When we left St. Catherine’s to come home in June of 2006 it
felt like surrender, it felt like we were leaving too soon with too much still
to learn and to do.
We had been at St. Catherine’s, a sub acute care and rehab
center, for a total of four months and we had spent a turbulent six weeks at
Pate rehab in Dallas. All in all Marty had not seen the inside of
our house for six months.
As I sat in the social worker’s office listening and
thinking about our options, trying to come to grips with our new reality, I
finally just gave in to what I saw as inevitable and I said, “It’s time to go
home.”
I never would have thought it but going home felt like
surrender, leaving rehab without accomplishing some or really any of our
recovery goals felt like total failure.
We had spent months trying to find answers and see some real improvement
in Marty’s physical and cognitive abilities.
I felt like we had made very little progress and as I said those words, “let’s
go home”, it felt like acquiescence to the strokes, it felt like I was quitting
on Marty.
Before the strokes Marty was a musician, a teacher, a
therapist, a mentor to young women, a house painter, a detailed but painfully
slow wall paperer and the financial manager for our house. She presented seminal papers at conventions and
helped revitalize a youth program at our church, she helped our oldest put
together a remote powered, Paper Mache shark and guided our youngest through
the travails of adolescence.
Before the strokes Marty managed to get a couple of degrees,
one a doctorate, while raising two very successful children and supporting a
husband in a job that was somewhat nomadic.
She had done big stuff and seen big stuff, she was accomplished.
The strokes and the recovery from the assault of the strokes
made everything she had done seem pretty small. As we walked out of St. Catherine’s for the
last time we were faced with giving up on rehab, we were being forced to take
unacceptable losses, we were going home to learn to live and accept.
Over the years my accomplished wife has taught me a lot of
stuff, over our years together she has helped me grow into something
better. How she has lived her new life,
what she has taught me by her gracious acceptance of that new life, has been nothing
short of inspiring and maybe her biggest achievement. Marty has taught me that what I saw as
surrender that June was really just the beginnings of acceptance without
surrender.
Marty, my wounded wife, taught me. She quietly led us both to acceptance, to
accept the disability, to accept the new life, to accept the massive changes
brought on by the strokes, to accept it all, but to never surrender to any of
it.
She has continued to fight for every little piece of
improvement, every tiny memory, every number, every address, every name. She has very simply and quietly fought for
improvement. Marty has embraced the
rehab adage, “I’m better today than I was yesterday, I will be better tomorrow
than I am today.”
She has lived the credo, acceptance without surrender.
Marty has done all of this quietly, without complaining and
with all of the dignity one can have when your body and parts of your mind are
so broken by a disease. She has accepted
with dignity and grace a body that does not necessarily lend itself to either. In her living she has taught everyone who
knows her about grace and acceptance.
Marty was always stubborn, dogmatic, determined in
everything she faced, in everything she wanted to do. She wasn’t ever really compliant or graceful
in her life. The strokes forced us both
to find a way to accept a new life.
She was not forced to live her life without complaint, she
just does. She was not forced to
continue to seek improvement, she just does.
She was not forced to live with grace and dignity, she was not forced to
fight surrender she just does every day.
She embodies acceptance without surrender.
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