Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Quad

It sounds simple.  Quad.  But it's immobility.  It's a body in place with no power.   People ask me, "how's the hubby?"  They're trying to be nice.  But "hubby"  can't do anything, literally anything, without help except push the buttons on a TV remote.  Everything.  Everything.  Everything must be done by someone else.  Food.  Bathroom.  Drink.  Nose Picking.  Eye scratching.  Ear cleaning.  Teath flossing.  Teath brushing.  Everything.  That's what quad means.  All four.  All four don't work.  That someone else is either me or Ubaldo. 

But to Jed's remarkable credit, he stays positive.  He is protecting us.  At night he prays outloud for God to take him home.  He has no idea that I hear him.  One day I told him I was worried about him.  He had been low energy for several days.  He said, "why worry, the worst that can happen is that I die and I rather look forword to that." 

When I was just beginning my adult life I remember a very sad man who lived in our apartment building.  He and his wife had just retired with hopes of living the life they had dreamed.  But, with little warning, she had died.  He wandered about lost and without purpose.  I remember him saying, "we should have lived more fully when we could." 

That's the one of the many things I have to be thankful for.  Jed and I lived life fully.  We had fun.  Lots and lots of fun.  We lived a little bit on the edge, enough to know gasps.  Gasps of joy, gasps of beauty, gasps of fear, gasps of love.  A little bit abandon.  A little bit magic. 

Quad.  Very unfortunate.  Not as we planned.  Please, dear God, take it away.  But, what we have been given is far greater that what has been taken away.  "To whom much is given, much is expected."

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