The day I got married—13 years ago today—I knew that growing old with someone wouldn’t always be easy. I knew that in order to become a couple who celebrates 50 plus years of marriage, we would need to withstand some storms. But I never imagined those storms would get so strong before the first decade was even behind us.
It was three years ago, on March 10, 2016—in this very spot—I became a paraplegic. Today, it looks nothing like it did on the day of my injury; there is zero indication that this was a place of a life-altering accident. The dirt has been replaced with carpet. Drywall and paint covers the exposed cement foundation and the staircase fills in the dark emptiness of a basement-in-the-making. But one thing remains—framed in with wooden trim—and that is the hole I fell through.
I’m sitting here, on the night before my first accident-iversary (it’s a word people use—I googled it to see if I made it up or not) and I’m attempting to write something eloquent about time passing and about the fact that it has been one year since my accident. Every time I think I have something decent, I read it back to find that it sounds artificial—it sounds like I’m trying to hide what I really want to say. So I imagine what I’m about to write isn’t going to be eloquent—it may not even be well written—but I can pretty much guarantee that it will be what I want to say.