It’s one of those things you don’t notice until there’s something wrong with it.

Like that white banister in Oviedo I cleaned obsessively.

I’m talking about things like walking, writing, showering — the mundane tasks that comprise daily life. It’s so easy to take these things for granted.

I know I did.

And I know this has been said a million times by a million people in words more eloquent and poignant than mine, and I know, at best, such words evoke only sympathy, but never empathy. Platitudes like “treasure every moment” take the word ‘trite’ to a new level.

No, it’s not until you experience such things yourself that you truly understand the vulnerability, the frailness of things. The ephemera. It’s hard to wrap your head around the ramifications vegetable oil, five seconds, one bad judgment call can have. It really puts things into perspective in a way that is beyond my ability to transcribe.

I wish I could relay these things with words so powerful they have the same effect on people it took second-degree burns and fire-hot oil to teach me. As bad as the physical pain is (and it is bad), the mental anguish is greater.