Isn’t it crazy how your entire life can change in the blink of an eye? Everything you’ve ever known, your entire childhood erased from your memory within a few hours and without a reason or explanation. Yes, it is crazy but it can happen in fact it did to someone very close to me, my Aunt, her name is Theresa and i’m going to tell you her story.
Theresa was the kind of person who cared about other people so much. She bought a two story building that had a house on top with three bedrooms and a house on bottom with 14 bedrooms and turned it into an adult foster care center so that she could take care of elders. Every summer I would stay with her because she had a big beautiful house with flowers everywhere and a ginormous garden. She would always take me shopping, it was one of her favorite things to do and mine too. We went on trips during the summer and she came to every birthday party. My aunt and I were close and I liked that a lot until it very abruptly changed.
A beautiful, bright, kind, clever, adventurous, wild, confident, girl, with red hair, red cheeks, red lips and ambition was living her best life, partying and drinking with her friends just like any other night and she was the life of the party. Then that night she and her husband went home. She had a little too much to
drink so her husband carried her inside and took her to bed. While they were sleeping she fell out of bed and got sick, she didn’t think anything of it so she got back in bed and it happened again she just thought that she had too much to drink. Until the third time her husband woke up and knew something was wrong. Immediately he called Theresa’s sister because she was a nurse, who then called and sent an ambulance to their house, but by the time she got to the hospital it was too late. She waited too long to call an ambulance. She had a stroke and would be paralized for the rest of her life. the doctors didn’t know how this happened just that she had multiple strokes. She lost her memory, the feeling in her left leg and left arm but most of all she lost her freedom, her happiness, her ambition nothing would ever be the same for her again. She would no longer be the life of the party, the one who planned everything, the one so confident that it spread to other people, she would have to learn how to live this new life unable to do a lot of the things she used to.
Four years later, she sold her adult foster care home. Bought and moved to a small, quiet house in the country. Now she and her husband are happy. She is able to get around with a walker instead of a wheelchair, she still has friends come over and she is still the life of the party. She is not the same person she used to be, because she can’t remember who she used to be or the things she did. But because of the stroke we became closer, I’m so grateful to have someone like her in my life and even though she may not be able to remember most of the things we did,I remember and will never forget. I am so thankful for that.
People need to learn to appreciate what you have because it can disappear in the blink of an eye.