Life "should" be back to normal by now.
My husband "should" be recovered. He's young, the doctors say. He's resilient. But recovery is taking forever. And may never be complete. Sometimes when he's sleeping, I look at him and imagine that his body is whole again. But when I climb in bed next to him, his left hand (his "affected" hand) often migrates over to me and clunks me with the brace that keeps his hand from curling into a tight ball. His arm still moves on its own, and I try to push it away, but if it's being particularly stubborn, it will snap right back over to my side of the bed again. If I stretch my legs out a little too far, I stub my toe on his night splint, that keeps his foot flexed in the night. It doesn't take much to destroy my little fantasy of my husband being back to normal.
He struggles to sit upright to get out of bed. He awkwardly dresses himself, a task that takes at least 5 times as long as it should. But it's slow going, putting everything on with one hand. Especially socks. I hated helping him with his socks, and I'm glad he can do it by himself now, but it's not easy for him with one hand. I hate watching him go through the grueling process of doing everything in slow motion. To his credit, he's more patient than I am!
I hate not knowing what the future holds. How much healing and recovery will there be? Will he ever start to have more hope that God has a good plan for his life?
Grief sucks. I just wish we could "get over it" and "move past it." But how do you move past something that has done so much damage? And how do we know how much to grieve when we aren't even sure what has been lost or what will be restored?
I think I've used the word hate a lot in this post. There are a lot of things I'm grateful for, too. And I will remember them. And I will encourage you, hopefully, when I recount them. But for today, I'm just letting myself grieve.
