HAPPY BIRTHDAY GARY
As always, I'm a day late and a dollar short. No, I didn't forget. It's just taken me the better part of a day to get the fortitude to actually get myself to the computer & write this to you.
Its been a long, trying year for me and so much has changed. About a month after going down south to celebrate your grandson's 1st. birthday, I had a massive right hemisphere stroke. It left me paralyzed on my left side and losing more than I could have imagined. I'm sure you can laugh at 45 odd years of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and overall shitty living finally catching up with me. I guess it took something of this magnitude to get my attention and teach me things I should have known all along.
As much as I've lost, I've gained more. Rather than go into the gory details. I need you to know that my very first cognitive thought was of you. I was in a rehab hospital specializing in catastrophic brain injuries, still unable to sit up among everything else. I couldn't remember much - what happened, where I was going, who I had been - but the one thing I did know was I had never looked you in the eye and told you how much I loved you or how much I appreciated the man you had been.
I came to find, with each hardship I faced, with every obstacle I had to try to overcome, I felt like this was the price I had to pay for my indifference and failures. Somehow, it made it easier to accept knowing I am paying for my sins.
To this day, there isn't a moment that goes by where I don't take responsibility for my circumstances. Somehow, I feel your strength, your unconditional love and your presence in everything I do.
I know its too late for so much, yet still, somehow feeling you around me gives me that one thing I need so desperately to thrive and go on.
With each milestone, each new accomplishment, I know you are right behind me, cheering me on. I was told just weeks into my 3 month rehab of all the things I will never do again. Now, 10 + months later, I'm doing almost all of those unattainable things. I lost the wheelchair and all ideas of defeat, I can live alone, be self-sufficient, shower by myself, even drive again, although I know I shouldn't. I was determined to walk, and with a weird cane and a brace on my leg I can now. All traces of who I used to be is gone; ego, pride, arrogance, sense of entitlement, sense of self. I can no longer recognize my reflection any more. Even more so, I can no longer recognize that person I once was.
My biggest regret is that I didn't have the heart and insight that I do now for all those years.
I can't tell you how many times I thought about you and wished you could know me now. I feel like I've finally become the person you tried to see me as, someone worthy of being the sister you cherished in spite of myself.
Somehow, I need to believe you can see me now, that you can feel the love and awe I have for you. There are trying times when I wonder why I'm still here and you are not. It is in those moments I know I need to make you proud, to show you how your strength and influence have saved me, to have faith there will be a chance to finally see you again, eye to eye, and tell you at long last that your love has made all the difference in the world.
Happy 61st. birthday, big brother.
