One Year Later

Have you ever completed a questionnaire that asked you the following question?

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

What a ridiculous question! With all the uncontrollable factors at play in our lives, the whims and fancies that change our directions every minute of every day, who could possibly give an answer to that question? I can certainly tell you that five years ago, or a year and a month ago, I could not have even come close to predicting where I am now.

One year ago, our lives were changed forever. A split second saw the end of a chapter in our lives and began a new one whose ending we could not even begin to guess. In the space of an hour on April 26, 2009, I went from worrying about finding a job for the new school year to wondering if someone was about to walk out of the trauma unit doors and begin a conversation with “I’m very sorry.”

At that moment, and in the days that followed, the thought of ‘a year from now’ did not even begin to enter my mind. As those early days passed, we thought in days, and weeks. We wanted to see IV drips stopped in so many days, or tubes pulled in this many weeks. A year was so far away that surely all of this would be finished by then.

But this has turned into a longer chapter than we had originally imagined. At the beginning, we could not even imagine how long it would take, and how slow the progress would be.Each day we look for the signs that Mom continues to get better. Some days it’s easy to be optimistic, and some days that glass is just half empty. But by little steps and inches, she gets better.

In some ways, it’s like what I imagine having a baby must be like. (Hear me out on this one.) You look for milestones – that first laugh, the first smile, the first words. In a way, Mom has been reborn. She is learning to do everything again. The first time she laughed, it was cause for celebration. Now she laughs and smiles with us every day. The first time she was able to do “Yes/No” responses, it was cause for celebration. Now she can answer questions to help make sure she gets what she needs at any given time. Everyone who sees her from the medical perspective sees phenomenal progress and improvement. We are always looking forward, pushing her gently but surely toward toward another step.

This is not the story we wanted to live, but one year ago we learned that sometimes life just doesn’t go according to plan. But we have come so far in one year; where will we be one year from now?