drink all your water out of plastic bottles. Clean showers with hot fresh water (instead of muddy lukewarm showers with water pressure that could and often did shut off without warning). Eating fresh fruits and vegetables instead of the preserved shelf stable ones that he had eaten for months on end. These were just a few of the things my mom told me that dad was appreciative of when he came home. “In some ways it opened my eyes to how much I had taken for granted..” She told me as she gazed out the little window of our cabin in Vermont. I found hints too of the home coming in the journals my mother had kept. One thing that he wrote a lot about was how nice it was to be close to mom again. He wrote a lot about her smell, the warmth of her next to him under the sheets, watching her get dressed while pretending not to watch, or joining her in the shower (uggh). I could tell my dad missed those things every single day that he was away in the desert. So, maybe civilian life was not too terrible… It was just an adjustment. My mom told me that anyone who was exposed to hand-to-hand combat, suicide bombers, snipers, and the threat of death with every breath would leave anyone struggling with PTSD for the rest of their lives - sadly that was the case for my dad. My dad missed his Marines and he was especially disappointed to have not been there for their homecoming. Instead he had been stuck in the hospital undergoing rigorous physical therapy and learning how to use his new prosthetic arm. The first stop my parents made on their way home to the west coast was to visit his unit, which was stationed in Camp Lejune North Carolina. He wrote about the two Marines who had been in the guard tower were back on full active status. They were both in dad’s old platoon.  They had confided in dad that they were sorry he had been wounded and they felt that they were to blame. They wished they had taken out the vehicle before it got so close to the base. They had been afraid to though because of all the flak that came down from the higher-ups for the death of that woman and her child. My dad tried to comfort them and assure them that he was not mad. You had been in a tough situation, he said, and the higher-ups had abandoned us. All in the interest of protecting themselves from any political fallout. ![[desert-ii1.jpg]] Mom told me that she had hoped that life in the city where my parents had moved back to, after his forced medical retirement, would help him heal. Instead it exacerbated dad’s PTSD and made things worse. The noise and the crowds had him on edge almost constantly. So, my parents moved out of the big city to a quiet suburb just on the other side of the bay. They found a cozy home on a cul-de-sac in a peaceful neighborhood. It was a great place for a new beginning. The move was a good change for both of them and as the months passed, dad spent less time at home and more time in the coastal wild lands around their home. Relearning simple day-to-day tasks like opening doors with an armful of groceries, driving his manual transmission truck while adjusting the A/C., or even just opening a pickle jar were all new challenges for someone with a robotic arm. Dad told mom all the time that he felt like a baby re-learning how to do things he had been able to do his whole life again. One of his journal entries he shared how his therapist had suggested that instead of getting angry and frustrated by the situation he should try to see the positive aspects of his new abilities. Since his hand never got tired he could push his body further at the gym (where mom said he spent hours of his time every day), he could carry all the groceries in one hand, and the sharp edges of his prosthetic “fingers” allowed him to rock climb much harder routes than he had been able to do with his big soft hands. As the months passed and the raw emotions of the deployment began to subside things started to get better for my mom and dad. They were happy, in love; and life was simple, sweet, and full of hope. Sadly though it was not to last very long. It was late winter when the nightmares, as my mom called them, started to happen.     <center>“An excerpt from my father’s journal”</center> **$\quad$** _January 23_ **$\quad$**_It was a cold night, the moon was full and bathing the misty landscape in a pale glow. It was late but I could not sleep. I was sitting up in bed alternating staring out the window and back to Lilli’s bare legs which were caressed by the pale moonlight when suddenly I noticed movement down the hallway out of the corner of my eye. We were the only ones in the house that night. So, I flung the sheets off, affixed my arm, and held my breath. Adjusting my eyes from the brightness of the moon to the blackness of the hallway took a few seconds but then I saw the movement again. The coat closet in the hall was opening slowly. What I saw next made my blood run cold. A dark figure of a man stepped out of the closet. There was no sound, not even the creak of the door opening or the groan of the floor as it walked towards our room. I stood slowly and was getting ready to charge at the figure when it stepped into the moonlight. The person I saw was none other than the man I had killed with my knife in the desert, the one who had shot me in the chest, and he was standing in our room! I could even see the blood oozing onto our carpet from his knife wounds. His eyes glowed a bright red._ _I let out a cry of sheer terror and anger and in one great leap I swung with my good arm at his head. Instead of hitting him though I crashed into the far wall of our room. I spun around lashing out at where the man was standing. He was still and oddly peaceful._ _“Leave. Leave now.” Is all it said in the most grotesque guttural voice._   _I lunged again at him screaming and cursing. Lilli woke up clutching the sheets to her bare breasts screaming and fumbled for the lamp on the bed stand. I took another swing at the figure just as the lights came on but the apparition dissolved before my eyes. Stunned by the suddenly bright room I blinked and rubbed my eyes. I spun around to look down the hall - the closet was still open but the man was gone. Suddenly I felt Lilli’s bare breasts pressed against my back and she wrapped her arms around my chest holding me tightly._ _“Come back to bed sweetie. It was just a nightmare….”_ _I went back to bed but sleep did not come easily I tossed and turned until the sun began to rise and then - I fell asleep._ --- Years later my mom told me something about that night that she said she had never told my dad. When he finally fell asleep I was laying in bed next to him staring at the ceiling. I just happened to glance over at the closet in the hall and I noticed several coats were on the floor with the hangers still neatly tucked into them. I got out of bed to pick them up off the floor when I  smelled a fragrant aroma mixed with a dusty smell. A chill ran down my spine and I got this eerie sense that I was not alone. Forgetting the coats, I jumped back in bed and wrapped your father’s arm around me. My parents didn’t speak to each other right away about that night. She just wasn’t sure what to say and she guessed my dad was embarrassed by the episode. So, she let it be. Then a few days later on a windy afternoon my mom was taking a nap on the sofa while dad was watching a show. She was woken up by the sound of a loud gust of wind and the back door slamming open. Dad stood up to go close the door when the room suddenly got very very cold. My mother recalled then how the room was filled with the same fragrant dusty aroma she had smelled in the hallway a few days before. Just barely audible over the loud wind coming through the open door she heard a grotesque guttural voice coming from the kitchen. “Leave now. You must leave now!” My mom said that the next thing she heard was dad yelling and a loud commotion in the kitchen as pots and pans crashed to the floor. Mom said she ran in to see what was going on and found dad rolling around the kitchen floor cursing and punching at the air. She had heard the voice but there was no one in the kitchen and dad was fighting thin air. It was at this point that she began to get really worried that maybe he was having a psychotic break. He wasn’t though. Worse yet my mom was about to experience her own terror filled interactions with the “messenger” that was tormenting dad… ### Next Chapter: [[10 - Happiness and the Dreams 💭]] ### Previous Chapter: [[8 - Departure 🚁]]