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Brain Go BOOM!
Author/Survivor: John Cooper
Chapter 53: My 4 F’s
B
eing the stay-at-home-parent gave me ample time to reflect. I asked myself many
questions when I was feeling down, but even more when I wasn’t. That was a change in
the right direction. Some questions will never be answered and I probably shouldn’t be asking
them in the first place. It may sound like common sense because I’ll never get the answers I’m
looking for. So I must continue to “just keep swimming.”
During my rehabilitation, my initial questions and thoughts ranged from “Why me?” to
“If I were back to work, like many people think I should be, I know that we would be better
financially positioned for our future.” Some of these thoughts were eating away at my soul. As
the years have passed, some questions were finally answered and I started believing again. I
have accepted most of the travesty and have started to believe in myself, and it’s showing.
One bright, sunny, mild afternoon, I sat on the back deck and placed my pen and paper on
the newer glass-top table. I looked up to the sky and noticed the perfectly-formed clouds and
their crisp, brilliant, white color. They were positioned as if Jesus himself had cut them out of
construction paper and glued them onto the baby-blue-color-papered sky behind them. I could
see them even more clearly, thanks to the three trees I removed a year or so ago. I began to write
down what had helped in my evolution from being a victim of a giant, ruptured brain aneurysm
to that of becoming a survivor of one. They were my 4 F’s: Family, Friends, Facility and Faith.
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