When Life Changes...

Nothing really new here but my heart talking today. I hope no one minds my sometimes rambling but it is the truth and my life.
What do you do when your life suddenly changes? You are walking along in life and suddenly everything you ever believed changes. What you thought would be your life for the rest of your life is in a flash...Gone! You were going to grow old with the Love of your life. You would watch one another face what challenges and beauty come with growing older together. But in just a moment, you are alone. After 25 years, God decided to take My love to heaven. Should this have been unexpected? Should i have been more prepared?
She was sick from the first year we were married. Muscular Dystrophy came into our life in a huge way. Her legs and arms weakened to the point she could no longer walk and barely lift her arms. We learned how to walk through this new way of life together. We knew the inside of hospitals better than we knew our own home. We raised two beautiful daughters together, doing our best to lead a normal life for them. They saw their mother in hospital rooms and surrounded by doctors and it became a way of life for us. We ate fast food and took every opportunity to enjoy life and lived it as if she were not ill. Life continued and we had a great life.
Strength comes in many forms and from many experiences. Sadly, sometimes it also is knocked down. And then a disorder takes over me. It sneaks in slowly and only looking back now can I see that it was always there. Little things I did slipped past without hardly a notice. But they were there like little beacons, beacons trying to tell me that there was something not quite right. But when it settled in hard, my whole life changed again. Things that came easy for me no longer simply flowed. Thoughts that came one or two at a time now came 20 or 30 at a time. So fast that I found myself unable to capture just one to sort out.
Now, watching Sheila suffer so as she did, was not just part of our life. It was huge for me and it took me down some hard roads. I cried like a baby whenever she hurt. Emotions I had secured in the way back of my mind no longer were staying there. they rushed forward and made me See everything through the eyes Of what i had always known I was. The eyes of an empathic. Someone that no loner simply Saw the pain but felt it deep inside. I hurt when she hurt and I cried because I could not take her pain away. I held her tight and prayed silent prayers to God to let MY body absorb her hurt, her illness. Give it to me, I prayed! And i cried more... {tomorrow perhaps I will write more. Today, I am flushed.}