Defining Life by “Can” Instead of “Can’t”
As Mother, Ray, and I prepared to attend my aunt’s funeral last week, I wondered how my aunt’s daughter — I’ll call her Susan — would handle her own husband’s care while she attended the funeral with her Daddy. Susan’s husband — I’ll call him Tom — is a disabled Vietnam veteran who is not able to leave their home except when Susan takes him to doctor’s appointments. “Perhaps one of his friends can stay with him,” I conjectured.
To my surprise, when we arrived at the church, there was Tom in a reclining motorized wheelchair. As I visited with Tom, I told him that I was surprised to see him. “I had to be here for them,” he explained. The “them” were Susan and her daddy, which is the full-extent of Susan’s immediate family, besides her son who lives out of state and was not able to be at the funeral.
Tom was strong and active when we first met him a dozen or so years ago. However, we knew from the start that he carried about the after-effects of his Vietnam War injuries and suffered from them a great deal. Then, two years ago this month, Tom suffered a stroke. He has not been able to eat or to walk since. Tom spends his days in a hospital bed, keeping up with the world electronically, watching what happens outside his window, conversing with Susan and the friends who visit him, and loving His Father in heaven. That moment at the funeral was the first time Ray and I have seen Tom out of a hospital bed in two years.
“He’s a wonderful husband,” Susan told me one day last week. I believe it. And she’s a wonderful wife.
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,
but with humility of mind
regard one another as more important than yourselves;
do not merely look out for your own personal interests,
but also for the interests of others.
Philippians 2:3-4
Oh my gosh this made me cry….I wish more people were so loving toward others.
I am in awe of my cousin “Susan!”
What a wonderful example both “Tom” and “Susan” are to all of us. Thank you for sharing their story in such a caring, gentle way while exhorting the rest of us to work for “can” in stead of “can’t.” Which probably for most of us (well me anyways!) is “will” or “won’t!”