two are better
On the Fridays when Josh spends the day with us, Riley, Josh, and I have conversations about what they’ll do for each other in-case-of-seizure. They sit at the bar, our couple, their fingers interlaced, while I stand in front of them at the kitchen sink, my hands preoccupied with washing.
“Now Josh,” I begin. He grins, and his smile lights his deep brown eyes. “Let’s say Riley has a seizure. What do you do first? What’s ‘step one’?
Riley bubbles over and squeezes his hand, as if this were an absurd premise.
“Well, so, the other day? Riley had a seizure at the car, while I was getting your bag of tomatoes.” I nod, grateful he has brought this up, this context for our conversation. “I would’ve helped her sit down, but my hands were full, and we were in a parking lot. Yeah, so, what am I supposed to do in a parking lot?”
The last time we had this conversation, Josh said it was his favorite thing he’d done that day, this talking about what he could do for Riley, and she agreed, blushing a little and flashing him an adoring gaze.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another. Carry one another’s burdens…wash one another’s feet.
I hear no sighs now from either of them; they are rapt and ready, eager to take care of each other. When, I wonder, have I ever felt so completely engaged with how I can serve someone else? What if these were the conversations the rest of us loved, the ones about figuring out how to take good care of each other? I can imagine it would do me some good, to have thought about love in advance.
“You’re right. Step 1 is to make sure they’re safe and won’t fall, and you bring up a good question,” I say to Josh. “Riley’s last seizure was in a parking lot, and you can’t just lay her down on the road where drivers might not see her.”
The night that seizure happened, Kevin had come home from picking Riley up and had told me that fortunately, it had been very quick. Riley had been on her way to get into our car to go home when the seizure took hold, stopping her in her tracks. In my mind, I could see it play out, how she stopped and slowly froze, her head locking as she looked back over her shoulder, as though she had heard something coming for her and turned, only to be frozen in place by the sight. Kevin and I looked at each other one beat, two, both of us feeling heavy with our memories, somehow locked ourselves in that place Riley goes when she blanks on us, but we said nothing more to each other about it. We’ve already said all the things there are to say so many times we know them by heart, and we know that feeling, the unexpected jerk of reality, like we know the weary lines that deepen in each other’s faces.
“Yeah, I had my hands full because I was getting your tomatoes,” Josh is saying now. “Dad H helped, though. Dad H helped.”
Sometimes, I have to stop what I’m doing and thinking to actively acknowledge that their Father will always be there to help them, even when Kevin and Ray don’t happen to be standing nearby. I lose track sometimes of who God is, of the fact that no time or place or circumstance exists where He is not fully present. By necessity, we endlessly strategize about the question of care in our absence, because well we know our finitude. In the midst of all that, God keeps turning my heart to rely on His infinite goodness, for surely His goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. Josh and Riley will never really ever be on their own.
“Riley, what would you do if Josh had a seizure in a parking lot or while you’re walking down the road?”
“Ummm, look for some grass?” I watch her consider him and twinkle. She lifts her hand in front of her, flattens it as if to underline the point. “Or, I guess I could try to hold him up? I don’t want Josh to fall if he’s having a seizure.”
Two are better than one…for if either falls, their companion will lift them up.
I nod, reaching for another dirty pot, and then say, “Or, if you can’t hold him up, you can wrap your arms around him, pull him to you, and gently lower him as you sit down yourself, so that his back is against you or his head is in your lap. But make sure drivers can see you or you’re safely away from where cars will be moving.”
I am thinking that we will need to practice this somehow, already imagining how they’ll laugh, how Josh will sheepishly cover his eyes at the thought, and in my heart I whisper thanks that God has given them one another, that they only want to be together, that they never have to fall alone.
“But Dad H did help the last time Riley had a seizure,” Josh says now, as if to reassure us all.
“And God will absolutely always be with you,” I say, because it’s fresh and re-freshing to my soul to rest there.
Riley sagely nods as she says, “Mm hmm, yes He will, Mom,” and, entwining her fingers more tightly together with Josh’s, she gazes upon him with a dazzling smile.
