The Way We Were

Caprice celebrated her sixteenth birthday on March 5/1989, but it was anything but sweet.  She had attended a basketball game at school and afterwards felt sad seeing all her friends having fun and going out together and she couldn’t join in, always dependent on others to go anywhere or do anything.  Instead she had to just come home alone and miss out on all the fun.  She felt her life was always the same; nothing changing even though she was trying so hard to believe that one day she would have a normal life like her sister Lisa.  Both my daughters are beautiful to look at and this made it even more difficult for Caprice.  She and Lisa may have looked alike but she couldn’t see herself having a boyfriend and eventually getting married and having children because she was in a wheelchair and who wants someone like that?  It hurt me so to see her suffering like that and inside I silently screamed, ‘it’s just not fair’!  Why does she have to miss out on all the fun of being young and carefree when everyone else she associates with is  ‘normal’?  At school Caprice was Miss Popularity and she was accepted by both boys and girls, but at the end of the school day while all the other kids had things to do and places to go, she had to wait to be picked up to be taken home.  Ah!  Acceptance - the need to be like everyone else.  The human condition that is the trap that holds us back from dreaming the impossible dream and facing the world as an individual instead of one of the pack.  On the inside Caprice was just like her friends, but on the outside - she was different.  She couldn’t hide her flaws.

“When the inside is like the outside and the outside is like the inside.”  (Gospel of Thomas)

I remember her sadness when she first went into her wheelchair (she was seven years old) and suddenly she came face to face with the fact she was ‘different’ and not like everyone else.  She came home frustrated and in tears then too, because she couldn’t join in any of the extra-curricular activities and she had to sit on the sidelines and watch all the other kids having fun.   I remember trying to make her feel better by telling her; “everyone has a handicap Caprice, yours just happens to show.”

Until Caprice, I had never known anyone in a wheelchair.  Why my daughter?  Why not me?  Why not Roy?  Why not my sons David and Jim, why not Lisa?  Why not anyone in either our family trees?  It just seemed to have come out of nowhere.  There had to be a reason and her tears just made me all the more determined to find answers. 

I gave her the old pep talk about how it won’t always be this way for her; lots of other girls don’t go on dates or have any more fun than she does, nor do they have the other perks she does etc., etc., etc., but inside my heart was breaking. I just had to find a way to make her pain go away!  I wrote in my journal:  “Please God, if you’re listening, help us to be strong.  Do not let anything deter us.  Surely by now you know we will honor our promise to continue helping others?  We will not let you down.”

“When the pain of remaining the same exceeds the pain of change, you will change.” (Modern Mantra)

In Dickie Motherwell’s psychic reading in September 1987, she said Caprice would be married in the future.  One of Shera’s readings said she would have friends all over the world and lots of them and this is true today.  All the psychic readings pointed to Caprice being healed, maybe even walking again!  Both Roy and I had also seen her walking in a dream, so had Carleen (her sister in law), friends, and even strangers.  As a matter of fact, in May of 1989, Lisa, Caprice and I were in Vancouver for a fun weekend away and we wandered into a crystal shop to look around.  We no sooner walked through the door when the owner of the store said to Caprice, ‘I knew you were coming, I dreamt about you last night’.  Now - Lisa was having a hard time with all this weird stuff Caprice and I were into and when she heard this her face went white and all she wanted to do was get outta there.  He too told Caprice she would walk again! Caprice and I go back to his store (Amethyst Creations, 2746 4th Avenue W) whenever we are in Vancouver and the last time in 1999 he asked Caprice why she was still in her chair and he added, ‘you can get out of it you know’).  Imagine that!  

Is it any wonder we began to think that maybe, just maybe, dreams do come true?   The thought that she might one day be able to walk again kept Caprice and I motivated, so why not go there?  Who was I to say that miracles cannot happen?  I had learned from the people who came to me for healings that hope is what really heals a person and hope comes from the inside.  It was their faith in the thought I was a healer that helped them, not anything I did…except maybe give them a reason to hope.  So, as impossible as our expectations were, hope reigned supreme.  Why?  What made us even think such a thing could happen? Well, ‘what if’ there was a way?  We had already seen huge changes in her physical condition since beginning the healings, changes that were not supposed to be possible (I mean, how does one revive dead nerves?) so why not believe that anything was possible?

“Hope is the opposite of despair.”  Deepak Chopra

I was caught between a rock and a hard place.  Which way do I go?  Who do I listen to?  I was torn between the pull of two opposites and neither were working; one minute here and one minute there.  From where I sat I had no choice.  Caprice was all I cared about and to watch her body slowly deteriorate in front of my eyes was not an option.   I was willing to head into no-man’s-land and risk losing in order to gain and that is exactly what happened.  It is a good thing I couldn’t see into the future.  If I had known then what I know now…where would I have found the strength to persevere?  Maybe our expectations were too high and maybe we fell short of accomplishing them, but then - we’re not dead yet!  If I hadn’t plunged in headfirst would she be alive and well today?  The prognosis given for her disease hung like a stone around our necks and I just couldn’t accept there wasn’t another way.     

“The body is a learning device for the mind.” Alice Bailey

“Anyone can do what I do if they are willing to pay the price.” Edgar Cayce