Member-only story
Two Steps Forward, Ten Steps Back
Sometimes I write to teach you something. Other times I write to process something. This is the latter today. Maybe it will teach you something, too, along the way. You cannot make up my life.
This morning I woke up at six. By the time John woke up and we went to grab breakfast my older sister had called me. I missed her call, so she messaged me saying her day started at 3 am. When I got her message and replied she sent me several photos without context or warning.
These were quite graphic photos. I insisted she call me and she did. She and her husband moved in with his mother after she had a stroke. They take care of her because she cannot walk or do much for herself. She has no feeling on the left side of her body.
Normally they put her in bed at night and place her cigarettes on the other side of the room. This way she cannot get to them. She is known to drop them from time-to-time. Well, last night they didn’t do that. His mother fell asleep in the living room chair.
He didn’t want to wake her, and didn’t think to move her cigarettes. He stayed in the living room to sleep near her. At 3 am he woke up to his mother watching television as if nothing was wrong, only there was something very, very wrong. She was on fire.
