Coming Home

This weekend I sat in my bed with one of my best friends and drank a couple few glasses of wine while we watched the show 'Coming Home' and shed some tears. The whole preface of the show is to highlight real life military famlies and their reunions with thier loved ones. The show was overwhleming and quite emotional as we watched the various servicemembers come home from war and surprise their loved ones with the homecomings of their dreams.
The whole show got me to thinking... does the rest of the country feel the way that I do when I watch this show. Do they understand what it feels like to wait for months on end for the person you care most about in the whole world to return home safely? My bet would be that they do not. But, is it even my place to expect that they should understand or even feel any empathy towards this life that I chose live. Granted one can not choose who they fall in love with but our life is a culmination of choices that lead us to our given path.
I think that my train of thought was partially inspired by the emotion I felt when I was told by a member of my family that, "believe it or not most people understand what you go through during your husband's deployment." My thought was... believe it or not most people do not understand.
There is an entire emotional cycle that one goes through each and every time a loved one deploys and forget about those spur of the moment deployments where we can not even expierence that full cycle of emotions and are left with a heavy heart and a half empty bed.
However, at the end of the day what really matters is that there are homecomings. They are filled with love, devotion, emotion and an array of feeling that maybe is better off left to those that have waited so many months for the return of those dusty boots. Perhaps it is better that others do not understand and these moments are left held close to the heart of a military family. These moments are sacred and we are so very priviledged to have them.