Life Keeps Rolling

Everyday is a gift and there are blessings everywhere.  I had to learn that the hard way. I took for granted a lot of aspects of my pre-paralyzed life. The ability to walk, talk, move, breathe. You never stop to think about these simple commodities. Well, that’s all I can think about now. I am consumed by them. I see small blessings in my life now, that otherwise would have gone unnoticed to me.  *** Family:  I have never known what a bad family atmosphere was like. I grew up with two great brothers and two loving parents that also came from close, loving families. I never thought of it as a blessing, to me it was just normal. But it really showed it’s importance when push came to shove.  Years before I was shot, my twin brother had the choice to choose which Ranger Battalion he wanted to go to. Instead of choosing the Army base that is on a beach in Savannah Georgia, he chose rainy Washington to be stationed with me. On top of that, he let me live in his apartment f...

“Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn’t know possible” - Tia Walker (author) I wake up, unable to move... blah, blah, blah. By now you all know the ballad of Josh Keller. Paralysis is rough and it is messy. What you are going to read today will be less about me and more about a woman in my life that deserves some well earned praise. That woman is the one and only “Kassidy with a K”. Most of you know my journey so far, but you probably don’t know that none of it would be possible without my rock-star of a girlfriend. It being ‘Caregiver Month’, I thought it appropriate to recognize and brag about my round-the-clock caregiver and my rock, Kass. I grew up in the Catholic Church. That being said, I also grew up checking out the pretty girl sitting in the front-right pew during mass. That was my first impression of Kass. She was so pretty. Fast forward some time to 21 year old Josh. I was on the west coast serving my time in the Army. I had recently become friends with ...

Hey all,  this is Josh's brother Zach. I asked Josh to let me write a post for something I'm calling “family Friday". I'm probably not as good at writing as Josh is so bear with me. I just wanted to talk a bit about Josh's injury and my take on it.  Before the shooting, aside from some difficult training in the army, I hadn't really faced any serious emotional or mental obstacles. On February 11th, 2017, that all changed. Immediately following the shooting and for several hours afterward, nothing seemed real. It was almost like I was on auto pilot. I did a little first aid, watched Josh get EKG'd, loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled into an ambulance. I thought “that was it, my life was over”. But I didn't cry. I have no idea why but I couldn't cry. I was in shock, everything was shaking and I was more scared than I have ever been. Josh was taken to the hospital and the only info that I was getting on his condition was from some unhelpful police off...

It was a Saturday morning. I woke up in my brother’s apartment and rolled my sore body off of his couch (AKA my bed). I opened my shattered iPhone 5 to send a good morning text to Kass. It was already 1:30 on the East Coast so I felt like a real jerk for sleeping in. Goodness, I was sleeping well though. I got up and started on a cup of coffee and filled Jake’s (pet cat) bowl with wet food. Hannah (Zach’s wife and my sister-in-law) must have heard Jake. Either that or her ridiculous coffee senses were tingling because she zombied her way into her kitchen to start on her coffee. We heard the roar of Zach finding consciousness from the bedroom and he worked his way into the kitchen to greet us. We started brainstorming what we were going to do on our day off. My brother and our friends had just gotten back from Afghanistan so whatever we did needed to include them.  Why not go to the shooting range? This “range” was an abandoned hillside-turned-shooting-range about an hour from the...