Apart

Tomorrow will be my Georganne's birthday. I will not be able to be with her and that is hard. Most people would say it's the special days that are harder to be apart on, but maybe it's not. It might be missing all the little things, the normal times of just doing life together that is the most difficult.
We don't get many of those.
Our normal days are spent apart from each other. More often than not it is the 20 minute phone call or the email or the card in the mail that represents the woman I love. Even that blows me away. But oh those times that we are together, how special they are!
She managed to come to my base here in Afghanistan for a conference a couple weeks ago and we got to see each other. I was walking around trying to find where she was in the maze of dusty concrete barricades that made landmarks difficult when I heard my name shouted by the voice I love to hear. Behind me was my wife dressed in anonymous camoflage, but my wife still the same. I dodged the armored vehicles roaring down the street and met her as she ran to me with tears in her eyes. I held her right there in the midst of the dust and bustle of a military machine that has no place for such displays, and it all disappeared for a moment.
It's memories like that which we hold on to.