On the Road

Missing Limbs.  I recently had some especially interesting and enjoyable experiences.  I keep thinking that I will probably stop driving pretty soon as I accomplished my goal of paying Uncle Sam but then I have a week like this and I wish I could drive forever!  It started when I picked up a ride in Tempe.  She was a beautiful young woman in her mid 20’s who came out of the facility in a wheel chair.  I carry cold water bottles in my car to offer to my passengers because of the hot weather here and so I offered her one.  She declined and said that she was so hungry she felt sick.  I’m not suppose to stop once the trip begins but I decided that she needed something to eat more than a hurried trip home so I pulled into a Jack-in-the-Box and bought her some lunch.  As we visited, she told me how she lost her leg beneath her knee.  After a violent attack the man threw her to the ground and her leg was underneath her body.  Before someone found her the nerves in her lower leg were so damaged that she ended up having to have it amputated.  I felt honored to be able to share some time with her.  In that same day I picked up a ride in Phoenix.  She told me that she was born without an eye and only has vision in the other one.  She was at an eye doctor when I picked her up and she was so excited because she had found out that she had glaucoma but it was treatable so she wouldn’t lose vision in her other eye.  She told me that she volunteers at the School for the Blind to help other people deal with their vision loss.  The next day I picked up a lady in Mesa and drove her 45 minutes away to north west Phoenix.  She too had lost her lower leg and had been at a doctor’s appointment where they were fixing the nerve endings where the prosthesis connects to her leg.  I don’t know how she lost her leg but was touched by the story she told of her 16-year-old son who passed away after a long battle with cancer.  Each of those women were so inspiring as they shared a glimpse of tragedy without dwelling on their loss but on the hope, they had, that everything would be okay.  “I cried because I had not shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.”  How honored I am to learn such important lessons from others who have experiences I have a hard time even comprehending.