Honor

     Honor.  Family honor.  Physical honor.  Personal honor.  Honor.
     Mere mention of the word "honor" elicits a call to have good posture--to stand at attention.  To limit our understanding of "honor" does a grave disservice to the word--to everyone involved in Honor's Service.
     I confess, I am guilty of affirming that limited definition.  Yet, recent events and life stages bring honor into question.
     Family crests.  Monuments.  Physical stature.
     None of these words engenders a spirit of forgiveness.  Yet, forgiveness is perquisite.
     Personal honor, and family honor are intertwined.  My counsel of a young man struggling to find his way in the world surprised me.
     How many of us, who are adults, yearned for something our parents did not give us?  Usually, that something is not material, although it well may be.  The form of something is not important.  The revelation of forgiveness is.
    My necessary forgiveness regarded questions that only I could answer by my own life experience.  Why did my peers not understand my disabilities?  Why did they bully me?  How could I stop it?  Those are impossible questions for anyone to answer satisfactorily.
     By nature, I am very hesitant to assert my views--however urgent I feel they are needed--face to face.  I am a coward--a coward's face.  Yet, I feel emboldened by the written word.  Writing allows the reader to absorb my words "in the structure of time," as the young man I speak of might say.
     I am learning to appreciate a different dimension--physical honor.  Never have I heard others mention it.
     Physical honor.  Graceful aging calls us to it.  As babies, we are born with a set of physical capabilities.  Whatever that set may be, it is our starting point.  We take no notice of what those capabilities are.  Why should we?  We have known no other way of living than with that particular set.  We learn our limits by testing them.  All-nighters, weight-lifting--childbirth, perhaps.  Depending on our life circumstances, aging alters that set.  Our permission is NOT required.
     I was born with the set of capabilities, which were described in part as being cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  That was my starting point.  Seen as having limits, just as any other child, I tested them--believe me, I tested them.  Just ask my therapists.
     I did not understand my limits.  Aging has changed those limits.  Age forty.  Morning stiffness.  Age forty-five. Painful hips.  Strained walking.
     Each new limit called me to respond.  Before I could accept the somethings that were given to me--to my aging body--I had to take a very different action.  To my left hip, and my right ankle, I needed to forgive  them for the service they could not give to me.  I needed to forgive myself for yearning--for demanding--that  my left hip and right ankle could give me no more.
   Cognition of my body parts' service to me was and remains essential.  Acknowledgment.  I abused my body, such that some of my body parts are wearing out.  Vigilance.  Ever I must re-cognize  my body's service.  Ever, I must acknowledge--confess--to any abuse I may be inflicting on my body for selfish reasons--for vanity.
     A brace.  An electric wheelchair--Zoomer.  Forgiveness of my parents for being human--forgiveness by my temperamental child self.
    My counsel to the young man was a question.  Have you ever considered that you need to forgive your parents for not giving you what you yearned for-for what they could not give you?  Have you ever considered honoring what they have given you?  Have you considered honoring that they have given is everything that they know to give you?
    Honor.  Standing at attention?  No, not physically.  Honor.  Attending to the gifts that have been given.  Forgiving what has not been--what could not be--given to you by your parents?
    Honor.  Family honor.  Physical honor.  Personal honor.  Honor.

Epilepsy Chronicles: A Firm Grip

     You have a hold on my right arm and leg no longer.  Yet, your grip on me is firm--firmer than I realize.  I try to erase you from my memory--put you in the well within me.  Yet, I look back to my own words--my sentences.  You have a firm grip on my mind.  You take words from my sentences.  You steal the precious part of me that, so desperately, I want to--I must give.
     You give me no clue as to where you are--no hint as to where to look.  You give me no key to find you.
     Where are you?  You are hiding from me.  Where are you?
     I try to understand.