A mom’s quiet courage and the sacred rhythm of getting back up

“Of all the exercises I’ve taught you these last few weeks, this is the most important one.”

I wasn’t even the patient, but I sat up a little straighter when the physical therapist said that. It was her last visit with my mom, who has been slowly but steadily recovering from a series of strokes. Over the weeks, they’d worked through a whole menu of movements – heels to toes, leg lifts, the occasional battle with gravity and pride. But this, apparently, was the grand finale.

My mom gave her a look I recognized: part suspicion, part fatigue, part “Don’t you dare make me do lunges.” But the therapist just smiled and pointed at the recliner.

“We’re going to sit down,” she said. “Then stand back up. And then we’re going to do it again and again for 30 seconds.”

That was it.

No balancing on foam pads or marching in place while holding soup cans. Just standing up, sitting down, and repeating until the body remembers what it once did without needing a diagram and contingency plans.

She explained, “If you can do this, that means you can manage a visit to the bathroom and back without needing assistance of a family member, a home health worker or needing to move to a facility. You can move toward life instead of waiting for it to come to you.”

That landed.

Since losing her husband over a decade ago, and being mostly housebound since the strokes, she tells me that some mornings she wakes up, deduces from that fact that she is still here – and then feels uncertain what to do with that gift of another day, when some of those gifts don’t always feel that gifty.

She used to be an avid quilter – president of a quilting guild, no less. But the fingers don’t quite cooperate the way they used to. And the prospect of starting something new, something large and lovely, has felt too daunting for a long while.

I’ve made a few suggestions of other things she could do, but I’ve learned these things go better when they bubble up from the inside out.

This week, I came downstairs for lunch and noticed a couple of rows of neatly arranged quilting squares on the floor. Mom said she’d forgotten she’d even worked on them. But there they were – small, imperfect, hopeful. She’s decided to give quilting another go. It may be slow. It may not meet her own high standards. But she’s back in the fray.

And in a way, that’s its own kind of stand.

Making the “Whine Fine”

It’s easy to miss the majesty of it all – the sacredness in these small, steady acts of defiance against decline. But I see it. I see her. Pressing forward in a season that doesn’t offer many standing ovations. And I know I’m not the only one. Her seven children each reach out to her regularly to tap into some measure of her quiet resilience. Mom’s our forerunner. The strength she shows in pressing on is not just inspiration – it’s inheritance.

She’s an expert stander-upper. A quilting comeback story in progress. And a wise woman asking brave questions in the middle of ordinary afternoons.

And me? I’m just learning. A rookie in the sit-and-stand league, trying to catch on. (The secret, I’m convinced, is in the scoot forward. You’re welcome.)

And I’ve come to believe that in the great choreography of this life – its rises and falls, its arrivals and goodbyes – what matters most is not how high we leap, but how faithfully we return to our feet after getting knocked down.

Again and again.

Until one day, perhaps, we rise for the last time – only to find we’ve been lifted.