This is a very personal article for me to write. My parents met in college, my mother had suffered the effects from polio and had been in a wheel chair since she was 5 years old. She went on to get 2 masters degrees and wanted to become an English professor at a college in Portland, Oregon.
After achieving her goal of the master’s degrees, she was told that she could not stay on and become a teacher; they just didn’t hire people in wheel chairs. (This was in the early 60’s)
My parents where married soon after this news, and I have been very blessed to have grown up in a household where both parents stayed together for over 40 years before cancer took both of them, six months apart.
When it seemed as if everyone in my class had parents going through a divorce (this was in the early 70’s) my parents stayed strong and married.
I often wondered how my father could have chosen to marry my mother, knowing that she would be in a wheelchair forever, and that the life expectancy of someone who had contracted such a painful, debilitating disease was shorter than the average woman. Yet he did, and I believe that even though he had throat cancer, he died six months after her from a broken heart; he just missed her too much. He was entirely devoted to her the entire time they were together, as she was to him.
I write this article to let couples know that the one thing that binds a couple together, more than money, more than “in sickness and in health” is true love, something we don’t hear enough of about these days of quickie weddings and even more quickie divorces.
How do you live with a spouse who has a long term disability? My father seemed to do it effortlessly. We just found different ways to spend our time together as a family.
We couldn’t go on hikes, obviously, and water slides and other public places where we couldn’t go (remember the times-there was no such thing as wheel chair access in those days) didn’t bother us so much. We had a van, and we went on long drives. Those are some of the best times I remember, especially at Christmas. My mother loved the lights, so we would bundle up with a thermos of hot chocolate and drive all over, looking at them.
We also learned to read at a very early age. (Mama and Papa had two children, me and my sister-four years younger) Mama couldn’t run and play, but she was an English major, so we learned to read and had impeccable grammar-it is also one of the reasons I became a writer.)
The point of this article is that even though your spouse may have a debilitating disability, if there is love and creativity, you can spend as much quality time together as a family as the next door neighbors. Concentrate on the good, and let the rest go.