Consummatum est.

Welcome home. It's the craziest set of two words to even be contemplating, let alone facing, right now with the lobster. Welcome home. What? Didn't he just leave? I mean, wasn't it just four months ago that I was unwrapping my body from his and watching him walk away from me?

The Army has consistently not given me deployment presents. Deployments have been extended. Goodbye days have been moved up. Dwell time has been shortened. Communication has been worse than anticipated. When it comes to deployments, the Army and I don't have the happiest of track records. So when the President announced that all the soldiers would be leaving Iraq, I smiled that he would be out of the country that almost killed me, and assumed the next big hill to climb would be heading my way. I have lived this life for quite a while now and I know to expect the unexpected. Except that the unexpected in this life is negative. It means that things change, but they change for the worse, not the better.

To be honest, I can't believe that I have spent that past three weeks making welcome home banners, posters, cards. I can't believe that I have worked on preparing barracks for soldiers from our company to move in to. I can't believe that my husband is safely out of what I consider to be my heart's hell hole. I can't believe this is all coming to an end.

It's difficult to process. It's emotional in a way that I don't know how to describe. For some of you dear readers, you know what it means. You know what that country has cost me. You know. So here I sit, trying to wrap my brain around all of this. Here I sit trying to comprehend how I feel.

I asked the lobster to save the uniform he was wearing when he left that place for the last time. I plan to have it framed, along with his boots and dog tags, and the last picture ever taken of him in that place. I plan to have some sort of purging, letting go, moving on ceremony with the lobster. Maybe we'll write down the things that country stole from us. Maybe we'll sit on our back porch, sipping wine and just journeying down the memory lane of Iraq.

When he walks off of that airplane, and he walks into my arms, one thing is for certain, this welcome home is the most significant in a number of ways. It didn't win. The war, the country, the place didn't win. It didn't destroy us. It didn't conquer us, and I promise you it tried. It tried with all of the ugliness that it could muster. It tried and failed. And I will cry. I will seriously cry. I will probably cry harder than I've ever cried. I will breathe differently. I will feel lighter. I will wrap my arms around him and rejoice because I can finally say for good and forever that it. is. finished.