One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t rush recovery. Whether you’re talking about the head or the heart, healing takes time. Grief recedes like the tide, leaving memories that make you smile or laugh. Life is for the living, after all, and you can only walk around in a daze for so long.
On July 31, 2015, nearly four months after Cairo passed away, my medical retirement finally came through. After so many months of waiting—after the endless rounds of applications and evaluations and interviews and testing—it was strangely anticlimactic.
Honestly, it felt like a long time since I’d been a Navy SEAL. I say that with no malice or regret. The simple truth is, I enlisted in the navy as a boy fresh out of high school and chased the dream of becoming a SEAL with everything I had. I did it because I wanted to serve my country at the highest possible level, on the front lines of a battle against a global enemy of freedom. Was that naïve or simplistic? Maybe a little. The world is a whole lot more complicated than I realized when I left Texas, having never known what it was like to kill someone or to watch one of my friends die. But I believed in the work that we did, and I remain proud of my contributions. I am grateful for having been given the opportunity to be part of such an amazing organization and to have served alongside men I can honestly say are the best of the best.
But three years had passed since I’d held the job I’d signed up for, and there was no way I would ever again be healthy or young enough to go back to it. It’s strange to feel like an old man at thirty-one years of age, but that’s the way it was for me. Ultimately, the navy agreed.
My career came to an end quietly and gradually, with three years of limited service—none of it involving jumping out of planes or hunting down bad guys or blowing things up. I was wounded. I’d suffered a traumatic brain injury. It happens. As a result, I didn’t go out the way I would have liked, but that’s often the case with guys in Special Operations. I tried not to feel sorry for myself. It could have been a whole lot worse. More than ninety members of the Naval Special Warfare community have been killed in action or during training exercises since 9/11. Hundreds more have been seriously wounded and struggle today with scars far more damaging than mine.
In all ways, I was lucky, and I had to remind myself of that fact—even on the very worst days.
After my retirement was official, I took a security job in Alabama. That was a mistake. It was much too soon. The headaches worsened, and the brain fog rolled in like a burgeoning storm. After six months, I left the job and filled the next year traveling with Natalie and the dogs. We spent time with her family in Florida and my family in Texas. We visited friends in various places around the country. Eventually, we bought a little house on a lake in East Texas and settled into a comfortable routine.
Through friends in the navy, I connected with some terrific folks at the Brain Treatment Foundation in Dallas, an organization devoted to providing support and guidance to combat veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress. A lot of vets struggle with symptoms related to their service, and often they feel like they have to suffer in silence. Alone. I felt that way a lot of the time. But there is help, and I was fortunate to find it. I’d like to help others find it, as well.
Through the Brain Treatment Foundation, I was referred to the Brain Treatment Center in Carlsbad, California, which is affiliated with the USC Neurorestoration Center. There I was exposed to therapies—transcranial magnetic stimulation, neurofeedback, brain stimulation—that were unlike anything I had tried in the past. Over time, I began to heal. The headaches and back spasms receded. Freed from chronic pain, I weaned myself off most medication, and my mood naturally lifted. Was this a result of alternative treatment or merely the passing of time? I don’t know. Perhaps some combination of the two.
I still get headaches sometimes, and there are days when I think about the friends I have lost, and the cloud rolls in. But it passes. I don’t stay in the dark for long. My memory is better than it has been in years. I feel … better. Almost whole again.
Natalie and I have added two more dogs to the family: another Malinois and a Dutch shepherd. They’re cute as hell, and they keep us busy. Sometimes one of the Malinois will cross one paw over the other and tilt its head a certain way, and the resemblance to Cairo is uncanny.
And it makes me smile.
Occasionally, I have to travel for work—I take freelance security assignments, and I’m working with the Brain Treatment Foundation to encourage more veterans to seek help and support. Sometimes I’ll take one or more of the dogs on the road with me. But even when they stay at home, I am rarely alone. That coffee can with the paw print? The one that contains Cairo’s ashes? I usually carry it in my backpack when I’m on the road. I drive almost everywhere. Doesn’t matter if the trip is two hundred miles or two thousand miles—I’d rather sit behind the wheel and roll down the windows and crank the music. Once in a while, though, I am forced to fly; it hasn’t happened often, but there have been a couple of times when I have taken Cairo with me, which has caused some interesting reactions at airport security.
TSA screener (holding up coffee can, looking at paw prints): What’s this?
Me: That’s my dog, sir. He was my best friend.
TSA screener (gently placing can back on table): Oh … I’m sorry.
Me: That’s okay. He goes everywhere with me.
TSA screener (nodding sympathetically): I understand.
He doesn’t really understand, of course. But then, how could he? I never tell anyone that the can contains the ashes of not just any dog but one of the most amazing dogs who ever lived. That’s something I’ve always sort of kept to myself.
Lately, though, I’ve thought that it would be nice if more people knew about Cairo and had a chance to hear his story, and maybe connect with him in some way. I’ve been thinking about donating some of my personal memorabilia to the 9/11 Memorial, including reminders of my time with Cairo. I still have the bloodstained harness he wore the night he saved my life—and that he later wore during operation Neptune Spear. It would be hard to part with that, but it would be a fitting tribute to Cairo if others had a chance to see it.
Maybe I’ll donate his ashes, as well, or at least a portion of his ashes. I’d like to keep some for myself, tucked safely in a coffee can in my backpack, so that Cairo is never far away, and so that he will always know …
I love you, buddy.