The fourteenth of every month still sets it apart from the others as we count backwards to July 14, 2007. We are now in month 8 post-crash and the experience is slowly splitting into three parts: the nightmare of the crash itself; the immediate response from family, friends and colleagues, combined with the effect of painkillers that make those early two months seem rather nice and then the slow up and down trajectory of healing, first in body, then in mind. We are still in part three and may continue to be for awhile.
Are we alright and our old selves again? Yes and no. Axel still walks with a slight stoop and is often in pain especially after a long walk, like the one we took yesterday. His hand is inflamed and, as he says, his head is still not quite right. Yesterday, for example, he discovered that he cannot read the newspaper and listen to the radio at the same time, something he did effortlessly 9 months ago. But from the outside he looks and acts like the old Axel and we could fool ourselves.
As for me, no one can tell from the outside that anything happened to me. The scars are hidden behind clothes and the neuropathy cannot be deduced form my gait; I sometimes forget about all this as scars and senseless toes have become so much part of my daily physical experience. But the sadness remains and has never quite gone away; sadness about things going wrong one day and tentacles that reach out from that time into the present, never quite relinquishing their grip. It is like a heavy weight on my shoulders that I can’t seem to take off and put down. That is my stoop, not visible like Axel’s but there nevertheless. We don’t talk about it all that much during the week. But last night, while Sita and Jim were out, we talked about the continuing aftermath and the lives that have been affected and the whole gamut of feelings that goes along with the pain, the regrets, and the gratitude.
It has become some sort of a ritual that each time the14th comes around I read through all the previous entries on this milestone day. I have tagged these entries and I can select them as a set. In re-reading the entries I hopscotch through our recovery and the jumps of the early months. With the focus on recovery and our loving community of care-givers, the agony of pain and sleepless nights, and the interminable wait for all of us to get back to normal is not as visible (anymore?). The written story is far from complete, whole chunks are missing, but they come back into view when I read about what happened on the 14th of every month since July.
It is Friday now and I turn my attention to the things I cannot do in the office because of multiple and constant interruptions. It is to be a day of long stretches of concentrated attention to reading, thinking, designing and writing. I have a vision for the end of the day, and that is checking off items from my to-do list and, with a sense of great satisfaction, closing my computer at cocktail time!
Sylvia's Journal 
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