My Motorcycle Injuries

This is one of the years in which the day and the date of my motorcycle accident match the day and date in 2013. It was November 29th, the Friday after Thanksgiving. Early on I would attempt to commemorate the event each year by doing something unique such as attempting to donate blood. After a few years I determined to celebrate the anniversary of the accident by just living my life and having a normal day. The best proof of victory involves living well, yes? So, today I attempted to live well by doing what I ordinarily would do. I started by cleaning a little around the house and then taking care of a little bit of banking business. I then spent some time visiting a church member who is in the hospital. Next, I headed to the church property in order to get some work done within the church building for the services on Sunday. I spent the remainder of the day at a family event that involved eating, football, and playing various games. Nothing exciting or innovative, just...a normal and...

  Things continue to hurt and hinder, but today is not a day for complaint. These days I'm getting plenty of things done for my job, I'm getting things done around the house, and I have the ability to love my family and enjoy the life that I've been given. Tomorrow night I'll be leaving after the evening church service with my wife and my daughter for a long weekend trip together. We don't take these trips nearly as often as we once did, so I'm looking forward to being together for some fun family time. Ten years ago I was still working on being able to function physically, and here I am living life and enjoying everything that God allows for me within each day. He has been kind to me and I look forward to the coming days. Not too shabby for a guy with a messed up body, yes?

 Today is the last day of my “full time” duty with my niece. I’ve taken care of her Monday thru Friday, early morning until late afternoon, since she was six weeks old. She is now four, and will begin attending pre-k in the late summer. Her mom is a teacher and school ends for her today, so my time with my niece will now be far more limited. I’ll get her for a couple of weeks in August as her mom reports for staff days, and then she’ll begin attending school later in the month. From then on I’ll only be taking care of her on school half-days and teacher work days (along with any sick days). All in all it will only add up to a few days each school year. I’ve spent the past four years watching her grow up while joining her in playing with a multitude of different toys, playing every game that she learned or made up, walking her around my neighborhood, watching her play with my tools in the driveway, taking her to various places as a sort of field trip, playing various chase games a...

Tonight I had dinner with over a dozen family members at a burger restaurant nearby. We sat outside because of the size of our group and we had a nice time together. Our table was located about twenty feet from the entrance to the place where I got my haircut on the morning of the accident. The crash occurred as I rode home from getting a haircut at that place. I have absolutely no memory of the haircut or the ride to and from this place, but I’m a creature of habit so I know pretty much where I pulled in and where I parked. It is currently an empty storefront (thank you Covid-19) but the place looks the same as it did years ago. I sat in a chair at the dinner table tonight that had me facing directly toward the front entrance of the former storefront. It makes me feel stupid, but I kept thinking that this was the last place that I walked without having so many problems with my body. I knew where I would have gone between the front door and my bike in the parking lot, and I couldn’t ...

 A week from today (November 29 th ) marks the five year anniversary of the accident. It happened on the day after Thanksgiving in 2013, but this year the date falls on the week after Turkey Day. Still, the Thanksgiving holiday has always seemed strongly linked to the accident within my mind. It’s early morning now as I post this entry and in just a little while we’ll be going to a relative’s house nearby for the day. There will be fifteen of us this year and we will spend the whole day together eating, conversing, playing games, and watching TV. Many of the people that I will be with today were at the hospital or close by throughout the ordeal after the accident. I don’t really know what to think about this day beyond the obvious. I know that I will spend the day having a nice time with people that I love. I know that we will all be in a festive mood and several of us (not me) will be busy in preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I know that we will share aspects of our lives an...