What does comfort mean to you?
I think sometimes you find comfort in small things. Those things that under normal circumstances you might not notice but which somehow in times of tension, or fear, have a way of erasing everything else.
I remember laying in the darkness of our apartment in Vukovar during the war, the sounds of mortars and sniperfire keeping me from sleep. In those hours when the chance for death was so near I found my comfort in the sounds of the quiet breathing of my wife and children. At other times, when it seemed there had been more death then life in my day (or night),or when I was questioning my choice of what I was doing with my life, the only comfort to be found was in the arms of my wife.
When those sounds, and even that touch were taken from me I wondered if I would ever know those kinds of comfort again, and it was then I turned to more destructive methods to find relief.
There was a time in my life when I wondered if those early means of comfort would ever return to me. It's only in these past few months in fact that I can finally allow the hope of reclaiming them to surface. I know that Danijela and my children are gone and the comfort they brought to me has been lost with their passing, as are the extremes in my life that made me so desperate for the comfort they brought to me. Having that security doesn't make me want the comfort any less though and so I welcome my now being able to turn to Abby. Perhaps the most welcoming comfort I look forward to is once more laying in the darkness and listening to the quiet rhythms of my wife and child as they sleep, and with that I know I will find true peace.
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