On Struggle

In a LA Times article, the wife of Dr. Richard Olney, a Lou Gehrig’s Disease researcher and patient, describes her struggle with her husband’s debilitating disease:

”Life is overwhelming at the moment,” she says. “I try to get some pleasure out of each day. I don’t look forward because I get scared. I don’t look back because it’s too sad. So I put one foot in front of the other.”

This is as beautiful an expression as it’s sad. The separation from the future and past that compels her to live in only present must be a jarring and uncomfortable temporal space, though it’s the one we physically inhabit all the time. And how fitting the description at the end. Given that her husband can barely walk, it seems appropriate and touching that she can only do so with such will and focus.