How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world.
—Anne Frank
One thing I am not is a fatalist, though people from all
walks of life, for whatever reason, often assume that I am. It might be the
cashier at the grocer, the man I pass walking his dog on the fields, or perhaps
it’s another mother I meet in a coffee shop or a new friend, and often mere
strangers tell me, upon hearing about or seeing Calvin’s struggles, that
“things happen for a reason,” or “God doesn’t give us anything we
can’t handle,” to which I reply kindly, “What about the poor folks who take
their own lives because of situations they couldn’t handle?”
I remember watching the film Rabbit Hole with Nicole Kidman.
She plays Becca, a woman whose only child, a four-year-old son, runs out into
the street in front of his home and gets hit by a car and dies. She and her
husband decide to go to counseling with a group of parents who have also lost
their children, some to cancer, some to disease, some by accident. One of the
mothers speaks sullenly about her daughter, dark grieving circles under her
downcast eyes, and says, with little conviction, “God had to take her. He
needed another angel.” Becca replies strong and incredulously, “Why didn’t he
just make one? Another angel. I mean, He’s God after all.”
Any time well-meaning folks tell me that things happen for a
reason I think of this scene and my mind rolls over images of my friend Emily’s
toddler Ronan who is dying of Tay-Sachs, of my friend Christy’s son Will who
suffered a lot in life and died when he was only four, of my friend Lidia whose
beautiful daughter was stillborn, of my friend’s son Leland who, at only twelve
days old, got meningitis from a mosquito bite and ever since has suffered up to
forty dangerous atonic and tonic-clonic seizures every day and must be drugged,
like Calvin, to try to keep them at bay, albeit unsuccessfully. No one can tell
me there is reason behind these maladies. No one.
Though I’m not a fatalist, one thing is certain, I am an
eternal optimist. I know that, if I am strong, I can decide how to handle the tragedies that inevitably happen in life, so I choose to see beauty and
opportunity in that which has caused me much grief and hardship. Calvin, whose health has been seriously compromised by seizures and drugs, has
shown me to live life day by day, to immerse myself in the moment and to savor
it gracefully, to love unconditionally. The strains that having a child with
epilepsy has put on our family has only made us a stronger more cohesive unit,
a force of love to be reckoned with. The people I have met along the way—the
doctors, the mothers, the nurses, the children, the teachers, the therapists,
the writers—have enriched my life in a way impossible to describe. The support
I’ve received from old friends, former coaches and teachers, former
acquaintances who’ve become friends, from new friends and from family is
astounding, humbling, brings me to tears and lifts me up all at the same
time. My life is full and rich beyond measure, which makes up, in part, for the
gross limitations that having a disabled child with intractable epilepsy places
on my dreams, my desires, my psyche.
So no, in my world things do not happen for a reason but
rather I choose to find purpose in the stuff of life, and I am forever thankful for the
people who have helped me to find it. Many of you, my readers,
help me through the darkest, hardest of days when you reach out to me with a kind word, or when you
share Calvin’s story. You let me know that I am not alone. Without you so much
wouldn’t be possible. You make the world a better place for Calvin and me to
live. What more profound purpose could any of us find in life but to do that for someone else? Thank you and keep up the good works. What goes around comes around.
In honor of the last day of epilepsy awareness month, please share this story. Help bring us one step closer to a cure.
In honor of the last day of epilepsy awareness month, please share this story. Help bring us one step closer to a cure.
photo by Michael Kolster |