- To celebrate all your little accomplishments, whether it's getting more reward points on a new credit card, fixing the garage door opener, organizing the sock drawer, or surviving another day with that idiot boss.
- To not take each other for granted. Thank them for their small kindnesses and forgive them their little irritating habits.
- ...
I started this post a long time back and only wrote the part above. At the time, as now, I was 4.5 years into my $$$$$ divorce, and I still didn't know what I wanted from marriage or love or men or even friends. Now, I do. And I want to tell you an inspiring tale to tell you how this happened.
It's about a young man growing up on the South Side of Chicago, still getting his head on straight and the value of hard work. He could and did do anything. Six foot three, athletic, he held his school's swim record for over 18 years.
This golden child was a bit adrift but heading in the right direction when, after a night of drinking, his 18-year-old friend crashed the car in which he was a passenger.
I met him 18 years later, a lawyer with a condo in the newly fashionable West Loop of Chicago, when he started dating my sister. I had just had Tootie Pie, and was crazy with anxiety, and so I didn't learn that much about him aside from the first impressions. Just over a year later, I was a bridesmaid at their wedding, after just having had a stroke. I can tell you that I looked craaaaaaazy on the dance floor with my new hemichoreaic involuntary movement disorder, but, I mean, c'mon, they played Don't Stop Believing.
They had my niece and nephew and they were in love. They were everything I wanted in a marriage: a person that would make me better and I would be better because of it.
Did I mention that he is a quadripelgic? No? Oh, yeah. I forgot. I was busy having post-partum depression and an ischemic neurological event. He had no problem letting me know what he needed from me, which made it easy for me, because I just followed his lead, and I told him what I needed from him (mostly, don't fuck with my sister). He knew what he wanted and communicated and made everything very comfortable and normal. He had years to perfect these things.
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| My family, minus Tootie Pie, who stayed behind in NYC, and of course, Karen and Mike's kids, who came later. |
Still, in all the years knowing him, I only had so much curiosity, or, I guess I should say that I didn't know if curiosity would be appreciated. I mean, how many times did he have to go through the story, the one that was catastrophic to him? So, I let my mother be the conduit of information, and so I had only the foggiest idea of what he had gone through.
He had surgeries, bed sores, reduced lung capacity and increased phlegm, been dropped on the floor (numerous times), had a metal halo bolted to his head, catheters in his penis, God-knows-what was going on in the backyard, strangers thinking he was a vegetable, and all other sorts indignities and tortures. All of this medical side of him, which was a huge part, was conducted very secretively; partly, I guess, because he was private, and mostly, I'd assume, to spare people from disturbing situations.
I now know of these things because he realized one more dream: he became a published author of his autobiography. That left one dream, walking. It wasn't to be, because two days after the book was available on amazon.com, he left his earthly body, but he had years of practice with that, too.
The funeral was inspiring, but of course it was. The amount of people that knew him and the love was unbelieveable. The priest had know him since his first days in college. Bagpipes, Irish singers, and a poignant eulogy from my fiercely private sister, who spoke to her young children and somehow, didn't break everyone's heart. He passed way too young, with not enough time. But, the world is appreciably better because of him. And that is the only legacy worth leaving.
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