Story, Meaning, Knowledge
Monday, May 3, 2010 at 2:32PM | by Otter ;)
My sister and brother and I are all teachers. Funny how that happens.
The Bear, my brother, had to head back to Illinois for the end of the term. I think it nearly killed him to leave mom now. But as the bad news was coming in, we were together, all of us in this sort of envelope of the grace that's given to grieving people.
The doctors are flocks of birds that travel their rounds in white coats and green scrubs or bow-ties. Some cultivate personalities very carefully. One surgeon seems like an old Trapper John, jollying along the patients and insisting "You'll get to know me... I'll get to know you." Another is an eager young oncologist resident who wants me to call him by his first name. An internist is carefully professional but with a warm bedside manner. Another is refreshingly lacking in ego and doesn't give a damn what we think of him, but who is ruthless in caring for the dying.
All these personalities are carefully staged, I think, and they slip in and out of our life here.
But for us the real life isn't in the constant parade of life-giving science.
It's in memory.
It's in story.
This morning as I was driving to the hospital, sipping coffee from a travel mug, I was thinking about the truth that a disciplined objectivity can never really give much meaning. It can save a life. It can't make that life worth saving.
The objective fact is that the human race has a 100% mortality rate. It is that the sun will burn out eventually and the eager procreation and civilization of our lives will reach some distant quietus. We can "know" a lot of things. These are the things we "know."
The story though, the narrative, the collection of details arranged so that we have a beginning, an end, a middle; that emphasize the conflicts we face and overcome; the eventual yielding to the inevitable kiss of unbeing; these things make us who we are. They wrap us in meaning, and in love. They heal us deep down. They touch us at the core and change us.
I was watching my brother soon after the diagnosis came down. He crept into the bed next to mom, and they just lay together, coping. Not speaking. Resting in a deep nest of story and history and memory and meaning.
This is the nest that will soon be taken and carefully laid to one side.
Mom's had a bad day. Dehydration seems to be the culprit and right now they're sending yet another needle into her veins to accomodate the rush of fluids. The nurse burst in with a cheerful "Hi!" and exploded the silence in which we were nesting.
She now sends in the needle that will save mom's life for a little while longer.
She will disrupt the placid surface of the life we share.
But she really cannot know how deep it goes.
Reader Comments (3)
I volunteer at a hospital. Much of the time, I sit behind the desk, available to family members who wait to hear news of their loved ones in surgery. But a couple of times, I joined a music therapist who went from room to room to see if anyone could benefit from his tunes.
One of the rooms we entered felt particularly holy. A middle aged daughter was snuggled up in the bed beside her mother, and there were tears streaming down her face. Gently, my friend asked if they would like for him to play a song for them. We had the honor of gently singing over them. And we left them in the same holy hush.
I wasn't able to crawl into the bed with either of my parents in their final days because of the many medical obstacles. But, I desperately longed to in both cases. It hurt that I couldn't. And I know both of them would have "gotten it". I used to crawl in bed with them in the mornings when I was far too old to. And we'd just lay there and talk and laugh. Dad would jokingly say "Aren't you a little old for this?"
After the deaths of both of my parents, the first thing I did when I went back to the house, my childhood home, was to crawl into their bed. Knowing that soon their scent would be gone. Wanting to somehow capture something of their essence before it faded away. I held their pillows to my face.
The other day, I was about to box up an old house coat of my mom's and send it to a relative who makes fabric purses. I thought it would be special for myself and my 5 sisters to have purses out of that fabric. When I held it up to examine it, an unexpected grief overwhelmed me. Thankfully, I was alone in the house, and I could cry and call out to her to my heart's content.
I didn't send the house coat. I want to wear it instead. And every time, I'll picture her, first thing in the morning. She'd be in the kitchen, making coffee, then sitting at the little table where her Bible and journal were permanent fixtures. She had 7 children, so her routine was to focus on one of us and our clan each day of the week. Our names and our needs were on index cards inside her Bible.
I have copies of the cards, and I have taken up that mantle.
Today is Tuesday. On Tuesdays, my prayers are focused on my sister Anita.
Shirley, thank you for all this. Beautiful writing. Images like these make a difference about now.