you try and sleep with this guy

 This is the condition of our bed the morning after. It looks like large pigs were rolling and jumping and messing with the sheets and do not let your thoughts go there.  This is what happens when a middle-aged man dealing with PTSD attempts to get his eight hours of shuteye. David is necessary to me on many levels but the sleep state requires that I be far away from this landscape.

 Middle age for this woman means night sweats and charlie-horses, heartburn from the late spaghetti supper, and too much wine, way too much wine.  Joints creak and lock, the lower back bellows loudly, and even my elbows ache when I sleep.  When almost sixty years of age if you're not moving, you're in pain.  I have an understanding psychiatrist who has been with me since my first depression, trying to be a woman in the 70's, and he has given me this little triangular pill which lets me sleep, thank you, sleep.
My David fights many demons at night.  He is crawling on his belly through jungles and he volunteers to carry the heavy artillery making himself a target in that Viet Nam war.  A youngster, a crew cut soldier insists that he carry the big gun, he is stuffed with fake importance and Dave relents, and then the boy is blown to pieces, shrapnel embedded in my husband's arm. Nightmares share the bed with Cowboy Dave and he insists on fighting the crazies unmedicated so there is a constant physical struggle under his sheets, not conducive to snuggling. God, I hate that war.
We don't sleep well, we children of the sixties, but we can cherish each other in the morning, brave and hopeful morning.