Compadres

We went up to Friday Harbor this weekend for a big pig BBQ.  Three people turned 60 this year, and there was a party, farm style.  Big tables laden with food, lots of LOTS of people, a couple kegs, boxed wine and lemonade.  This used to be my hometown, and why I moved the kids to Poulsbo... I thought it would be like growing up in Friday Harbor.  Alas, nothing is like the 70's and 80's on a seventeen mile long island in NW Washington! 


Courtesy Washington Land and Homes

A fellow I have known my since I was 5 walked up to me and said that we should talk.  He is a member of my honorary extended family but he and I never had much to talk of. Now we do. He said he had a hemorrhagic stroke 6 years ago. From there it went winding down that stroke story path. There are conversations I have had that go on between us stroke survivors that immediately go to the serious, open-hearted and supportive.  A comraderie that happens that you can only understand if you have had a stroke.  We know that we may be changed, and have different skills and abilities, but we are still ourselves.  We all faced that wall of fear, of undoing, and rebuilding.  The conversations that I have had remind me that we go to a horrible, horrible place and then we navigate how to live our lives beyond it.  Thanks, Kim.