First, I want to thank Josh for sharing this platform with me. I don’t typically shy away from talking to large groups but realizing 14,000 + people have visited this page makes me hope I can meet the standards Josh has set. This is Josh’s dad, Matt and I want to take this opportunity to talk about what changed for me on February 11, 2017. It was 6:04 pm ,   Maria and I had just gotten our food at one of our favorite restaurants (T-Bones). We were with some friends (they’re really more like family) when my phone rang. I saw it was Zach and I was just about to “bitch button” him and send a text saying we were eating and I’d call back. I thought about that for a second and realized I had not spoken to him for a   while because he was just back from Afghanistan . S o I decided I would answer it so I could hear his voice and then tell him I’d call him back. I thank God for a lot of things in my life and answering that call is one of them. My world was rocked with just the words “D...

Building Dreams for Marines video   Take a minute to watch a quick YouTube video created by an extremely generous organization Building Dreams for Marines. BDFM is one of many in the long list of people and community that helped me and my family through an overwhelming situation.  I was a soldier in the Army. I tell you this because I lived off of a paycheck that was significantly lower than minimum wage if you don’t include the benefits like food, housing and the college GI Bill. Now, I’m not complaining. I understood that fact well before joining. I didn’t serve for the money. For me it was duty to Country and ultimately for the experience. I only tell you this to explain that I was never a man of wealth. Most of my money foolishly went into keeping my truck and motorcycle running. It was an expensive but also therapeutic and fun hobby. I loved tinkering around with engines and learning the ins and outs of my Ford and my Harley. The grease and dirt was a badge of honor for m...

Part of being confirmed in the Catholic Church is taking preparatory religious classes. One of these classes was Theology of the Body. When I was 16, taking this class was more of a check in the box so that I could get confirmed and get back to baseball after school. In hindsight, I was sining but I did actually learn a good bit from everything. Of course, I have a much more profound respect for the human body now. In theology of the body we were continuously told “your body is a temple”. I never really understood it... until I was forced to. I grew up as a skinny, lanky kid. I had an athletic build and a stupidly fast metabolism. I had a decent respect for myself already. Throughout high school I played sports and stayed physical but it wasn’t until I went out on my own that I knew that I really needed to maintain and improve myself. I entered the military at a whopping 140 lbs. I had just turned 19 and I was pretty much a clean slate. I thought that Army Basic Training was an absolut...

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...

I open my eyes just enough to see a brilliant, blinding light. It feels like I am staring at the sun, or is it Heaven? I hear people speaking with muffled, familiar voices. I try to piece together who is around me and where I am. Purgatory? It is too straining. I am exhausted. Then, silence and darkness again. Back into this vivid reoccurring dream that I am handcuffed to a bed at the bottom of a damp, rusty cargo ship. Repeat... again and again, until.... Mom? Dad? Kass? Why do I hear their voices? They are in New Hampshire... I am just sleeping really hard in Washington State right now. I find the strength to open my eyes into a squint again. This time I see the beautiful, inviting face of my girlfriend Kass. It had been months since I was able to touch her and kiss her. Let me just sit up and kiss her. Just... kiss....her... Well, that didn’t work... why can’t I lift my head? My eyes look down, why are my arms strapped to my bed? I am exhausted. Back to my bed at the bottom of the c...

I’ll start this one out by talking about small injury I had in my sophomore year in high school. I had just made the junior varsity baseball team and we were getting ready for a stadium game that we played once a year. About a month prior I had sprained my ankle and tore two of the three ligaments that hold that sucker together. It was a pretty serious sprain but I downplayed it a lot in order to stay on the team as their starting first baseman. Because I had downplayed it so much, I had done some actual permanent damage and would have to deal with ankle pain and random joint clicks for the rest of my adult life. This injury and my actions in dealing with it would really put into perspective my next serious injury. At the time the only thing that seemed important was high school baseball. 16-year-old Josh didn’t really think much about the future. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake the next time I had an injury. I had always been fortunate enough to avoid any serious injuries. I c...

It’s no big lie that most of us are naive to people with disabilities. I know that I certainly was no exception. There are a lot of misconceptions regarding paralysis. Granted I can only attest for my own personal experiences and from the experiences of a few others that I have met. Here is my crash course in what I have noticed and experienced.  https://liferollson365.blogspot.com/p/life-keeps-rolling-comics.html If I saw someone in a wheelchair prior to my injury, I would always tell myself not to stare and I would take some uncomfortable side glances instead. Believe me, we notice and you would probably be better off staring that way I won’t feel bad for calling you out on it 🤷‍♂️. Early on in my injury it used to infuriate me when I would catch someone looking at me. I would always say that ‘everyone sees the wheelchair first and me second’. If I caught someone staring, I would yell and try to pick a fight. It must have been quite the sight because I had no voice and could onl...

“Every cloud has its silver lining”.  If that is true then my cloud is a hurricane. A lot of people have asked me how life is going as if they’re expecting me to give them an answer about how difficult it is or how horrible my new struggles are. My answer is always the same, “life is great”. Truthfully, my life is great. All trials of my new handicap aside, I am doing great. I have a beautiful home with the woman of my dreams and I have found peace. I often find random silver linings regarding wheelchair life throughout my days, so I began to make a list. I have fun finding the good in my situation and I hope that you enjoy my silver linings. The most obvious silver lining is the parking. Everyone sees the handicap car with the handicap plate parked crooked over two spots and no one cares (unless you are also handicap (reference my last post)). It is an obvious convenience to be able to pull right up to a building and roll right in. Growing up I usually had one or two pairs of shoe...

How do you live your life? You learn how to live your life a certain way from the moment that you are born. I don’t mean that you learn to be nice or to respect others, but that you learn to breathe, walk and move. You learn how to associate certain muscles with other muscles to make a movement. There are over 650 muscles in the human body and they all work together and are controlled by nerves. So you can imagine that my muscles are pretty messed up.  During my time in the hospital, I met an older Vietnam War veteran named Eric and I was blown away by his optimism. He was in the same boat (or wheelchair) as I was but his injury wasn’t as severe. One day we were sitting in the day room and he said something that I really took to heart. He asked me “how many people get the chance to relearn everything? To truly rediscover their own bodies?”. He said it as if we were the lucky ones and I was pretty taken aback.  At the time, I could pretty much do next to nothing for myself. I e...