“Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.”

— Mark Goulsten, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for   Dummies

As I drove the motor home up to the driveway and parked, I felt grateful to be home. We both did. I relaxed my shoulders just a little. As much as I could. Somehow, I had gotten us home safely. Tired, burned out and still coming to terms with what happened. In a too big for me motor home that now felt somewhat like a car. The highway had stretched long before us, and after what seemed like a lifetime away, we had finally reached our destination. It was not an easy trip, but it did not matter anymore. We were home. Our kids were there. Joy.

Chris was in pain. Of course, he was. He had just travelled hundreds of kilometres on minimal painkillers with major injuries. The pain had been his constant travel companion. He climbed carefully from the motor home. Walking was still difficult. His cane provided him with some stability. I cannot imagine home must have felt like to him. Seeing the faces of his children must have been beyond emotional. We moved toward the gate. Our children were waiting for us. We had been gone too long.

Some family members were waiting to welcome us home. My sister and mom made us a welcome home sign. The kids stood beside it. Welcoming their mommy and daddy home. Too little to really understand what was happening. Too young to understand why we had been gone so long. Our kids were used to their father coming and going, but I had always been there. I was their constant. My daughter had only just turned one. I had never left them before. Not even for the night; I had been gone for two weeks.

My sister watched as my daughter saw us. She says it still breaks her heart. It was as though my daughter had just realized we had been gone, while at the same time she was surprised we had come back. What does a one-year-old brain do with that? Does it feel abandoned? Does it feel traumatized? Does it store it? Remember it in some unconscious way?

My son, he was just three years old. Old enough to know his daddy was in an accident, old enough to know his mommy left to take care of him, but too young to really comprehend the realities of what that meant. He was definitely traumatized. He showed it. He would not let me out of his sight for a long time. He needed me near him. Us near him. As he tried to understand that his daddy could no longer wrestle with him on the trampoline, that his daddy could barely walk, and that his daddy was changed.

I look at the pictures of those first few months home, and I still somehow cannot believe those people are us. We were so elated and happy to be home. Chris was alive and walking. We still had so much hope. At the same time, we were so naive. So unbelievably naive. Me, I am no longer naive. Chris, well I think he would say the same thing. We had no idea that we had a mountain to climb ahead of us. A mountain the height of Everest. And not just one mountain; in the years that have followed we have climbed many. We have fallen into crevices, and pulled ourselves out, only to see yet another mountain awaiting our feet. There are still some before us. I can see them, but when I look back, I see the tallest and most jagged behind us. We are veteran survivors now. Our innocence left on a peak long ago.