As The Children Learn

“Mommy, this is SO unfair. She was the good one and this shouldn’t have happened to her. She was going to have a party for me and now I don’t even want to celebrate. This is too hard ... the worst part is ... I just can’t be ... Juli!” Cheyenne was sobbing as she realized that Juliana was going to be unable to guide her the way she had always done and the unreasonable responsibility she felt to fill her sister’s shoes was heartbreaking. 

It was her 18th birthday.

Nothing I said, including trying to address her inferiority issues was going to console her. She needed time to heal and the awkward comfort I could offer when I was in and out of my own reality was not going to be enough. She hasn’t been the same since the accident anymore than Juli has but in some ways her experience through her sister’s brain injury has given her more maturity than just stumbling through the last two years making her own mistakes.

The adjustment we all had to make forced us to think deeper, appreciate longer and love deeper.

It’s not something that can alter your family and not have you digging deeply into your soul to find purpose. I tried to be their counselor but they were just as upset watching me live through it as they were watching Juli live through it. It took nearly a year before I realized they were all busy trying to protect me from their feelings.

WATCH: Juliana's siblings revisit the night of the accident, and describe how their lives have changed along with Juliana's:

I watched each of the kids vacillate between sadness, hope and anger and knowing that they had to feel so awful was like a compound pain for me. Everyone expected Delaney and Mackenzie to have the hardest time adjusting, but they seemed to take it in stride. Perhaps I was just oblivious to their pain or perhaps their grief seemed more straightforward so I recognized it as reparable. Their successful adjustment was likely to the credit of my husband who held the reins tightly on the home front. He had always been part of every bit of their routine so for all of them to just cling closer was a natural progression. 

Regardless of how or why, even though they can be sad sometimes, they appear to be well-adjusted children. (Let me pretend that this pre-adolescent non-dramatic stage will last forever ... please?) For the first several months that Juliana was home from the hospital Delaney was a great help nursing Juliana back to health because she is so gentle and caring. Mackenzie made it her mission to help Juliana talk because she is more driven and unafraid. As Juli became more aware she started to resent her little sisters treating her like they were older and so to spare their feelings from her random and inappropriate reactions, we steered them back to their regularly scheduled childhood. 

Since many days it was a thankless job I didn’t want the kids to feel the rejection that by rights should have been only mine.

As I had my times of both extreme strength and extreme weakness I tried to alternately coach and beg them into inclusion. To answer the call they each took turns taking active roles in Juliana’s care and then drifted away as they are still trying to figure out how to become adults themselves. It’s a lot of commitment to maintain and the 24/7 expectation of caring for Juliana both physically and mentally requires you to be in a different mindset where you set aside the way she used to be. For the kids, that’s not always been easy to do but they are stronger probably because of the scars they never wanted. The details of our life might be different but the cadence of its ups and downs is no different than everyone else’s life. It’s a point worth writing down to reference when the pity starts to set in.  

I have this theory that I may have shared with you before. I think that parents are not here to instruct their children but instead, to learn from them. If our lives are 80 years long (God willing) and childhood is but a small fraction of that it makes sense that the educational opportunities are proportionately on the adult side.   Also consider this: we make mistakes so our children can learn from them and hopefully not make them but ... guess what? Those big ‘mistake ages’ are the same ones where they suddenly lose the ability to hear us talking. It makes no difference that we really DO know how to help them or how to guide them. It makes no difference that we care about them so unconditionally that we are likely the ONLY ones who won’t have any agenda in our advice. They still are unable to hear us, then. So, I figured instead of getting too wrapped up in teaching them, I would just try to learn from them: Learn to be patient, learn to be kind, learn to be loving, and learn to be appreciative. Nothing really teaches you that better than the children you would die for. As much as I love my husband, the physical bond with your kids is too powerful to ignore. I am still a student of this theory and certainly far from accomplished and I have to recognize that Moms are a work in progress too. And while my kids remain too young to recognize that I might know what I am talking about, I will just let them figure it out in their own time.  In the meantime, I am old enough to know that they have the secret to make me listen: I love them more than myself. That’s powerful and enough for me to continue learning about myself from them.

WATCH: Juliana's siblings revisit the night of the accident, and describe how their lives have changed along with Juliana's:

READ:  Where it all began, in For Juliana: Almost to the Almost, One Penny at a Time, by Janet Spencer Barnes.