I had a dream last night, a very vivid dream, part of it at least I remember. I was talking on the phone with E's mother. I was yelling at her, screaming about her arguing with about how awful my life is, about the depression and the hopelessness, about how it has not ended. There are those who still claim that time heals all wounds, and they are wrong. I have been living with disability for twenty eight years and I have never gotten over the loss of my abilities. There is not a day that goes by that I don't wish that I was a "healthy" person, a person who can actually walk up a flight of stairs or wiggle her toes or even feel the ground beneath my feet. But I can not, and I never will. The loss of E is even more severe than my disability. There are some losses that people do not recover from, we like to think that healing is always possible, but it isn't and anyone who thinks different should work in a hospital for about one week. That is that is will take to change your mind. Just go and watch, particularly the pediatrics ward (especiall if there happens to be a pediatric intensive care ward) go and after you watch those children you come back and tell me that time heals everything. I dare you.

You see I've been on the other side of that ward. I grew up in hospitals and emergency rooms. I grew up with experimental treatments and gait labs. And even with all the emergency surgeries, the tests, the injections, the casts, the braces, the physical therapy, the hours and hours and hours spent in waiting rooms, the incorrect diagnoses, the prognoses, none of these things, even put together, the totality of being a cancer survivor NOTHING I went through, chemo therapy, surgery, radiation therapy NONE OF IT was as bad this loss. The loss of E makes cancer look like Disneyland. Because at least with the cancer, there was hope. I have been pretty much been living without hope for two years. It is a tiring thing. And eventually, eventually, if hope can not be restored, this loss will kill me. It make take its time, but it will. It took my father quite a while to finally succeed in his quest for death. But eventually he did. To those who say time heals all wounds I say this, just because I'm still alive doesn't mean that I have survived. Some diseases take their time killing you, like diabetes or heart disease. It can take a while, but sooner or later it will take you out. On days like today, I just feel that the most that can be said about me is that I am not dead yet. But I probably should be.