A year ago today my son and I were in the general waiting area of a major hospital about to be admitted for his radical, extreme and horribly painful orthopedic surgery.
He was hysterical with fear.
I was too. But there was only room for one of us to scream and cry.
A year ago today, according to my own doctors, I had three weeks to live at best. I had ceased treatment for my own terminal illness in order to be functional for my boy through the horror we were necessarily about to embark upon.
They were not supportive of that decision.
A year ago today two incredible girlfriends, true friends, had moved in to our house to help us as we had nobody that could and as such my daughters were at home with them in a childhood oblivion to the trauma upon us.
The experience of being human is never matched in intensity as owning the responsibility of guardianship: of family, of friends, of self.
On this day my son is laughing, loud and musical, at his mother's antics as he bears weight through is legs working toward promise of walking. This in utter defiance to the quadriplegia that claims his body. And only possible due to the surgery he chose a year ago.
On this day I breathe deeply, my mind clear, my body stronger than it has been for several years. My heart beats not renewed but instead, reborn.
On this day both of my incredible friends are moving through life amid blessing and trial as life would have them do so. It is delight to watch. And they are loved by all of us.
It is a rare gratitude, complex and rich, that we shall eternally bare for them.
This day houses light as never before. Love as never before. A future as never possible but I know no impossibility and so, I shall claim it.
For we are here on this day.
"Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will. It is always interesting"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Melissa Hocking 2011
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