After I separated from the military, I continued to deploy as a contractor. Many don't realize that we often claim to have no boots on the ground in a given theater because we have no uniformed troops there. But we do. Their uniform is 5.11 cargo pants and black zip-up fleeces. I know. I was one of them. I didn't ask to stop deploying. I was forced into it. I got a bad neurological report. Spinocerebellar ataxia, type 14. Never heard of it, right? It's one of the rare ones. I think of it like a slow progressing ALS. It's characterized by a steadily deteriorating sense of balance and coordination. It makes things that used to be easy, difficult. It makes things that used to be difficult, impossible. It's not going to shorten my life, God willing, but it will make my later years look different than I had hoped. I obviously couldn't keep deploying. I did my final tour - one last hurrah to the same desert where I had earlier met Lucy. It was a much safer place this time. I made a point to stop by our old camp and visit the spot where I had once played with my dog when she was a sad faced pup in the desert. What I didn't know is that a short time later, I'd be out of a job, a casualty of Biden's vaccine mandate. As someone rendered non-deployable, nobody went to bat for me. In those uncertain times, they wanted to retain the people they could use as boots on the ground. So I was shown the door. It felt like Uncle Sam had spat in my face. At the same time, @Herb_Minstrel's music school closed on orders of the Virginia Health Department prohibiting in-person music lessons. In the blink of an eye, our family's source of income had disappeared. But Lucy remained a source of comfort. When I deployed, I felt better leaving my wife and kids knowing she was home to protect them. When I had to stop traveling, she kept my experiences alive; a living, breathing link to the past. D.C. once took away my livelihood. Richmond took away my wife's. Now, the county is trying to take away our dog. We can't let them. #SaveLucy
