the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

32 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
He yells at me, “They shouldn’t be making fun of you!”
“They… aren’t… really,” I tell him, trying to soothe his ire for me.
He doesn’t get it, but I’m softened by his caring so much.
I’m like a beloved toddler who makes words, messes up, and tries again.
In the messing up, family and friends applaud, laughing in pleasure. In all
of my tattered, ridiculous, tragic, heroic efforts, these friends quietly see me.
They take me as I am and remind me that I am still me.
My mother calls me every two or three days. The irascible, unsatisfied
mother is not the one calling. This one is supportive and empathic with the
ardors of getting through my day. Nearly eighty, she is sharp in mind, often
too much so, cutting. She is active in social causes and gathers her energy
carefully to do what she wants to do in her old New England town.
Haltingly I tell her, “I … got up, shower…ed, had... breakfast… then……
burst into tears! … I’m exhau…sted … it’s …only nine ... in the morning!”
She clucks sympathetically and says, “I didn’t have much energy this
morning either, but I wanted to clean up the leaves that have collected too
long in the bottom of my yard. I raked them for a little while to do something
to them. And then I sat down in a lawn chair just to look at what I did. It
was good.”
This picture eases me. She makes simple miseries sweet. It makes me
laugh. We are two little old ladies. This sharing of infirmity feeds me, and I
have a better vision of getting through each day.
I am new at this. My mother is not a graceful woman, but she models
for me a certain interior grace, humor, and ease with the inconvenience
of decreased ability. I can think of myself as a little old lady. A tender
perspective.
Discourtesy happens all the time in New York, but some days it is
unbearable. At a coffee kiosk, a window opening on the side of an old building
on the Upper West Side, I open my mouth, and the few seconds I need to
retrieve, “Co..ff..ee….mi…lk….., no…. sug…ar..” are too much for the vendor.
“Next!” he says to the man in line on the sidewalk behind me. I’m shunted