I recently came across some old CDs with photos from 2005 – 2006, I was delighted to find them, given our family photo history disappeared with my computer during the robbery.
As I began to upload them to the new computer I found tears welling up in my eyes, I have to be honest it caught my by surprise. Paging through the photos of Cameron’s beginning, looking back I honestly can’t believe we made it through that first year, especially the first 4 months.
When you are in the moment you have no time to reflect, or process the reality of your situation. Which is for the best, or you likely wouldn’t make it through times of crisis.
As parents to a medically fragile/special needs child people will often comment to us “I don’t know how you do it?” It’s not really a question, despite the punctuation indicating as such, because in my opinion there is no real answer to this question.
Seeing these photos again reminded me of many things, but what was most surprising was I felt like saying to myself “how did you do that?” We’ve survived some of the toughest challenges a parent could ever face. Not without some scars of course.
As time goes by those scars of the past start to heal up as they are surrounded by the joys, the success and the promise of a future you weren’t certain existed. New challenges arise as you continue down this path, whether it be the things that keep us awake at night, the fears about the future or even the really crummy stuff when the intense medical problems rear their ugly heads.
And the scar tissue becomes irritated, sometimes too much and it really, really hurts.
The new wounds are sometimes raw and you’re not sure you’ll survive, but you do, and eventually they too will turn into scars. We must remember this when we are not certain we can make it another day.
This all came full circle for me as I changed Cameron’s clothes the other day, he has several scars, some more prominent than others but all are hidden, be it under his thick locks of hair or his favorite t-shirt. There is one you can barely see anymore, on his belly, the rest are either “fresh” or clearly visible to the naked eye.
Being reminded of the beginning of our journey in photos and then seeing the healed, almost non-existent scar on his belly, it made me smile. It was a sign of how far Cameron has come, and how far we have come. With time I believe all those scars will fade away, but the scar tissue will remain, as a way to protect us all and remind us that we have indeed survived.