Love story behind B.C. soldier’s inspiring recovery celebrated on stage

Adam finds out how a Nanaimo couple’s real-life story of love and sacrifice is being celebrated on stage.

Debbie and Trevor Greene will never forget that night they first met at a bar, when he noticed her sweater had fallen off her chair and made his move.

“I went over and picked it up and put it on,” Trevor smiles. “And said, ‘Where did you get my sweater?‘”

“[Trevor] is tall,” Debbie laughs, recalling the sight of him squeezed into her small cardigan.

“It literally came halfway up his arm.”

That moment of silliness inspired a connection so substantial; it led Debbie and Trevor to exchange vows and start a family.

One year into fatherhood and Trevor embarked on a journey that would change the course of his life.

“I left my daughter’s first birthday party to deploy,” Trevor says.

“Obviously, I regret that now.”

Trevor was serving on a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan when he was attacked with an axe to the head. The incident left him near death.

“It was shock and disbelief,” Debbie says, explaining how she was told that Trevor would never wake from his coma - but he did.

But although Trevor lost the ability to walk on his own, he spent the following decades working tirelessly for solutions to fix broken bodies, heal emotional traumas, and inspire enduring hope.

“I do the things I do for the families of the wounded, so they don’t get forgotten,” Trevor says. “And maybe in some way I can improve their lives.”

Trevor says the real hero is Debbie, who sacrificed her career to be instrumental in helping him and raising their family. Trevor says his wife deserves half the medals he earned.

“She showed me how to love someone completely, without reservation,” Trevor says.

That love story is now being explored in a new play produced by Shakespeare Kelowna called The Soldier’s Wife, written by Los Angeles based playwright, Sean Harris Oliver.

“This is a story about quiet courage,” says Oliver.

“And two people who stayed together and went on a miraculous journey together.”

From her fallen sweater, through his remarkable resilience, to their advocacy for others, Oliver hopes the play will inspire Canadian audiences.

“To me, it’s this generation’s Rick Hansen or Terry Fox story,” he says.

“This isn’t the life I had anticipated,” Debbie says, but it is the life that she and Trevor had worked to find purpose and meaning in living to the fullest.

“Maybe it can give somebody strength,” Debbie says. “And make them feel like they’re not alone in their journey.”

And maybe through adversity we can find the opportunity to be loving to others, and achieve something even greater than we could have imagined.