Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Life Sentence

It hit me like a sucker punch to the gut, but then it always does. No matter how realistic and pragmatic I try to be, those darn elements of hope and faith creep in ever so subtly so that when further discouraging confirmations come in, they knock me down all over again. The neurosurgeon's report came in...he was personable, kind, open to questions, and painfully discouraging. And the ruling he gave us, like a life sentence in prison. She wakes, sleeps, opens her eyes, looks around for naught because she isn't really awake. It seems cruel, the idea that it is most likely that she will lie in that bed day after day, year after year never speaking, never feeling, never knowing those she loves and who love her, missing all the events of our lives until some day far in the future she finally slips away for good from some infection or pneumonia or something similar. The image I'm reminded of comes from the Count of Monte Cristo when Edmond Dantes, betrayed by his best friend, is thrown into the tiny, bleak, cell in an isolated prison to serve out a sentence he didn't earn for the rest of his life. That's what we're being handed, that's what my mother is getting, though she has done nothing to deserve it. That's how we feel when we hear the news, even though we already knew in our heads that it was likely. The gavel has fallen, the judge has spoken, the ruling is against us.

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