Sometimes Nothing is Easy

There are cobblestones in Old Town, ruts and bumps between every curb, 6 different ways upstairs but only one that is handicapped accessible... A bone might be broken but a trip to the urgent care for someone who has spent the last six months in and out of the hospital is not an easy trip to take. We've gone to the beach a thousand times, but have never spent weeks trying to get a beach wheelchair rental or a van that might carry a beach wheelchair. There is a path along the waterfront but only half of it is paved... we want to go to a memorial for a friend this weekend but might not be able to get there because there is no place to park or walk safely with a wheelchair. A shower is an arduous process that takes more time and strategy than a game of chess some days.

I'm tired and sad because this is exhausting and change is at every corner... change that none of us asked for and none of us could ever have predicted. The hardest part of it all is watching Mom with tears in her eyes after it takes her minutes instead of seconds to cross a parking lot or seeing her defeated look at a bowl of soup she cannot carry from the kitchen to the table because she needs both hands on her walker.

One of the most disillusioning of things is the voice in the back of my head that constantly reminds me how much I've/we've taken for granted... how impossible it is to know how impossible things can be within a matter of hours or days. It is like briefly catching glimpses of it when you watch a sad movie or see someone shuffle into restaurant, visit a sick friend in the hospital... but seeing and doing it every day hurts like hell and I am humbled by what I did not know before this. Of course, no one can go back, no one can know until they've "been there", but it's almost painful for me sometimes to think about how oblivious I have been to just how good we've had it.

Mama Marian is tired today. I messed up her medicine last night and gave her the morning doses instead of the evening ones. It was after a three and a half hour trip to the Urgent Care facility, where I made her go to get x-rays, only to learn that there was nothing broken, nothing fractured... just a badly sprained ankle and knee. It was during the bath I tried to give her to relax last night afterward, only to find that I would end up terrifying her more trying to help her out of the tub later. Nothing is easy sometimes. I want things to be magical and times to be special. I want to have the best of memories and give Mom every smile, every laugh, every hug that I can... so I took her on a walk by the water today only to make her fall out of her wheelchair onto the pavement. I can't make any of this go away and sometimes it feels like I can't even make it any better or easier. I want to so much.

I suppose this is one of those times that is only made tolerable by knowing that life is not supposed to be easy. As M. Scott Peck said,

"Life is difficult. This is the great truth, one of the greatest truths—it is a great truth because once we see this truth, we transcend it.”

I know that this is why life is so precious; it would not be if it came easily and quickly and if it lasted forever. So I will try to celebrate the beauty of what is and what has been and try not to get held down by what is lost. It's just a bit harder some days than others.