Eleven years ago my mom was diagnosed with a horrible debilitating auto immune disease, Inclusion Body Myositis. It is not something that you can receive treatment and it will go away. It lingers and slowly attacks all of my mom's muscles. I have watched my mother deal with the inability to run, walk, walk with a cane, walk with a walker, to not being able to walk at all. I watch her on a daily basis deal with the loss of another muscle we all take for granted. I watch her deal with the easiest of tasks becoming like climbing Mt Everest, and most of all I see her try to be strong when all she wants to do is quick. My mother is probably one of the strongest women I know. She was always moving, doing and creating. And now all that has been virtually taken from her. I see her tenacity to "brush herself off and move on" when all she really wants to do is give up. She feels like what does she have to give now when all these years she was able to "do" so much? Amazing....because little does she know, that we love her for HER and not what she does. I guess no one knows what it feels like to watch yourself deteriorate, unless you yourself has to go through it. I admire my mom for having the strength to hang in there, for being truthful with her feelings, for still smiling when what she really wants is to cry and for continuing to be there for all of us. I know we are suppose to learn something from this horrible situation. I believe we have learned to understand disabled people more and how the world does NOT accommodate to them, we communicate much more as a family, we are all closer and try to spend as much time together as possible, we try not to take advantage of those small moments, and we try not to take life so serious. MOM on your 65th birthday, my wish is that we have many more to come, that we are able to spend as much time as possible together and that you know how much you are loved!
A poem from Cade 11 yrs old:
To My Lovely Abuelita
As you heard
Your heart dropped
You grew cold.
Then you saw your children
and grandchildren’s faces
You realized Heaven gave me a gift of family
I will cherish it until I die
Cade Johnson
7/30/2011
