The Story of My Mother
A format like this, where people with disabilities and those that share their sometimes insurmountable frustrations, helps in that it enables us to communicate with others in similar circumstances. My thanks to the webmaster(s) of this site for making that possible.
My mother contracted polio during the epidemic in the 1930’s. She was 14 years old at the time. Initially she was paralyzed from the waist down, but retained partial use of her arms. As with a lot of polio victims, her lungs almost stopped functioning and she was on an iron lung for 3 years. Over time, she began to slowly recover, although her legs were never very strong. She didn’t walk much more than a few feet and used her wheelchair when going outside the house. She was a very intelligent woman and spent a lot of time during her recovery absorbing as much knowledge as she could. While she did not have an extensive formal education, she was one of the most intelligent people I ever knew. I admired her greatly for that. In the 1940’s, she met my father. They met at a doctor’s office. My father’s brother also was a polio victim and my uncle and my mother were seeing the same physicians. My Mom had six children. When I was growing up, I never thought much about my mother’s polio. To me, it was just the way Mom was. And it never stood in the way of her living her life the way she wanted to. A sad fact of this particular disease is that it can recur in later years. My mother began to lose a lot of strength toward the end of her life, but her wit and her intelligence remained intact. She passed away 6 years ago. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and the courage she had just to get up and face every day. She was truly and inspiration to me and my family. I miss her very much.
Respectfully submitted,
Nancie J. Bennett (