Oktoberfest fundraiser. Community, family, friends, polka!
Late night bike ride home. Dark, pothole, delayed ambulance.
More dead than alive. Prepare for the worst. Well, maybe, just maybe, the best case, assisted living.
Weeks with no memories.
But wife, dear, loving, sweet, beautiful wife.
And sons, and now daughter. Mom, sister, family and friends, visits.
Laughter and play brings back memories. Not the recent past, but the now, the new.
Good and caring people all around me. Nurses, therapists, doctors, and always, every hour, family.
Well planned re-training of the simplest of things leads to more and still more.
Wonderful University and School give me leave, and health care, and continued income, and kind words and deeds.
Neighbors and communities near and far are there in visits, and whispers, and dreams.
So much care. All the necessary components.
Walks outside, therapists drive me to the voting both, then the house and garden, then back.
More care, more recovery. So far, so fast, so far to go, but now home.
First, only home and only with someone also there. Then one day, one hour on my own.
Slowly, carefully, supportively more.
Holidays, new year, one hour meetings — only one a week at first. Oops, a little to much. OK, better paced.
But every week, Angie, me, and ballroom dance lessons at the Regent!!!
So much is a blur as winter moved to spring, then summer.
Wedding 2.0 for Eric and Maddie. Drive to Colorado to hike the mountains with Joey on his days off.
Angie, my love, my life, now my primary therapist, too.
Late spring and back to work full time…barely. But yes, back at last.
Limits and boundaries needed. Space made to open the crossing of the right boundaries. Guest lecture, two day workshop, travel to Minnesota for the first conference.
Further, faster than ever dreamed.
Miracle? Maybe. There is a good and gracious God.
But life is always co-lived.
Always person with person. Martin with Angie.
Always person with family. Martin and Angie with Eric and Joey and now Maddie, too. Parents, siblings, aunts, uncles. Family by blood and family by passion.
Always person with neighbors, always person with communities.
Love. Care. Compassion.
Names without number. In Champaign and Urbana. And East St. Louis. And Anderson, and Piscataway, and Boston, and Chicago, and Toronto. And Benton Harbor. And Prato, and Tilburg, and Sao Tome, and Australia, and New Zealand, and Puerto Rico, and……………….
Life is great. People are miracles of care. Faith guides.
But mine is a unique story. It is totally unexpected. Why?
So much and so many stand with me, and around me, and for me.
White, male, American, privileged beyond measure. Would I have died if we had equality for all?
Would I be in assisted living if I had to put aside most of what we have so all could have just a little more?
Perhaps, maybe, no???
It is not a zero sum game. It is time to finally get it right. Confess and repent of genocide, and slavery, and whites only living.
Then.
Caring is not for the privileged few only. It is for all and especially the least, the lost, the widow, the orphan, the sojourner and refuge.
It is time to make every single person great. Finally. Fully.
For what I have become today, for how I have recovered…
…I give thanks with laughter and tears of joy, dancing and singing as we come to the eve of the one year anniversary;
…and I weep with ashes, and confession, and repentance.
There is so much more to be done.
We must give our all so that not just our immediate family and friends and neighbors and communities recover and live beyond the wildest dreams.
One year, this weekend. Dancing, music, celebration!!!
Today and always, caring and support, in and out, to all I can, whenever I can, with all I can.
Make everyone great. Finally. Please and thank you!