Thursday, August 4, 2011

Most who read my blogs have figured out by now that I’m a thinker.  Ideas pop into my head or I hear of things, and I get to thinking on them.  Today was no exception. 

I treated myself to relaxing in front of a movie at home tonight—a rare activity for me.  Flipping through the channels, I landed on one that was already thirty minutes under way.  But it caught my attention, so I stayed tuned.  Glad I did, for the movie held my attention and put my thinking cap in high gear till the very end.

The premise of the movie is about a con whose release from jail is secured by a woman whose little girl needs a heart transplant.  The ex-con is a large man, familiar with street fighting.  In exchange for his release, he vows to help the little girl’s mom pay for the needed heart transplant by means of underground fighting.

Like in the movie Rocky, this man is a giant, though those he fights repeatedly test his limits.  He’s knocked down, bloodied, and taken to the point no mere human should be able to rise above.  But he does.  I know…I know…it’s a movie.  But bear with me. 

There are several occasions when the man is offered a free pass to get the money he needs, but he refuses to take it, instead, granting that money to those he believes are more in need of it than he and the little girl who needs the heart transplant.  As far as he’s concerned, he can fight his own battles, quite literally, and earn the money himself to save the little girl. 

In the end, he does.  All works out and everyone lives happily ever after.  Again, I know, it’s a movie and was mapped out that way from the get go.  But I liked the moral it shared.  That just because you think life’s got you beat and you can’t fathom the thought of getting up and carrying on, you can if you dig deep within and think of those counting on you.  How their suffering might well shadow your own.

Then there’s another example.  One that doesn’t end so happily.  A friend of mine has been sharing about an elderly couple he knows who met and fell in love in high school and have been together ever since.  A little under a year ago, the man was having trouble maintaining his blood pressure.  They kept adjusting his medications but he’d still get dizzy from time to time and take a fall. 

One of these occurred one day as the man’s wife and my friend were with him.  When he fell, he hit the front of his face on a raised foot-tall brick wall, causing serious injury.  The impact caused him to reel, spinning him around and he then smashed the back of his head into the same wall, causing himself a double concussion. 

Doctors didn’t expect the aged man to survive but operated to save him.  He slipped into a coma.  For the next six months, the man remained in that state, his wife ever vigilant and determined that he’d return to her.  He did, a short time later.  Though the man was unable to speak, the couple was overjoyed to be reunited.  He fought hard over the next three months with speech therapy to regain the ability to somewhat communicate with his lovely bride. 

That task completed, one would have thought things would be easy going from then on.  But no.  The man suddenly gave up the will to live.  His wife is still vigilant about tending to him, as he can’t care for himself, but is distressed about her husband’s sudden lack of will to go on.  And who wouldn’t be?

So here’s my question.  What gives some the intestinal fortitude to get up and carry on the fight time and time again, when others, seemingly through the woods, just decide to give up?  Why do they quit?  Is it because they become fully aware of their situation?  Or do they become exhausted, no longer able to summon the strength to go on?

It may seem odd to compare a movie character to a real live person.  And it probably is.  But I just can’t shake how sad it is that the older man who had been in the coma had given up his fight. 

I know a thing or two about living in chronic debilitating pain and with physical limitations.  Spent a collective fifteen years of my life doing nothing but.  Living like that is draining and places a person in a dark mental area not many have frequented—thankfully so.  There were times I wondered if my plight would ever end, for I lived it 24/7 with no reprieve.  It was a bleak realization to go to bed each night knowing that when I awoke the next day, I’d be no better.  That my pain and suffering would continue. 

Perhaps that’s where the man who had been in the coma has arrived.  A place where he can’t imagine going through that each and every day for the remainder of his life.  Whatever his reason for giving up, it makes me sad.  I understand…but am still depressed when I learn of someone who has given up.