A Mother's Love: Unconditional and Fierce

When I was younger (mid-twenties), my mother always asked me when would I give her grandchildren?  My reply?  "When you go adopt some.  Kids?  Blech!"

After my husband entered my life and my Bear was born, I never knew such a love existed.  When my wrath is unleashed upon the world, he just walks in the room and it's secretly hidden and the place is calm.  I can actually feel those little sparkles in my eyes.

When he was 1 1/2years old, he came down with meningitis, and suffered a seizure, it won't be the first time.  Four spinal taps, so many CT scans and MRI's I can't remember, nine neurologists over the years and still no definitive reason for his seizures.

Christmas Eve, I heard loud crash in his room.  I shouted was he ok, with no response, and ran up the stairs three at a time to find him on the floor, full grand mal.  Hours later in his confusion, he thought he missed Christmas.  It was all I could do not to cry.

Out of all my children, he is my favorite.  My first born, my best friend, my heart. I treat them all equally and he's had a tongue lashing many times, but he is a part of me that requires the fiercest protection.  He is a forty year old man in a sixteen year old's body, but he is as delicate as china.

I don't hover where he can see me, I'm good at holding back just far enough.  I take the verbal beatings from my own mother for my lack of "career, wasting my life as a housewife, my lack of fortune..."  But my Bear needs me here.  Had I not been here all those many times over the years we may have lost him.

Twelve minute seizures, twenty minute seizures, forty one minute seizures where they once told me to "prepare myself".  I have punched a doctor, walked out on a neurologist calling him an idiot, and fought tooth and nail for the proper tests when I knew it was meningitis "I can see it in him".

I would give up everything I ever had, all the things I have done in my life, the places I've seen, for my heart to be able to experience those without being sick.  To be able to live a normal life like everyone else, I would give up my own life for him.  

It's not fair that such a good child; an honor student, a non-partying teenager, handsome and so very funny, should ever suffer through what he does.  

It breaks my heart and at the same time makes me so angry.  

I will continue to lose sleep while I do research all night, I will keep asking the questions, insisting on the tests, I will fight until my last breath to, if not find a cure, then to find a reason behind this so we can learn to deal with this...