The Day The World Changed

Hey, mom, I never told you this before, but...when I lied in that hospital bed all those years ago, feeling like my life might be lost to me forever, it was you who gave me hope that it would not.

Hearing, more than ever being told, that I had been said I would live as a vegetable if I ever woke up and then waking up partially paralyzed from a series of strokes and hardly able to move the other side of my body was incredibly defeating. Needing nurses and doctors to look after all my needs, major and minor, was more debilitating than my paralysis.

But then there was you.

You made everyone step aside.

I was yours and you were one hundred percent - more than one hundred percent - by my side. You taught me what it was to be unconditional, no matter what the surface looks like.

You left everything you knew to be with me living out a similar experience. You left both your jobs, even losing one; you left your home and your pets and your friends and other family. You left everything you knew about life to be with me and hold my hand to get through everything I now faced. And for 3 weeks you faced it without me consciously facing it with you. It was then you held my hand tightest. When the doctors told you that you could pull the plug on me, it was you who told them no because you weren't ready to give up on me.

Because of that you helped me not to give up on myself.

I'll never remember detail for detail the day I woke up from my coma, but I'll always remember the fear I felt. A fear that took a long time to fully leave, it stretched itself in many ways. But when I first woke up it was a fear I'd never felt before - I'm almost in tears going back to it. Everything was different. First, me from my top to my toes and inside to out. Then literally everything else - my environment, my independence, I was now a college drop-out, my precious kitten, Bambi, had died, I had no hair and was missing a front tooth....I felt ugly, I felt I would be judged as I judged myself, I felt like a disappointment, and so on. And as things went further and I got better bit by bit I was worried I would never walk and shake my hips like a woman naturally would or that my one arm would not ever swing like it should as I walked.

But then there was you.

You helped me step out of my own way.

I saw myself doing all the amazing things I had done and all the simple things, too. I saw myself doing more than what might even have been possible after that.

But I didn't see it until you did. And maybe you didn't even realize you saw it, but through the love you gave me and through the times you reminded me I could do and get through what I was facing, the times you held my hand you let me see and, even better, let me feel like the only limit that remained was me.

I live a life now where most people have no idea what I went through 20 years ago or that I was carried to the hospital nearly in a body bag. I live knowing I have a limitless capacity to face whatever comes and that I have the potential and ability to take on any opportunity I choose to. I deserve to live a good life and so I am.

And it's because of you I know that.

I love you, mom,

Always,

Heather