Why and How...IN HIS WORDS

Prepare to be moved by my husband's words. At least, I was.

IN HIS WORDS...

WHY???? Why did this happen? Why is this happening? Why is it happening to ME? These are questions that each and every one of us can relate to and most of us probably never get an answer to. They are probably questions that we have been asking ourselves regarding one thing or another for most of our lives and regardless of the fact that we don’t get answers, we still keep asking them. Not only do we keep asking them, we really seem to get hung up on the importance of the ever elusive answers. Perhaps it’s because we think that if we knew why something happened it would help us deal with the fact that it happened.

When I was 18 my oldest brother by five years committed suicide. It came as a real surprise to us all because he showed no signs of that at all. Since then I have had at least five close brushes with death, we lost our dream house that we built, our first daughter was born with Spina Bifida, Julle had a dramatic miscarriage, I started having Grand Mal seizure’s, and those are just the things I can put in writing. However, we don’t consider our lives to be any harder than anybody else’s and often hear of other situations and think “man, they really have it rough”. I am just saying that I have had ample opportunity to ask the “why” question. Especially over the last four years during which we have spent hours on end and thousands of dollars to no avail trying to chase down why I am having seizures only to realize there is no hope of finding out.

So I began to wonder, why am I so obsessed with knowing why and would knowing why actually change anything? The simple answer is I want to know why because I think that knowing why will fix everything and I want everything fixed because I want my life back. A life changing event is called that because it’s an event that changes our lives, usually in a way we don’t like or understand. One of the greatest things I liked about my life was public speaking. Although it’s ranked as a person’s greatest fear, I personally love it but since the beginning of the seizures it’s a struggle to hold a conversation let alone do any public speaking. Seizures took my life and I wanted it back. That’s where the second question comes in and the simple answer is, no. Knowing why would not change a thing. Even if I knew why I had seizures I would still be on meds, I would still have memory loss, and my life would still be forever changed. Even if we knew why my brother committed suicide he would still be gone. Even if we knew why Adria was born with Spina Bifida she would still have to learn to live with it.



As I look at the past several years I began to see that perhaps the best question to ask isn’t “why” but “how”. Continuing to ask myself why I have seizures was only bringing on depression but when I began to ask “How do I move on from here?” I finally began to adjust to the new life that I found myself in. Asking “why” kept me living in the past but when I began to ask “how” it brought me into the present and opened the door to the future. I think that asking “how” helped me to accept the reality of what is and began to lay the foundation to being able to move on. Even though this is a hard lesson to learn I hope that it is preparing me to help guide Adria through the path ahead of her as she grows and begins to ask the unavoidable question of “why”. Because I know without a doubt that as she navigates through the “why’s” and into the “how’s” the stars will be within her reach.

Even though I no longer ask “why”, I don’t believe in forgetting the past. I live my life with fond memories of my oldest brother and that house will always be the first house that Julle and I ever built together. The life changing events that happen to us are meant to be a part of our lives and not to be forgotten or stuffed down but neither are they meant to drag us down or hold us back. Are you asking “why” or “how”?

- Adrian Seely