The book is about two 17 year olds doing what 17-year-olds do all over the world. They fall in love. It didn’t take long for us to decide that we never wanted to part. Today we are approaching our 39th anniversary. My wife, Monica, is in a nursing home and we both know she will never leave there alive. She has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (the disease that the Jerry Lewis Telethon is all about.) About three to five days a week we enjoy a conjugal visit in her private room. I bring dinner, which I either buy or fix personally. We also share physical intimacies in celebration of our love. Philippians 4:11 says: “For I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.” I praise God for the time we do have together. Most of the book tells about the sorrow, joys, humor in raising two handicapped boys.
I graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan with a b.s. degree in Industrial Education, although I spent most of my college years in the School of Engineering. Considering that my book is not technical at all, my education is not really relevant. What is important is that I lived the events that make up the book. Every tear talked about in the book rolled down my cheeks. Every sorrow and grief I bore. Not everybody gets healthy children. Our children had Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. We raised them the best we could when they could no longer walk, we got wheelchairs for them. And we cried as they died.
Raising handicapped children is a difficult and heartbreaking job. Can you imagine how a mother’s heart can break watching her handicapped son struggling to walk to school, knowing how easy it would be for him to fall. “I’m a big boy now, mama, I can do this.” He refused any help. Four years later, he would be in a wheelchair.