During the week, I call to Sean to make sure he’s up for school. It takes me a moment for my body to,“warm up” once I open my eyes so lay in bed until after he’s out of the shower, dressed, and just about to leave for school. He helps me get out of bed. I have a big, four-poster queen sized bed.
I got this bed when Sean and I moved into our second apartment. As my disease has progressed, I think the bed is too big for me now. The frame is too high off of the floor. I can’t get over the fact that it’s paid for so I can’t seem to get rid of it just yet. Because it is so high off of the floor, I need help to get me out of bed in the morning.
Sean got out of the shower Friday and he was in his room which is right next to mine so I called to him and told him the beginning of this meme that I read Friday morning:
All I said was, “I got called pretty today” and Sean responded with a somewhat indignant, “By who?!” It’s just been Sean and me for pretty much all of his life. Then, I read the whole meme and started laughing hysterically!
He came into my room because he was just about ready to leave for school and I was still giggling as he put my shoes on and grabbed my ankles to pull them sideways off of the bed. Then he grabs my left hand to help me sit up. Since my knee has been hurting so badly lately, he just pulls me off of my bed, picks me up, and puts me into my wheelchair.
It takes me a minute to move my arms so he buckles me into my chair. I was still smiling thinking about that silly meme. He leaned against my bedpost for a moment and said something like, “Mom, you’re something else!” I asked him why and he told me that, “You wake up and you are five steps behind everyone else and here you are laughing and smiling when anybody else would be curled up in a ball and crying.
I was a little shocked to hear him say this. I kind of looked down and said quietly, “Oh, I cry!“ he leaned over, kissed my forehead, told me to have a good day, unlocked my wheelchair, and left for school. I sit there in shack for a little while. My kid IS something else!
He’s told me before that he can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in a wheelchair which breaks my heart a little bit. On days when my hands aren’t working too well and I can’t grasp both a fork and knife to cut my food. He will cut it up for me before we begin eating dinner. The other day, I told him to get forks for both of us and he comes back to the table with two serving forks.
I started to laugh asked why he got them. He just sat down and said, “They’re forks!” blessed himself and started saying Grace. I joined in and guessed that I was eating dinner with a serving fork! I told him that we should pretend we had shrunk or something. He looked at me and just kind of shook his head.
I asked him last night what he meant about me being, “Five steps behind” and he told me that it’s so much harder for me to do the simple list things and takes me so much longer – but I still do them.” I hope that he learns some kind of lesson in seeing all of this… I will eat dinner with serving fork anytime he wants to!