Courage

         He should have known the moment he lost his grip on the banister.

         He should have known the night he woke Marie from sleep with his hoarse cry of pain as his legs buckled beneath him.

         He should have known the moment Jimmy had tossed the football to him...and he missed. He could still remember the look in his twin boys' eyes as he tried to pick it up.

It was right there! In front of him! So why? Why was it so hard to get those hand muscles moving?!

         "Is everything okay, Daddy?" Timmy asked. He was the younger by five minutes and yet the sharper of the two. Ever observant, his Timmy was.

         "Yeah," he said with a reassuring smile, aware of the cold beads of sweat on his skin. He looked up to see Marie's worried visage through the windows of their kitchen. An unspoken question in her eyes.

         He still couldn't get himself to tell her of the collapse at the store. He had tried to carry a box of apples, and with no warning at all, he fell. Leg muscles, once strong enough to run a hundred yards on a football field, had completely failed him.

         Two long months later, he is now confined to a wheelchair. His boys had thought it great fun to see Daddy in it, and had even taken turns pushing him around their large home. But as he sat on the patio, watching them play in the garden, he wondered how long he and Marie could keep up with the excuses.

         "Won't you come play with us, Daddy?" they'd ask.

         And his answer would always be the same. "Soon."

         For although he suffered daily, he vowed to be courageous for a family that he loved more than life itself.


Word Count: 300

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"The prospect of a short life made me want to do more. I realized life was good, and there was a great deal I wanted to do." (Stephen Hawking, who has been living with Lou Gehrig's disease for about 40 years.)

To learn more about this disease, you can check out: http://www.alsa.org/