every soul is beautiful

Some angels, shelley, choose cleverly disguised lives in time and space just to help folks get past judging by appearances.

No, they're not much to look at, listen to, or dance with, and most would never guess they're angels... but that's the point.

Every soul is beautiful.


over the past few years, i have maybe gotten this one figured out. i love him, but have kept him at arm’s length for most of my life. Uncle Rich. kept him at arm’s length because he is different. at 15, he was diagnosed with epilepsy. not much was known about epilepsy in the late 1950’s. seizure “remedies”…the old “stick a piece of wood in his mouth so he won’t bite off his tongue” bit of advice…and medications have come a long way since then. i remember being a kid and Uncle Rich just being kind of “there,” but not really. the medication kept him from seizing most of the time, but also kept him pretty zombie-fied. he would play with us, but there wasn’t a lot of conversation. when he seized, his seizures were strong and scary. he wouldn’t quite grand-mal, but it was enough involuntary movement to freak out a little kid who didn’t quite understand what was going on.

but you know, even as an adult, i was unsettled, not by him, but by the disease and the possibility of something “happening.” those feelings were channeled from my mother, who doesn’t have a lot of patience for my Uncle. that’s not a judgment, just an observation. admitting to being unsettled doesn’t mean i didn’t feel compassion or that i judged what was happening. it was always just accepted as who Uncle Rich was.

i wasn’t living here when the neurologist suggested the implantation of a nerve-stimulator to help reduce his medications and the frequency of the seizures. he and Dad talked about it, and the surgery was scheduled in Indianapolis. he now walks around with this stimulator under the skin in his chest, connected to the Vagus nerve that goes straight to the area of his brain that seizes. it has allowed him to decrease the amount of meds he takes each day, and has awakened him. his senses, his speech have improved with this stimulator, and, when he starts to have a seizure, he waves the magnet he has on a bracelet around his wrist and gets some extra pulsing going to lessen that seizure.

i was unsettled until the last few years. it helped i became friends with someone who occasionally has seizures. helping him thru them online…the recognition of one coming on, followed by the post-seizure questions to get his thought patterns to return to normal…helped me understand and to respond to my Uncle in ways i hadn’t been able before knowing this friend.

being the person he checks in with when he needs help … fiercely independent, it takes a LOT for my Uncle to say he needs help … has been an enlightening experience. over the past few winters, i have taken him food and clothes shopping, to the neurologist, and along to Christmas dinner with friends. he’s a sports nut…specifically baseball and football…so we have conversations about that day’s game or who’s gonna win the Super Bowl. our conversations take longer than most, as it still takes him a while to get out the word he’s searching for. it’s a patient conversation :)

occasionally, he’ll make a comment…some sly, sarcastic remark…that will make me laugh out loud and remember there really is someone in there, inside that quiet exterior.

i was grilling burgers on Memorial Day, by myself out on the deck, when the sliding door opened and out he came. he came out and sat on the steps and asked me if i remembered the tv show “Lassie.” of course i do. who doesn’t remember Lassie…and Timmy! especially when you have a brother named Timmy. he told me he saw Timmy on an episode of “To Tell The Truth.” we talked about it for a minute and then switched to the baseball game he’d watched the night before. this conversation was smile-inducing, simply because he had never done anything like that before. he actually walked outside…sought me out…to talk to me. never in my life had that happened. it made me feel so great. feel that connection was as strong as it truly is.

then, last night, as i was standing behind him in line at the kitchen counter to dish up dinner, i had to smile at the sight before me. he was filling his plate with his back to me, his oh-so-O’Bryant male flat butt (or lack of butt) in his jeans, and the black leather belt along with suspenders holding up those jeans. one of the suspenders had come loose and was hanging up in the middle of his back. that’s my Uncle. making damn sure those pants aren’t gonna fall down.

that’s my angel. thank you God for him.