Growing up, I never understood more than “I have a headache.” It’s easy to feel compassion for people with physical, visible disabilities, but it’s hard to explain to a child that you’re in pain when you look fine. To most kids, a disabled person is someone bound to a wheelchair. It’s difficult to explain to a child that disabilities go far beyond the physical indicators, especially when the only thing you can show them is a large scar on the back of your head, which seems cool to the young population anyway.

Growing up, I never knew why you couldn’t just take some medicine and get better. I didn’t understand that the trips you went on were to try to find a cure and not just long weekends we got to spend with the grandparents. That the days you stayed home from work were because you were in excruciating pain and not because you had a head cold. And that when you said you couldn’t coach my soccer team, it was because you didn’t know if you could depend upon your health, a luxury that I’ve always taken advantage of.

I never thought about being thankful for the fact that I had the ability to get out of bed every day knowing that I was just as healthy as I had been the day before. I never had to worry about how well I would or wouldn’t feel tomorrow. I could go to sleep without the fear that when I woke up my pain might be worse than it is right now. But you haven’t had that luxury for a long time.

I can’t imagine going to countless doctors who repeatedly turn you away, knowing that next to no one is invested in finding a cure for an illness that is almost unheard of.

I still have no idea what you go through on a daily basis, but I do know that you never failed to push through that pain to show me that, no matter what you were going through, you would push through it all to be there for me. You say it’s your job, but you and I both know you don’t have to. You support every decision I make as if it were your own. You never fail to pick me off and brush off my boo-boos regardless of how old I get. And you never let me question for one second that you will always be there.

I don’t tell you enough, but thank you. Thank you for never missing a soccer game, for teaching me how to be compassionate toward everyone and just those that appear to need it. Thank you for never giving up and never letting me give up on anything I’ve ever tried. Thank you for pushing me, and for pushing yourself. I can’t imagine what you go through every day just to wake up and go through your daily routine, but thank you for doing it.

You will never fail to amaze me.