Life is nothing like a box of chocolates, folks.
Chocolate is a snack, a treat used to bribe small children and romance your partner. Full of sugar and sometimes caramel.
Life is a crazy, never-ending, all over the rails ride. Things go very, very well, and then they go horribly wrong. Sometimes, life seems to coast along at an almost (dare I say it?) normal pace-nothing out of the ordinary occurs, everything goes according to plan, etc. Life, for everyone, is full of a combination of those times and many more that I don't have the time to classify.
It's nothing like a box of chocolates.
One day, we're coasting along-doctor appointments, work, school, life in general-and all is going as it has for months. The next day, I'm racing to the hospital in the middle of the night, my four year old in the front seat next to me, not breathing. Two days later, he's home again, as if it never happened.
He'd had a seizure, which brought on an asthma attack, which depleted his oxygen levels, which caused another seizure, which closed off his airways, and at some point pneumonia decided to rear its ugly head.
And two days later he was fine again.
So, we're back to coasting along. And everything is going as it should. And life is grand.
And then Byrd is diagnosed with epilepsy. And my world comes to a screeching halt again. Now, I am stumbling through the process once again-why is this happening? Is there something else wrong with him? What do you mean, you don't accept his insurance? His insurance told us to come to you!
And yet he is still Byrd, still happy, still silly, still unbelievably cute. But now I know, when he stares off into space and nothing short of an earthquake (and maybe not even that) will get his attention, he's not simply lost in his own world-the network of nerves in his head is malfunctioning.
If life is a box of chocolates, then I guess I now understand why I never liked chocolate to start with.
