I called my wife that night and someone picked up. The voice was a female’s voice. If it were a man who spoke to me that night, a lot of things would have run through my mind but it was a woman. Thank God. I had been calling her phone for hours and no one was picking up. I was confused, anxious and a little bit angry. Finally, someone picked up the call and asked me, “Who are you?”

The first answer that came to my head was, “I should rather ask you that question. You’re the one speaking on my wife’s phone.” But her voice sounded mature, like the voice of a woman who might as well be my mother. I answered, “I’m the husband of the woman whose phone you’re answering. Where’s she?”

She answered, “Good that you called. Your wife is here at the hospital. She can’t talk, walk or see. Her situation is critical. You have to be here as soon as possible.”

I got to the hospital and saw my wife lying there with tubes running through different places of her body and with a mask on. I asked the man standing next to her, a very young man who I believed was the doctor, “Is she going to live?” He answered, “We’ve done our best. Let God do the rest.”

I was looking for assurance but this man made worse my anxiety. I looked at her closely and tears welled up in my eyes.

We dated for one year and had been married for four years with a three-year-old child. A friend introduced her to me at a church’s programs. Right after the introduction, my heart kicked, my eyes started seeing stars, a voice said in my head, “Don’t let her go. She’s the one.”

But I didn’t have the courage to do anything until a month later when I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights because of her. I called my friend. I said, “That lady you introduced to me the other time, can I have her number? Does she have a boyfriend? You’re her friend. What do you think my chances are?”

He laughed at me but later gave me the number. I called and asked her out pleadingly. She said she was going to think about it. A month later, I got a date. A month after the date, she said yes. One year after saying yes she said yes again, this time to a marriage proposal. A couple of months later we were married.

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I remember looking at her on our wedding day and telling myself, “If I could win a woman like this, then I don’t have to play small. I can win everything if I work hard at it.” I loved my wife from the very day I saw her and a year later, that love I had for her was still the same so I decided to marry her.

She was a strong woman. Even when she was pregnant, she could carry a one-seater sofa all by herself. I was scared. I shouted at her, “Put it down. Do you want to hurt yourself?” She responded, “I’m pregnant. I’m not sick.”

She took her fitness seriously. She would wake up at dawn and go jogging while I joggle in bed. She said I was growing fat and needed to train. I told her she was to blame for making me fat. I loved to see her run. Everything about her shook and it was beautiful.

She was at the hospital for two months. I remember standing next to her bed while the doctor was giving her the news. He said, “There’s good news and the good news is that you’re alive. Many people have died for less but you are here. The other news is that you won’t be able to walk again. You’re paraplegic now but all is not lost. Make adjustments to your way of life and you’ll be alright.”

“Paraplegic.”

A word that sounded like a name of a beautiful flower but it was the reason my wife was going to be bound in a wheelchair forever. She was tearful. She asked the doctor, “You mean I’m going to remain like this forever?” Before the doctor’s answer, she turned to look at me, I winked at her and nodded my head. She cried. I held her hand and said, “No need to. We can do this.”

We were saving to buy a car before the accident but after the accident, I dipped into the savings account and bought her a brand-new wheelchair. She sat in it for the first time and for the first time, I became a pusher of wheelchairs. I pushed her out of the hospital looking forward to our new life with hopes and new dreams.

She approached life from a defeatist point of view and I could understand her clearly. When we got home, she asked me to send her to her parents. “They have to do this and not you.”

“This” she meant bathing her, carrying her into bed, changing her diapers in the morning after a night she pooed on herself.  She was embarrassed that I had to see all that. Sometimes she fought me. She resisted when I tried to help. She screamed at me, “I said take me to my parents. I don’t want to be here any longer.”

It was hard but we’d had it easy before so we learned to take the hard and whatever that came with it. She yearned for her parents so her mom came to live with us. For a while. When she was leaving, we hired someone to help, especially with the child.

All that while, I was keeping in contact with the company she was working for before the accident, giving them updates on her condition and how they could take her back and possibly reassign her to a position her new situation could handle. She was ashamed to go back to work. She was ashamed to face the world in a wheelchair. She told me she wouldn’t work again. I told her, “You’re a strong woman. If you don’t work again, you’ll be bored and that will make your situation worse. You need to do something for distraction.”

Every evening after work, I will take her for a walk around the area. We would see new things on our way and she would comment on them. When people looked at us, she laughed at them. I realized she was getting her confidence back.

I wheeled her to a beach one night and she got emotional. She loved the beach but she couldn’t swim. She said, “I was thinking of learning how to swim but now look at me. I can’t even walk.” I told her, “You can still fall in the waves and get your body wet. As far as you come in contact with the waves, it’s swimming to me.”

Sometimes she got overly jealous and sometimes questioned my moves unnecessarily.

When I’m late from work; “Where did you go? Who is that girl?”

When I’m leaving home in the evening for a reason she felt was unnecessary; “You’re going to meet the one who can walk, right?”

When I didn’t eat in the house, “She fed you before coming home, right?”

That was the toughest moment in our marriage—to go through tough chores and be questioned about things that didn’t cross my mind. But instead of fighting back, I decided to fight the doubts in her mind. I asked her, “I’m meeting this person. Would you like to go with me?”

Somedays she said yes. Somedays she was too tired to be excited about outings so we made our own plans to visit interesting places together.

On our tenth anniversary this year, she woke up and said “Thank you.” I asked why and she told me, “Thank you for not leaving. I didn’t believe we’d see this day together. From the bottom of my heart, thank you and I mean it.”

She was going to visit her parents that day. We were supposed to go together but I had a call from work that changed our plans. I told her, “Why don’t you wait so we go next week? It’s still the same right?” She answered, “I have to go. I’ve postponed this visit for a very long time. I can’t postpone again.”

I took her to the station. I waited until the bus moved. She waved at me and I waved back. On my way home, she texted me to take care. I responded, “I will. Safe journey.”

It was the last time I saw her walking. When I asked how it happened she told me, “I was sleeping. The screams woke me up but it was too late to see anything. The next thing I saw was the white walls of the hospital room.”

Her voice got mellowed as if she was choking on her own tears. She said, almost in whispers, “I should have listened to you. One more week wouldn’t have changed anything.” She took a long break before saying, “But I’m lucky you didn’t go with me. Who would have taken care of us?”

When you love someone, I’ve learned that you love them not because of who they are. You love them because of what they bring into your life. Who she was has changed over the years but what she brings into my life and the life of our boy has always remained the same. People look at us and think we are together because we vowed to live together for better and for worse. No, that’s not the reason.

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Those are vows people break all the time but when you value what she brings into your life and allow the love you felt the very first day to remain true, it becomes easier to live through whatever life throws your way. I don’t know it all but I know this much is true.

We are ten years old as a couple. Six out of ten, my wife has been in a wheelchair. I don’t know how many years we have left but I know know this…

We are not giving up on each other no matter what comes our way.

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—James

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