Paper and Elements: Bella Gypsy –
Just Breathe
Journaling 612 words (as counted with Google Docs)
My daughter graduated from Oklahoma State University. She was always a bit “older” than she actually was so she didn’t make friends easily. However, she attended the Episcopal church near campus and joined the choir. She also attended the campus group there. When she was a sophomore, a young man, Silas, joined the choir. He thought she was a graduate student. They flirted a bit at first but did not move past that flirting and then summer came and she came back to Texas. When she returned in the Fall, the flirting started again and Silas suggested that they go see a nearby ghost town together. Then a few days later he asked her to go out for a drink with him. She had to explain that she wasn’t of drinking age! They continued to date and finally went out for that drink on her birthday. She told me that she was dating someone and he was a bit older. Silas was not a student, but living in town and working for the local newspaper. He is only six years older, but that seems quite a bit when your daughter is 20! Anyway, they were in love.
Silas soon moved for a better job to Oklahoma City, so their dates were on the weekend or sometimes they met halfway for dinner. It was clear that they were in love, but she told him that she had four more years of school to do and the seminary she had chosen was in Ohio! He said that they would work it out.
They had a wonderful long-distance relationship. They used technology and texted each other “good morning” and “good night” and many texts between those texts. They would have movie night and call each other while watching the same movie on Netflix. They tried to see each other every few months and always had a Valentine’s Day date. Shortly after graduating, they got married. They lived in Oklahoma City for the first year and a half, but then she took a call at a church in Texas not too far from where we live. He worked for a weekly newspaper and then got a great job at a larger newspaper.
Silas is a great cook and also a wonderful singer. He had been accepted into the Dallas Symphony Choir but before he could even rehearse, they closed down due to the Pandemic. They were finally going to start rehearsing again. He was very excited and went to the rehearsals for their first symphony since the pandemic shut them down. We were all excited and got tickets to attend that performance. Three days before that performance, on Nov 1, 2021, Silas suffered a stroke. Fortunately, my daughter was texting him and suddenly his texts made no sense. She rushed home and found him and called 911. They rushed him to the best stroke hospital in the area. They removed the clot from his brain but that was just the beginning of his recovery. He couldn’t move anything on his left side.He was in ICU and then a step down unit and finally into the hospital rehab. It was 22 days before he came home. When he came home, he could walk with a crutch. Fortunately he did not lose any cognitive abilities. He started going to out-patient therapy five days a week for about six hours a day. He can now walk without his crutch or brace and is working on getting his left hand back.
Silas is cooking again and he plans to join rehearsals for the Symphony Choir soon. He is anxious to return to the newspaper too. Silas is our miracle!
