Living with Dignity

Regarding my vitriolic soap-box post from yesterday:

Living with dignity includes having a wife who has found the courage and strength in her kind and soft heart to learn to give me painful injections twice a week, who calls me a trooper when it’s all done and I haven’t cried. I know it hurts her to hurt me.

Living with dignity includes having friends who come to our house from more than thirty miles away in rush hour traffic (along a treacherous highway in winter conditions) to cook us dinner every Wednesday because we need the help. Friends who won’t allow me to even do some prep for them on the days I’m feeling up to it. Friends, who over the years of supporting each other and each other’s families, have become our own family. (I should be saying sisters who come to cook for us and watch Food tv, since I have been calling one of them Sister for years now. But my wife has a blood sister, and it can get confusing since I don’t think she thinks of my sister’s wife as her sister-in-law. We joke, actually, that they are instead the archetypal bromance.)

Living with dignity includes having family who come to sit with my wife in the evenings after I’ve gone to bed two or three times a week. My sister-in-law lives only a few blocks away, in a neighborhood safe enough to allow after-dark walks (so long as common sense is exercised).

Living with dignity includes having a teenage daughter who strives to be the best at everything, to not let me down, to not break the rules and stress me out for fear of making my condition worse. (We recently had a talk about this and I hope she feels less pressure about it. I need her to be a teenager because I need to be a mom.) But everyone knows the adolescent instinct is to sense weakness and take advantage. And while she has her moments when we both get to do our jobs (she making mistakes, the moms yanking her back in line), overall our worries and troubles are nothing compared to what mothers of teenagers around the world cope with.

Living with dignity includes recognizing these blessings and the people bearing them, loving them and thanking them. And learning, finally, at long last, how to accept gifts graciously. (I am, though, making my sister homemade cinnamon rolls for next Wednesday. I should be feeling great these next ten days or so.)

Today I am blessed with an attitude of gratitude. The herx must be over. Yippee!