What Remains

There was once a larger dream of what you thought life was going to be, but chronic illness slow eroded the life you once knew, as routines fall away and certainty thinned out, and yet beneath the symptoms and the appointments there is a question waiting to be asked about what remains. When so much is taken or altered, you begin to search for the parts of you that illness cannot name or measure, the way you still care, still notice beauty, still long for connection, still reach for meaning even on days when your body will not cooperate. My ability to enjoy my cup of coffee, the birds chirping as I type these words, and the tree outside my window blowing in the wind. It’s not these things around me, but it’s my ability to remain present with them and aware of them through all of my senses. The struggle is not only with pain or fatigue but with identity, with learning to recognize yourself in a changed landscape, and over time you may discover that what remains is not a smaller version of who you were but a deeper one, shaped by endurance, honesty, and a fight for your own fragile life. I never appreciated the idea of stopping to smell the flowers when I was young and healthy, but I do appreciate those flowers now in my imperfect state. Not only do the flowers exist, but it’s also the reminder I do as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Bone