Yesterday, when I came to the hospital, I thought through the things that she might need. Hospitals are cold, so I brought a sweater and a scarf, and some fuzzy socks for her. Also, because she's pregnant, I figured she might need some nutrition for the baby. So I threw everything I had in the blender: spinach, oranges, blueberries, pineapple, mango, cucumber, ginger-root, chia-seed, and I brought this to her.
Yesterday, the shock was apparent. She was wandering the hospital like a zombie. She put the sweater on, and drank the juice because it was in front of her. I rubbed her feet and her back, and she seemed to barely notice. She cried when I hugged her tight.
Today, the shock is wearing off and, in its place, a growing horror of the reality of the situation. Eve stayed with her most of the day.
I took off on the bike ride I'd planned. I have to keep my mental health going into the visit to my family. I've just climbed out of one depression, I'm sure as shit not going to cave in to another. Bike riding is part of my mental health routine.
It was a beautiful day. Hot and humid summer. The world was green and white and blue. I have to ride a long time to get the mental health benefits - 20 miles minimum. This is how long it takes for the good brain chemicals to kick in, and for the detachment from regular life to allow me space to relax. And, as I enjoyed the day and relaxed, I realized that I felt tremendously guilty.
Guilty that I wasn't at the hospital with Eve and Crystal. Guilty that I'd forgotten to be sad for the little body attached to machines, for the cold little feet that I could hold in my hands.
I'm familiar with the sensation. If you are in the middle of tragedy, any deviation from perpetual remembrance and sorrow incites extreme guilt: "I've forgotten. How could I have forgotten?" Believing that our dedication to the tragedy is somehow proportional to our love for the person we are grieving.
When tragedy hit my family during my first year of graduate school, I was in torment. And in those rare moments of respite, relief, and peace, I hated myself for feeling normal. What kind of person feels normal when there is horror in front of their face?
Several months later, tragedy struck me again and I traveled to the Northern Virginia Institute of Mental Health. The situation was awful. My fiance Jeff, diagnosed bipolar seven years before, was on a psychotic manic phase. He had been arrested after a number of bizarre stunts and court-ordered into the hospital where they forced Depakote on him and tried to get him stable. When I visited him, he was crying and upset, convinced that the doctors were trying to kill him. He alternated between weepy and belligerent towards me. And he was agitated, flexing and twitching, and stalking about. I hugged him and found him strangely prickly - because he'd shaved the hair from his entire body (including his arms and fingers). I remember that the nurses were upset because he'd stolen a marker and was busy writing Christoffel symbols on the cinder block walls of his room, working on problems in General Relativity. I did what I could to rescue, what I could do to help. I talked to the doctors; drove to his school and talked to his professors and got his homework assignments. I sat with him as he solved the problems. Even in his altered state, his mathematics were far superior to my own. One day, the hospital let me check him out for the afternoon. He freaked out and bolted, stealing the car keys from me before he ran. Jeff's dad came to help out - we called the police to assist, and we took him back to the mental ward.
I was shaken and upset - and then Jeff's dad turned to me with a warm smile, said, "be sure to be back at the house by five so we can be on time to the theater."
I remember I was stunned. Hadn't this awful thing just happened? Weren't we supposed to sit around and feel sad about it? Wasn't I supposed to grieve the disappearance of this man whom I loved? Wasn't I supposed to worry and fret and feel sad about Jeff trapped in this terrible condition?
That night, in the theater with Jeff's dad, watching political satire and laughing aloud, I felt some truth blossom inside me: I owed no allegiance to tragedy. Tragedy was a bastard, and greedy. It took something beautiful from you, a future you longed for. Then, as if this was not enough, it ordered you to perpetually pray to it, reliving those moments and seconds and hours and days when the AWFUL THING occurred, begging it to be different: begging time to be malleable, and to turn back just long enough to build a different outcome. And, when you lack the energy to even consider these things, it obligates you to dread and despair.
I thought about this as I watched Crystal today. Eve was comforting her when I arrived at the hospital. Her little boy was being taken for another MRI because his cranial pressure had begun to climb. She was shaken and visibly upset. We brought her back into the family waiting room. I gave her another sweater I'd brought and she put it on top of the other.
Over the next hours, as we waited for news, and talked to the doctors, I tried to get Crystal to eat. But she refused. Even in those moments of relief - when we learned that it was the sensor, not the little boy's brain, which had been faulty. This realization relaxed us all, and we laughed and joked for a few minutes. I made a comment about the fashionable way that Crystal had transformed my scarf into a headwrap. Then, in the middle of a laugh, I saw that bastard, Tragedy, reach out and snatch the smile from her face. I knew what it was telling her, "how dare you? How can you laugh and talk, and take comfort, when your little boy is in so much pain and still in such danger?"
I fought him. And so did Eve. I heated the salmon and grilled vegetables I'd brought. I plunked it on a styrofoam plate in front of her and told her, "it makes me feel better if you eat. Don't make me worry about you all night long. Please eat."
So she ate. And the nourishment relaxed her body and loosened her tongue. She talked to us about her little boy, and then the food urged her into sleepiness: a genuine tiredness, and not the exhaustion of terror.
I want to tell her that she doesn't need to honor this tragedy. It is only one part of this beautiful life you've had with your son. It doesn't deserve your allegiance. It doesn't deserve your loyalty.
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