Finding Courage in Adversity

I think of my father more often these days. At sixty-six, like his father before him, he had a stroke and lost the use of the right side of his body.  At the time I was only twenty-five, and while I admired the determination and perseverance he displayed throughout his recovery. I could not fully comprehend the depth of the challenge. I was immersed in my own sorrow at having lost the indestructible Dad that had provided me with a foundation.

Now, as I face my own challenges as I near 60 I am gaining that experience.  The accident has left me with a disability that I never, in a million years, could have imagined. And while my body and mind continues to heal and grow a little stronger each day, I’m acutely aware of how much healing remains. Hampered by my inability to use my right hand, I am exhausted by the time I complete an ordinary task. Whether it is showering, dressing or fixing lunch, it takes me twice as long as it did before. Further, the better I feel, the more I want to do, and the more frustrated I become. I long to rip the whole experience out of my life and go back to the way things were.

And then, I think of my Dad. Courage with a capital “C”.

As hard as it was for both he and my mother, they worked together, side-by-side, to pick up the pieces of their life and keep going. Day by day, week by week, month by month they soldiered on. I never heard my Dad complain. Not once. I knew he’d break down in tears once in a while behind closed doors and was generally more emotional as a result of the stroke. Occasionally when he struggled to do something with his hands that he used to do so easily I’d hear him mutter “damn” when things went awry, as they often did. But he never gave up. He’d just keep at it until the task was done.

He was a doer before and after. At twenty-three, after graduating from college, he struggled to find work. It was the Depression years.  He did not sit idle. Instead, he designed and built, with his own two hands, the house he and my mother and their subsequent five children lived in for twenty years. The house still stands and looks better than ever. After the stroke he continued, in time, to garden, build, and create in any, and every, way he could.

Even at eighty-nine he worked to improve his condition. The day he died he decided to take the brace off his leg because he had been working with a physical therapist who suggested the brace might be weakening his leg. Sadly, his slack leg caught the leg of a bench, and he fell.  His leg broke and he died post-op. Sadly, he saw the mishap as his failure and not the true success that it was.

So, when I start to feel frustrated and sorry for myself as I begin the challenges of rehab, I think of my Dad and I feel gratitude ~ not for what I’ve lost, but for all that I still have.