Let's Take Part II First, Shall We?
Human emotions befuddle me.
Maybe it’s just my own emotions, but I’d like to share the confusion
with all of my species. Emotions make no
sense, and yet they hold our mortal mini-universe together. They tie us to one another and divide us
asunder. They split our sides with
laughter and break our hearts into tiny shards.
They are manageable, but never truly controllable; as soon as we stifle
one emotion it just pops up in another way, generally messier and more virulent
than if we had just dealt with it in its pre-gremlin form. The passage of time
often softens the edges of emotions, and hopefully that will be the case today,
affording more clarity and less drama to my words.
A month ago, John had a heart attack. I’ve been trying to write about it nearly all
this time – when I haven’t been taking walks with him or cooking for him, or
running errands or trying to pretend that life hasn’t kind of changed around
here. He’s fine. As a matter of fact, if you want to know all
the details of his latest adventure, that will be my next post. Technically, that's Part I, but I needed to do this first. Every time I tried to write that, I ended up
writing this, and this isn’t that, but something altogether different.
This is about how I feel.
About how I felt. And I think it’s
kind of weird, actually, because in that moment four weeks ago, I didn’t feel
anything at all.
He interrupted my lunch break at work; I was at my computer
when he came in. As I told him to lie
down and tried to find him an aspirin, I felt irritated with myself for not
having an aspirin on me and I felt foolish for not having renewed his
nitroglycerin prescription for over three years. Who even knows where that old bottle is? At home in a dresser drawer? Maybe.
So hard to say.
As we tried to decide what to do – he wanted me to call his
doctor – I was firm but not afraid. No,
I wasn’t making a phone call. Once he
mentioned pain under his left arm, there was only one option, and that was
going to the hospital. His choices were
having me drive him there or calling the ambulance. He asked me to go get the
car, and all I felt was impatient – it was taking too long to walk/jog/run/(huff, huff)/okay,-just-walk-really-fast to the car.
The department chair asked if I was okay, there in the
office, and I assured him that I was; I tend to fall apart when things are
over, not in the middle of a crisis. I know
this about myself after many outings to the emergency room with children in
various states of distress and blood loss.
I don’t freak out at the sight of blood.
Emergencies spur me to action. I
don’t have to think about it, and I wasn’t thinking about it four weeks ago.
I did feel relief when I saw the Emergency Vehicles pull up
to the building at the exact same moment I did.
I was even a little annoyed when the ambulance took the last parking
space there. I had planned to park there
and had to pull further down the road and turn around. I began to feel really impatient when I realized
there was no place else to park, so I parked illegally behind the ambulance,
flipped on my flashers and handed the keys to my department chair who was
waiting outside for me to arrive at the building. I didn’t even care what he did with the car.
I didn’t feel panic, though, even with six or seven EMTs
swarming over my husband like winged ants in the spring. I always had thought the chair’s office was
large, but it was bursting at the seams with all those people. I felt surprise when an EMT pulled me
aside and asked which hospital we wanted to go to, especially when he
recommended a different one than I mentioned because of their superior
facilities for by-pass surgery. I
figured he knew more about what was going on than I did, so I agreed to the new
venue.
I wasn’t even afraid in the ambulance; in a detached kind of
way, it was cool to ride in an ambulance and watch the EMTs do all the things
in real life that I watched them do on a TV screen. It was just like that, except that John was
talking and when he wasn’t twisting and turning and trying to find a position
where his elbows didn’t hurt, we were kind of joking with Eric the EMT and
telling him about stuff like soccer and teaching Spanish. Okay, so maybe I was
feeling a little nervous – that tends to make me chatty.
I did feel impressed when Eric the EMT laid down a second IV
in John’s arm while the ambulance was going over bumpy roads and John didn’t even flinch. For those of you who know John, his long and
uncomfortable medical history and the hate/hate relationship he has developed
with all things needled, you might also feel impressed.
Until we arrived at the hospital, there had been precious
little time to feel anything, to tell the truth. I was
annoyed that they wouldn’t let me stay with him in the ER, but I used the time
to send some quick text messages to the kids.
Because I didn’t really know what was happening, I couldn’t say much,
and that was frustrating, but it felt good to do something - anything active. Sending a text was something I could do, and
it didn’t require me to answer questions I had no answer for. When they wheeled John out of the ER for the
cath lab I followed, wishing I could be walking next to him, touching his head
or his arm like I had been able to do in the ambulance, wanting to talk to him
and tell him I was right there; that I wasn’t going anywhere. All I could do was follow him down the hall,
walking with the nurse who took me to the waiting area.
Sitting in a hospital waiting room is an unfortunate
opportunity to feel stuff you may or may not feel like feeling. A few more texts kept me occupied, but I
found myself treacherously close to feeling something that resembled
helplessness as I sat there. I was so
grateful to have a distraction when my department chair appeared in the waiting
room doorway a little while later – he had arrived with my car and sat and
visited with me while he waited for the associate chair to arrive to pick him
up and take him back to campus. When she arrived, the two
of them just sat with me and talked . . . about the kids, about our summer plans;
I don’t remember what, but I remember that I felt comforted and relaxed. Their gift of time and listening was a
precious one.
