The reality of life is often harsh and ugly. Not many want to face it much less read about it. However, writing about it is a different story, and one that I will share because it is healing. For 13 years, I have lived as a spectator, and oftentimes a participant, in the daily struggles of the life of a quadriplegic, my mom.

I remember the details vividly of that fateful day that altered the lives our family in 2009 when my mom became a prisoner in her own body. My dad was on a business trip in LA and my mom was home shopping in Charlotte, North Carolina. My siblings and I were in Atlanta tending to our young families and jobs. We got a call from a nurse that my mom had been in an accident and was unresponsive and surviving on life support in a hospital in North Carolina. We knew no other details. Upon my dad’s return from LA, he would say it was the longest flight on which he’d ever been. The road trip from Georgia to North Carolina felt the same.

When we arrived at the hospital, nothing would prepare us for what we saw. Our mom, the glue of our family and one of the gentlest and most kind human beings we knew, was lying flat on a rotating bed, hooked up to what seemed like a thousand tubes. It took our breath away. We seemed to gasp for air as we watched my mom’s lifeless body slowly tilt from side to side on this strange bed to which she was strapped. We wondered what in the world had happened? We wondered if she would survive? And over and over we asked why? Why? Why? The questions were numerous, and the answers were few. Our hearts were broken, just like my mom’s fragile body.

We would later piece together the details of the day learning that mom was shopping, tripped on a curb, and went head-first into a brick wall. That fateful trip would cause her spinal cord to be damaged and her C2 and C3 vertebrate broken. From the moment she hit the wall, her life would become what could only be described a living nightmare. The days and weeks that followed would bring surgeries, hospital stays, rehabilitation, and lots of unknowns.

To this day, November 11, 2022, she lives in a helpless state with a functioning mind and a lot of frustration and sadness. It is a life that nobody would choose, yet she had no choice. For some reason, these are the “cards she was dealt”, “the valley she would endure”, or the “race she runs.” And every day we watch in pain, STUCK, unable to do anything to change the hand, reach the mountain, or alter the course.