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Worth The Cost
March 29th, 2011 2:17 am     A+ | a-
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written by Dr Tricia Working

Surrounded by memories they made, the tears forced their way out, falling damply onto both skin and pictures. Just that afternoon, they had said goodbye for the 'last' "last" time, but she didn't cry then. He had not seen tears since he left for the  Gulf; that moment at the homecoming didn't count because they really had not come out of her eyes and she turned away quickly so he only caught her cheek with his kiss, and then he was gone, surrounded by well-wishers, family.

So many promises made, broken, pieced together with kisses in place of words. All of it gone, now, as if it had never existed, leaving in its place a raw, aching wound, visible only through her eyes if you knew her very, very well.

But not many did, and no one knew her as he did. The night they came back from the cruise and were at that little bed/breakfast and were watching "Beauty and the Beast"- he turned to her and said that he would be her "Vincent" and she would never be alone again. And she so wanted to believe him, because always she'd been alone and searched for him, but she had never known until they met. The pain, it just felt too much to bear, but she wasn't stupid, simply a survivor who was a victim of the war just as surely as if she'd gone over with him.

But that didn't seem to matter because she had been home safe. Safe is relative because nothing during that time went unnoticed. Every waking moment was spent thinking, living, explaining, the war and how she was and how he was. Nights were worst because there was nothing to fill them up and the bed was empty save for that of his which stayed under her pillow and his tattered army t-shirt she slept in every night. It was weeks before she washed it because it was all she had and it had his scent still. There was even the remains of the flower he had given her from their last day at the beach and it sat in her car day after day in the hand of the teddy bear on her dash - that tiny piece lasted for exactly one year, the last vestige of the life they promised to have when he returned.
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