What a difference a Year makes!

I don't even know where to start...that's how I felt a year ago and it took me weeks to actually sit down and type out the story and my feelings. I won't do that today, I'll take the time to write, I'll make the words come.

Last year, at this time, I was sitting in the hospital with so many family members, waiting, for some spark of hope, for one of the nurses to actually smile or wink or give us some sign that everything would be ok. But it wasn't happening. Last year at this time no one gave any of us much hope that my cousin Curtis would still be with us today. Everything changed that day, life changed, the world changed, our family changed, and nothing is the same. The hospital staff just knew from that first day, there was no controlling this family, the ICU rules just could not apply to us. Two visitors at a time, no...we piled em in 4 deep 6 wide, visiting hours...what hours, no touching the patient..ARE YOU KIDDING! That was the most ridiculous, I understand the overstimulating the patient, but when you have someone in a coma, who is so used to a loving touchy feely family...like ours, he needs to feel us, to know we're all there, he needs to hear us, he needs to know how much we need him and want him back. That night, they gave up.

You see, for those of you that don't know..Curtis was in a horrible accident. They had given up on him before he was even in the hospital. They didn't call in a plastic surgeon to even look at him for two hours, they were just waiting for him to pretty much...die. When my brother called me, he told me I should come see him before they took him to surgery "just in case".

Over the next few weeks we all got to know that ICU better then anyone should. I would work all day, sometimes visit at lunch, and then either go straight there and then get home right before the kids went to sleep, or hurry home from work, spend a few hours with the kids, and then go to the hospital and drag myself out of there sometime before midnight.

Every movement, every twitch, every sound gave us some hope, and finally he slowly started to wake up!

He's still with us, life if different for him. He doesn't see himself when he looks in the mirror, it's a different face, and most of the time he's very positive about it, of course there are those moments when I'm sure it sucks pretty bad for him.

But for us, we're thrilled he's with us. We still want to beat him for putting us through that, but it actually has brought us all much closer, even after a year, we still make sure to say "I love you" before we end a call, we try to get together even for the little things, and yes, I do try to take more time off work for no reason at all.

I've always been waiting, working towards something, but now I realize...my life is happening NOW, it's not what happens some day in the future, its all these small moments woven together.

Appreciate every minute you have with each other, don't worry about the dishes in the sink (yes, I'm still working on that one) or the weeds growing in the garden, read a book to your kids, snuggle with your significant other, take time to appreciate what you accomplished today don't worry about what you didn't..it'll still be there tomorrow. But you never know WHO won't, love them while you can.