Helping Others

Tomorrow more of your equipment is going to others.

Tomorrow your lift (which frankly we never used) and your power chair (which we used ALL the time) are going to another boy who needs them. The lift will let his parents get him in and out of bed safely. Your chair will him raise up to eye level, so he's not always having to look up to people. 

Friday I will drop off your gait trainer for a young man who was severely injured in an accident a few months ago. He's learning to walk again.  

You really liked that gait trainer, but it didn't do much for your weight bearing. Instead, you seemed to think that you were supposed to pick up your legs so your brothers could zoom you around the house. You used it a lot more back when you were able to be off the vent. It was easier then for you to get around. You also used one at school and this one has mostly just sat for the last few years. You were too tired to do much with it, especially after being at school, or coming home from the hospital. 

When these go, another piece of my heart will simultaneously break and come together again.

Or maybe another crack appears and an additional part grows? 

I don't know how it works. I just know it both hurts to have another part of you gone, and helps that someone's life improves because you lived.  

Your bed, your manual chair, and your wheelchair van are about all that's left. The chair can go when someone needs it. I'm not so sure about your van, and I just can't imagine not having the bed yet. There will come a time when we give it away, but right now it's still so much a part of you, of me, that I need it here. The fairy lights turn on every night.  

And I can almost see you... 

"The best portion of a good man's life, 

his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love." 

- William Wordsworth