“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”

–Paulo Coelho

Sometimes. Somehow. I still get lost. I still get caught up in the things. Things that do not matter. Things we have been taught are important. Things we are supposed to care about. Sometimes. Somehow. I still feel lost. Torn. I learned, though. I do know better. When I got the phone call. When I waited for Chris to come through surgery. While I waited to take him home. I knew. I would have given up everything. Every single shiny object. Every single dollar. My home. My car. The clothes on my back. When faced with death. When faced with loss. The world becomes crystal clear. Our lives, simple. We realize. Immediately. We know. Chris almost died. And I knew. None of it matters. None of the material things we amass around us. The objects filling our homes and adorning our bodies. The things we can buy. In the end, they are worth nothing.

Still. We forget. We get caught up in it. Tangled in the web. Believing if only we had this or that. If only we achieved this or that. If only we were this or that. Then, we would be happy. Satisfied. As we fight for status. For territory. For power in our circles. In our little worlds. We tell ourselves this is the good life. This is necessary to be happy. To fit in. So we put on a show. We put on a show for those around us. For those around us who are only really worrying about their own show. About their own status. About their own accomplishments. We spend our time worrying about things, that when faced with lose, we would let slip away in an instance. If I am true to myself,  I know it is ridiculous. Silly. Inane. Insanity.

Sometimes, I forget to be grateful. To be as grateful as I should be. For the gifts we have been given. For the beats of our hearts and the breath in our lungs. For the feeling of my feet upon the earth and the sunshine on my face. I forget the clarity. I forget the reality, and I get lost in the illusion. Of how we have been taught to live. To strive. To consume. To feed the hunger we feel. Every day. As our souls starve. Waiting for us to remember. The things we knew in childhood. Before we became tarnished. Socialized. Tamed. Domesticated.

November. 2013. Four months after the accident. Not long after the double vision had cleared. The pain killers recently retired. Chris. Still in an incredible amount of pain. Still recovering. Trying to heal. With less support than necessary. Still strong. Still moving forward. It was the time when healing his body was priority. When maintaining positivity was key. Family support pivotal. Being with his kids mandatory. We needed people. We needed each other. But as it has often been on our journey. There were other mountains to climb. Rivers to cross and walls to break down. Battles to fight.

Chris was finally cleared for physiotherapy. Months after the accident. We had flown to Edmonton, where he saw the surgeon. The surgeon gave his okay. Finally, he would get some professional help to heal. It wouldn’t just be on him. Or, so we thought. The insurance company did agree to physiotherapy. Twice a week. But ideally, he needed so much more. It’s a long story, but in the long run he got nothing more. Physiotherapy for a few months, and then intermittently here and there as the years passed. That’s it. That’s all. Everything else he did was on his own. Through healers and trainers that we found.

So, back to November. The insurance company wanted Chris to fly to Edmonton, stay in a hotel for six weeks, and go to their rehabilitation centre there. He would not have a car, and would be on his own to get groceries. Cook his own food. He was still in a lot of pain, and even the idea of him lugging his bags seemed ridiculous to us. He could not pick them up. He could not carry them. It all seemed ludicrous. Completely insane. To take a man who a few months earlier had been in a crash that had almost taken his life. Broken his back. Who was still healing. To take him away from the family who loved him. Who supported him. And put him in a hotel room in the middle of winter. To spend his days in a rehabilitation centre, and then go back to an empty hotel room. Alone.

I believe that healing mentally at that point was just as important as healing physically. The insurance company said Chris could fly back every weekend. Again. As far as I was concerned. Ludicrous. He had an spinal cord injury among other things. Who would have helped with his luggage? As he flew back and forth each week. Me, being the fixer I am, called around the Vancouver area. Trying to find similar rehabilitation centres. Of course being in a big city, there was more than one to choose from. I called them. I suggested it to Chris’ case worker. We got a lawyer involved. All to no avail. It was pretty much, Edmonton or nothing. I promised Chris when they suggested it, that in no way would he be left alone in a hotel room. For six weeks. Over the Christmas holidays (he could have been home for Christmas), in the dead of a northern Canadian winter. Without a vehicle. Without proper support. It was never going to happen. Remaining in a positive headspace was beyond important. I knew that. He knew that. So we fought.

They suggested we switch to the insurance company in our province. Which would have meant a considerable drop in his monthly payments. Or go to Edmonton. Those were the two options. We said no to both. Which meant Chris never did get that rehabilitation. In the whole course of Chris’ time under the insurance company, they paid for a few months of physiotherapy. We pushed for even kinesiology. We got his doctor involved. He pushed for it also. As did the physiotherapist he was working with. Again to no avail. The worker played games until we gave up. So like I said above. In the five years since the accident, the insurance company covered some physiotherapy. The rest. We searched it out. We paid for it. Thousands of dollars out of pocket. How this is acceptable is beyond me. But even with a lawyer involved, Chris got very little support in his recovery. So. His recovery. It is on him. It is on us. He did it. We did it. And, doctor after doctor. Specialist after specialist has been surprised by his recovery. By his perseverance. By his ability to heal himself. By how far he has come.

When a bomb gets dropped. When something happens in our lives. We are, in most ways, on our own to deal with the repercussions. The people and the institutions we believe will take care of us. Will support us. For the most part, they will not. Do not. We are left to our own devices. We have no choice but to take care of ourselves. This is not always an easy task. But in many instances it is the only option we have. We are, in many ways, on our own in this life. So, we have to learn to become our own heroes. There aren’t always arms to catch us. Somehow, we have to find a way to catch ourselves. To use our own voices. To find our own strength. To follow our own dreams. No matter how crazy they may seem sometimes.

Maybe there is something in that, though. When it feels like we have lost almost everything, and we fight our way back to standing. We start to realize we are the true directors of our own lives. We are the writers of our own story. No one else decides our destiny for us. Understanding that is both  frightening and empowering. Understanding that is liberating. Freeing. Understanding that is living with true clarity. Because, in the end, we are the only ones who can truly find our way. Who can live the lives we need to live.