Compassion Awakened

In my little home town, there dwelled a renowned storyteller.  He would weave fantastic tales that always ended with ... "never would have believed it if it hadn't happened to me".  Like .. "one day down by the lake, I was swarmed with monster mosquitos so I took cover under my overturned rowboat.  The attackers' stingers came right through the boat bottom so I took out my hammer and bent them over.  Suddenly, the boat was off flying and I was crouched under blue sky.  Never would have believed it if it hadn't happened to me."

Such is life.  We have a vague appreciation of things that affect others, but we go along our way without true awareness. It hasn't happened to me so .. I can ignore it.  I'm sure you can make a list of any number of things like this. 

About a month ago my wife fell while out walking.  She was on a paved trail but at the bottom of a hill there was a mud hole (this in February in Minnesota, no less). She skirted off the trail to avoid the mud and caught her foot on a tree root and went down hard on her knee causing a compression fracture of her tibia. Hard to treat. She was placed in a lock-in-place knee brace and told she could not put any weight on that leg for 8 weeks. Uffda. Hard to get around with a walker hopping on one leg. So, pretty much homebound, confined to a wheel-chair + walker. Luckily she's a tough farm girl, determined to get through this.

Through this, we have come to really appreciate the difficulties facing the disabled. Of course we had some understanding of the trials of getting around while disabled: the lack of handicapped access to buildings; getting through doors - and their irritating  narrowness; negotiating curbs; absence of handrails and the struggle to do just the basic things of life - you know what I mean. 

We have a 2-story home with bedrooms upstairs so we moved a bed downstairs as climbing stairs was out of the question. The cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, pet care duties have fallen on the barely competent spouse. Stairs are daunting. To transfer up/down 2 steps from the house to our vehicle was nigh unto impossible until we purchased a short ramp. Now it is just difficult. We recently had a medical appointment at a hospital that will remain unnamed. The hospital presents a challenge. Its main entrance is below street-level with a long stairs from the street downward. There is a short drive-by patient drop-off accommodating only a half dozen cars so there's always a backup into the street. Just another example of a building not designed for the able challenged. 

The thing is, for us, this will soon be over and we will be back to living (hopefully) our normal life.  But for millions, disability is a permanent day-after-day struggle. I will never take mobility for granted again and I urge one and all to advocate for these folks.

“Compassion is the basis of morality”  Scopenhauer

Copyright ©  2024  Dave Hoplin