GAIL WHITE The hardest disability to overcome is thoughtlessness

I have a wonderful friend named Monica Stryffeler, and I have a difficult time describing her without getting gushy.
She is sweet, kind and pure hearted, unlike anybody I've met.
Her long, brown hair and big, brown eyes are a few of the features that make her beautiful. But what's in Monica's heart makes her beautiful inside.
I cherish the lessons I've learned through her good-heartedness. Her outlook on life and her steadfast faith have had a strong impact on me -- partly because her wonderful characteristics are so strong, and partly because I know that if I were in Monica's situation, I would be an ugly, angry, resentful ogre.
When Monica was 17, she, her sister and a friend were visiting a college in Leavenworth, Kan. A car accident on the way home left Monica paralyzed from the waist down. She went from being a dancing, giddy teenager who was ready to greet the world to a paraplegic who wondered how she was going to get her wheelchair up the steps at her high school.
Never complained
I didn't know Monica when she was 17, but in the 10 years I have known her, I had never heard her complain about ANYTHING.
Until lunch a few weeks ago ...
We were at a friend's house, catching up with one another, when Monica mentioned a trip she and her family had taken.
"Some hotels don't have handicap-accessible rooms," she said, describing the dilemma she, her husband and two children have when traveling.
Even rooms that are supposedly handicap-accessible are not completely accessible, the Stryffeler family has found.
"We have had to take the bathroom door off the hinges so my wheelchair will fit in," Monica told me that afternoon, with a slight sense of irritation that I had never heard in her. "We carry a curtain, spring rod and blankets with us when we travel."
The curtain and spring rod are for creating privacy once the bathroom door has been removed.
The blankets are for the children, Ariel and Owen, who frequently find themselves sleeping on the floor in their hotel room.
"Often, handicap-accessible rooms have only one bed," Monica shares. "I don't know what they think people with families should do."
Parking spots can be a problem as well. Monica has a car topper on her van. A mechanism lowers her wheelchair right beside the driver's side door.
"If somebody parks too close to me, I can't get out," she says, noting that some drivers ignore the diagonal yellow lines that are there to give a handicapped motorist more side room. "That's the only reason I park in handicap spots."
Hard to find
Sometimes those handicap spots can be hard to find.
"It's really bad in the winter," she said. "The snowplows shove all the snow in the handicap spots."
When I asked her about nonhandicapped people parking in handicap spots, Monica's response was gentle.
"It makes me wonder," she simply said.
Sitting there that afternoon, looking at my friend, I got mad.
How dare somebody undeserving take a handicap spot from her!
And why don't they push the snow to the back of the parking lot already!
Sit in a wheelchair and roll it through the bathroom door when building a public "handicap-accessible" bathroom!
We should all take the doors off and hang spring rods and curtains in protest!
As I aired my haughty anger, my friend looked at me with forgiving eyes.
"When I was injured, I decided I could be bitter, or I could just accept what God has put in my life," Monica said.
Despite all the obstacles out there, Monica bears her burden with grace.
gwhite@vindy.com