I’m sitting up in bed, having just had dinner and helping my
dad sand the knots out of his latest wooden boat. I’m one glass of wine and two
1 mg klonopin in (this is not recommended but it’s getting me through this very
moment of deep sadness). I put on Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens (yeah,
that guy is a genius). Since I was 16 years old that song has helped me process
my grief, and even more so after my own bout of cancer. I am sad tonight.
I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because I’m a manic-depressive.
I went to Philly for three days, which was a high, and now I crashed. Yes, that
could be it. I don’t process change from normal, daily life very well. Or, I
could just be sad like millions of other humans are right now. I don’t need the
special label of bipolar.
Anyways, I guess I’ll share a memory here since you all have
shared your time in this microcosm of infinity with me.
I had come out of an eight our surgery successfully (I was a
dashing youth with a body in good physical condition to endure the rigors). And
I was doing one of my three daily walks around the ICU ward, IV pole in tow.
When I was stopped cold, dead in my tracks. “I’m sorry,” said a male nurse
casually yet sympathetically. An elderly Asian man stood next to an empty
hospital bed with a woman’s cardigan in his hand. Next to him, I assume, his
son was standing. I put it all together within an instant: their beloved wife
and mother had passed on just two doors down from me. What had I been doing
when she died? Complaining of pain probably. I did a lot of that. Or maybe
blogging. Or maybe it was the Fourth of July when my two childhood friends came
and watched the wicked nurse force me to get into bed from my wheelchair
without any assistance: “It will speed up the healing process,” she said. And
my friends, decked in red, white, and blue gear cried. Watching me pitifully struggle
to go from sitting to lying down. Why, in America, do we place such precedence
on efficiency. Couldn’t I give my body time to heal? Probably not enough beds.
So, maybe that’s what I was doing when she passed.
My life profoundly changed after seeing the helpless,
hopeless look in the husband’s eyes. It changed me forever. Seeing grief up
close for the first time at 18 years old, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, with an
excellent prognosis and Virginia Tech on the vista of my near future. I won’t
be cliché. But seeing the fragility of life really does change you. I have
never been the same since that moment. An internal shift. Goggles to see life
the way it really is. Perspective. Pain. Real pain.
I guess the first time I had really experienced pain was
when my mom told me that her and my dad were getting a divorce and she was
moving out in two weeks. I screamed, shouted, hit the wall over and over, and
sobbed. My worst fear at the ripe old age of 14 had been realized. I remember
sitting in our dark sitting room (which we never actually sat in) in the formal
red chair listening to my ipod that night. On repeat: Cape Canaveral by Conor
Oberst. Man, I had good taste in music. Lol. I’m just messing with you. My
sister, five years younger than me, came in and asked what I was doing; she
didn’t know yet. I told her nothing and to go away now. I remember two weeks
later holding a sobbing nine-year-old in my arms as she was forced for the
first time to choose between staying with mommy or daddy. Oh, my sweet girl, my
little sister, for whom I would do anything. I can’t stand to see her cry to
this day. It’s like it breaks of a piece of my soul, a horcrux in each tear
shed.
Anyways, enough rambling. This nice little stream of consciousness
was more for me to process my emotions than anything else. But I hope it helped
you, or gave you hope in some strange way.
❤️
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