It's your moment of triumph! Where are you and what are you doing?/Theatrical Muse Challenge

Standing here now in front of the photographer it's still hard to believe this is all real. I have a wife, a son, a job I love...all of those things I was sure I would never know again have found their way back to me.

Come this November, it will have been sixteen years since I buried Danijela and our children in that Vukovar cemetery. Sixteen years since all of the dreams I had for the future were buried along with them. I look back at all of the years I wasted, all the years I let my grief control my life and I realize how lucky I am to have been given this gift of happiness a second time.

I made so many mistakes when Abby and I were together the first time. It's hard to say just what went wrong, maybe it was because I wasn't ready to let go of the past, or maybe it was because I was too afraid of what the future held. I know Abby saw it, how could she not? Why else would she tell me I was still married to a ghost when we ended it between us? I know I can't take all of the blame, Abby was battling her own ghosts, her mother, her father, her brother, her failed marriage, neither of us were ready the first time around.

Somehow though, we found our way back to each other and standing here now, our son Joe in my arms, this is my moment of triumph, our moment of triumph. Once more I can call myself someone's husband, once more I can embrace being a father, after sixteen years, I am finally whole again.