Dear Alex, 4th July 2012, Nine long months today...





4th july 2012

Dear Alex,

Nine months ago today…Nine whole long, agonising months.

After watching the video Jamie did for you (which PLEASE SHARE!!) I suddenly reaslised where you had come from, so I wanted to look at the positive moments, focus and refocus and soak it in...

I have wept, dried up, been given rain drops of hope and hail stone pellets of despair. I would never have thought I could make it this long nine months ago…

And life keeps going. And it keeps going without my hero, my best friend and my eternal love by my side…

And I look at you today, you are so different from the initial months in rehab. So very, very different, hoisted out of bed in a sling to sit in a wheelchair, not moving, not speaking, not opening your eyes. Longing for your touch, your voice, your words…

Now, nine months on, I have much of this. Words every so often, although speech is very unclear. Your touch all the time when I am near, your head (which drooped constantly to the right hand side-they didn’t know if you’d ever get head control back) moves purposefully to me, pressing into me. Your hand holds mine, reaches out, strokes the kids, holds me tight.

Your eyes open most of the time, although your sight is not there…

Your head has strength and control, you are even eating! Alongside the stomach peg which they still feed you through, you eat pureed meals three times a day, they sometimes try you holding the spoon, and you direct it (sometimes successfully!) to your mouth.

You are upright and walk (extremely heavily assisted) through a gym. Sometimes looking ahead, body (surf trained) standing almost tall and proud at times …taking steps on your new journey. Your upper body supporting you for short periods of time sitting unaided…Not harnessed into the wheel chair, straps everywhere to keep you forward and not flopping.

You said to me on Monday when asked what do you think about? ‘I think about you all the time’ and you frown your eyebrows and cry ‘I just want things to be like before’… you have thought processes this indicates, and can express them occasionally.

I bring in filter coffee, to smell and to make. Aided, you pour the coffee into a cafetiere, you plunge it when it’s brewed and with my help, you pour it out for us…something you did for me before, late morning at home. My special coffees made by you…sugary and frothy milk.

Esmie sat on your knee and made a clay pot with you the other day, you roll the clay with my help with your right hand, I support the arm.

The moments, the weeks that pass when you appear to not be there, and I am left wondering if this is it, you have gone? You stare into space, are unmotivated, not speaking, unresponsive, and I want to scream ‘Alex, where are you? Where have you gone?’ and drag you out. These times are hard, impossible, and I have to dig in deep to remind myself you will keep going, keep on fighting, but I never succeed in fully reassuring myself you’ll come back fighting…the hope flickers dim at these points, and my resources are tested to the ultimate limits. I groan internally and my soul fades…

Only you do reappear, you beam when you hear my voice, you hold me tight with your right arm, lift the left at the shoulder. We take it in turns, the kids and I, to massage out and coax your fingers on your left hand to uncurl.

You speak again, you laugh, you are my joy, my happiness, my hope and still, very much my Alex. These times I almost breeze through, because I think I can take anything on for just having a brief moment of a bit of you. Surely this will consciously, unconsciously come to the fore, gradually, repairing with time, love…

Doesn’t love heal? The Most High watch on, and encourage where all hope is burned, left singed souls scattered, despairing?

Aren’t you the living, breathing proof?

A product of love, purpose, and what purpose-four souls looking on, willing their daddy back.

Thank you God for this week, for your speech, delight, perseverance and smiles…

Thank you God that I truly believe, I will get almost my whole Alex back…

Things will never be the same again; we will never be the same again. But we don’t need to be scarred; burned out-we can be replenished in a very true and very different sense.

This journey for you, for me, no, I would never have accepted, but as I have to, I will tell you again and again that I am fighting for you, I LOVE you and I am, and will be eternally, yours Alex Wood…



Me xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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