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Cornerstones |
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Dear all,
My little boy Karl is snuggled in, asleep aside my mother, at home. My little daughter Else is asleep on the lap of Andy, a friend from days gone by, come again today to help us with the many projects in the house. And I am as at peace as I have been since the accident, now that my brood is bundled under the same roof.
The grand day of homecoming was, how shall I put it...eventful. Karl's last therapy session was in the pool; I look forward to every session. As we were working on getting those feet relaxed, and those legs kicking, the house loudspeaker began to crackle with the following announcement: "Will the owner of a gold Audi, Michigan license plates, please call or report to the front desk."
That would be my Audi. Five days before it had been my parent's Audi, but they had, gosh darn it, the good heart to donate it to the cause. So now, quite officially speaking, that would be my Audi.
So, dripping wet, hoping against hope that somebody had done something to my Audi rather than my Audi having done something to somebody else, I got out of the pool, went to the house phone, and dialed. Turns out that my car, parked for the very last time in the parking lot, had sprung out of gear, and rolled backwards into somebody else's vehicle. So an officer of the law was awaiting my presence in the room, would I please hurry?
Just a few short minutes after that matter was taken care of, little Else was prancing about on the bed, which at that moment held numerous wooden crates, carted to the hospital to move out. But she tumbled, and fell, eye first, into the corner of a crate. Howled for so long we couldn't see whether she had wounded herself or not, with her eyes squeezed so tightly shut that there was no peeking in to be had.
The devil is still trying to win the day, but just won't. Long story short, Else is fine. The Audi (and the Acura) are not, but she is, and that is what is important. And my boy is home.
I spoke with the neurologist the other day, and learned that although he is making good progress (the speech therapist says that she has never in all her years seen somebody make such rapid improvements in light of the severity of injuries), the issue with his brain damage is this: he does not have just one focal injury, but rather it is, using medical terminology, diffuse. That means that though normally another portion of the brain can adapt after injury and assume the functions of another area, that is harder to do with damage that is strewn about. She is fairly convinced that he will have some cognitive deficit, though whether it will be mild, moderate, or severe, she does not know. Truly, the prognosis can first be given after a year, and more accurately after two.
So.
I just pray even harder that Karl have complete recovery from this incident, for that is God's will, as a God of healing.
I also cling to the words of the medical staff in Vogtareuth. In the last few days before our departure, they began using a word to describe their expectations of Karl, namely "Zuversichtlich." Now, I had heard that word often in worship in Germany. It was in the portion of the liturgy entitled, "Bausteine," "cornerstones," in a tune that went like this: "Meine Hoffnung und meine Freude, meine Stärke, mein Licht, Christus meine Zuversicht, auf dich vertrau ich und fürcht mich nicht." I always wondered what "Zuversicht" meant, but knew all the other words, and assumed that in this context and because it had something to do with Christ, well, it had to be a good thing, and so I sung right along with the rest.
But when it started being applied to Karl, well, then I wanted to know. "Is it hope, are you hopeful?" I asked the staff. No, hope still entertained an element of doubt. "Optimistic?" No, even more than optimistic, which retained a bit of doubt--if one is optimistic, there is still room for pessimism. After searching for the right translation, it became clear that the word is "confident." They were confident of Karl's recovery.
In English, the words to the German liturgy read "My hope and my joy, my strength, my light, Christ my confidence, I trust in you and am not afraid."
What more can I write than that?
Peace,
Anna
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