A doctor came in – a stranger I’d never met before nor
since. I can’t tell you his name. He announced that John had had a heart
attack; they had removed the blood clot and put in a stent to support the weakened
artery, and John was resting. Then he
left. I didn’t know what to feel or
think. I couldn’t ask questions -- there
was no one to answer them, or walk me through this new territory. Mike and Leslie looked at me, as stunned and
confused as I was. How did so much
happen in so little time? It didn’t feel
real.
Over the next forty-eight hours, all I really felt was
tired. Sleep was spotty and not very restful. I remember waking up after my second night on
the fold out cot in John’s hospital room, my only thought being that I would
give anything in the world just to be able to fall back to sleep.
So when did I finally feel something? When did I acknowledge the fear and the panic
and the desperation? Because they were
all there, these drama-queens of emotion.
They sat in the wings and waited until they could have their own
moments in the spotlight. What was odd
was their choice of time and place to debut.
For example: two days
after John was admitted, we were hoping we’d get to go home soon, and I
remembered that I had left my insurance card in the emergency room when we
first arrived. I took a walk across the
hospital to retrieve the card, which they had in a little box by the front desk
– so simple. As I turned to leave, I stopped
and turned around and walked back to the desk to thank the young man who had
helped me. As the words came out of my
mouth, I felt emotion rising in me like molten lava. I smiled and turned and hurried away from the
desk and down the hall as far as I could before Vesuvius erupted.
It was a beautiful, sunny day outside and I stood in the
glass-walled corridor looking out on the courtyard garden, grateful there were
no people there to witness my meltdown, and grateful for a sturdy window frame
to lean against during it. A few minutes
later, I had regained enough composure to walk back to John’s room in the
ICVU. We went home that afternoon.
My next emotional moment is really only significant because of its similarity to the first. I baked some cookies to take to the crew at the campus Emergency Service Dispatch. It’s kind of silly, I know, ridiculous really to thank the people who saved my husband from a heart attack with sugar-and-fat-laden-treats, but flowers seemed weird, and I couldn’t really afford to send each of them to Cabo San Lucas to show my appreciation. Cookies seemed a safe middle ground. I especially wanted to thank Eric the EMT, who I had learned (doing a little online research) was the chief officer of the unit. The building is less than two blocks from my office, so I took the foil-wrapped plate and walked over on my lunch hour the next Monday. Eric wasn’t there; I was disappointed, but told the EMTs in the office who I was, thanked them for their wonderful service, and left the cookies. The crew didn’t seem to be cholesterolly offended by my offering, and I headed out the door to walk back to my office.
My next emotional moment is really only significant because of its similarity to the first. I baked some cookies to take to the crew at the campus Emergency Service Dispatch. It’s kind of silly, I know, ridiculous really to thank the people who saved my husband from a heart attack with sugar-and-fat-laden-treats, but flowers seemed weird, and I couldn’t really afford to send each of them to Cabo San Lucas to show my appreciation. Cookies seemed a safe middle ground. I especially wanted to thank Eric the EMT, who I had learned (doing a little online research) was the chief officer of the unit. The building is less than two blocks from my office, so I took the foil-wrapped plate and walked over on my lunch hour the next Monday. Eric wasn’t there; I was disappointed, but told the EMTs in the office who I was, thanked them for their wonderful service, and left the cookies. The crew didn’t seem to be cholesterolly offended by my offering, and I headed out the door to walk back to my office.
That’s when wave two hit me.
It might be important here to let you know that I’m not afraid to
cry. I believe in the value of tears and
all their chemical and hormone releasing super powers. I’m not embarrassed about it, even though I
look disgusting after (and during) a good sob-fest. I just prefer to do it in front of close
friends and family or when I’m by myself.
Walking across campus on a bright and sunny day with tears gushing down
my face does not feel inconspicuous to me.
At least this time I was steady enough on my feet that I didn’t need to
stop. Once back at my desk, I could hide
behind the computer screen until normalcy returned.
What I think is so odd is that in both cases, my tears (emotional response and release) were triggered by the act of expressing my
gratitude to others. Why is this? Was it the act of humbling myself to offer
thanks to someone else that made me feel so vulnerable? Was it the recognition that my world and security
and balance of life had been placed in the hands of total strangers, who had
acted with kindness and professionalism, and in that way had made my life easier
at a very trying time?
I don’t know the answer, but I keep fiddling around with the
question because I suspect there are clues in there to bigger things than what
the triggers are for my tears. What is
this mystery of emotion that connects us all as human beings on this planet? Why do we need each other so much? How is it that we can comfort one another so
completely with the simplest of acts?
How can kindness, that meekest of all human gifts, be so majestic and
potent and ripe with impact? And why
would we ever think to mock such meekness?
Because we do. We call meekness weakness. Humbling ourselves is
something we only do when we are compelled to do it. And we aren’t grateful nearly enough. We take so much credit for ourselves, and
offer so little credit to others. Or
maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it was just
me. Me before this latest change of hearts.
Your descriptions are always perfect.
ReplyDeleteWe are so glad John is recuperating well.
This is perfect. It makes me feel with you. I'll meet you in cyberspace on this one. I need to mull and chew and consider.
ReplyDeleteLovely words that bring memories on their heels.