
Unable to Forward
‘Return to Sender,’ read the yellow sticker plastered over my friend’s name on the envelope I’d addressed and mailed a couple of weeks before Christmas, ‘Insufficient Address, Unable to Forward.’
‘Return to Sender,’ read the yellow sticker plastered over my friend’s name on the envelope I’d addressed and mailed a couple of weeks before Christmas, ‘Insufficient Address, Unable to Forward.’
Saturday would have been our daughter Ruth’s eighteenth birthday. Instead, it marks the ten years she’s been gone. What more is there to say? Except that I am still unable to comprehend her absence. Not a day goes by that I don’t imagine how she might look, what hurdles she might have overcome, what goals she might have held for her future.
I recently had the privilege of touring a Maine business with an integrated workforce in which half of the employees are affected by some form of disability. It brought back warm memories of our daughter Ruth, who had cerebral palsy and was deaf. How she wanted to join in! It didn’t matter whether it was grocery shopping, licking envelope flaps to help mail bills, or stirring cake batter, with my hand over hers, Ruth wanted to participate.