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Julie

Written by Sean on Monday, July 26, 2004

One of those months when you wonder if it’s truly possible that all that’s happened has truly happened. Perhaps it’s only a dream - an incredible, bizarre dream that could only be the invention of the most macabre of minds.

What a month

The visit looms - larger than life. Catastrophe seems inevitable. Why now? Why when my resources are so depleted? My mind spins - remembering the scenes of the past week or so…… infertility? No children? A womb that will never be filled? I attempt to calm myself - after all, I myself have questioned whether I should plan to have children, but to no avail. As we all know there are vast universes separating the words shouldn’t and can’t. Tears come, but I stop them in time - after all, it is not far to the black hole of despair - a narrow escape.

The ride continues - I buckle in, for I’ve been here before. So tired, so tired - when will it end? And which betrays me? My body or my mind? Or both? She comes - this woman that I love and hate, often in equal measure. How to kill time without one of us being destroyed? And who shall it be? Who will die and who will live?

A surprise……….

It’s pleasant! Of all the possibilities I prepared for, I somehow overlooked this one. Pleasant!! How can it be pleasant? Am I simply crazy? Creating the fear? I lecture myself ……stop analyzing! Just be grateful and ride it out. Ride it out…… It gets stranger. The call comes…….he’s dying. This man who shared in giving me life - the man I’ve just recently begun to know is dying. I make plans quickly - I can’t let him die alone. I simply can’t. What? She’s coming? I concede - no energy to resist. I make the necessary phone calls and throw the trappings of life into a suitcase. Ride it out girl, ride it out……. Do what you have to do, and ride it out. What a surreal night - no cars available, a ride to the hospital with strangers, and a trip up to progressive care pushing luggage in a spare wheelchair from the emergency room. The duty nurse is on the phone - I find my father’s room number on the wall, and look to see how he is doing. An empty bed. He’s gone - I’ve come too late and he’s gone. She gets off the phone - I’m Van’s daughter, I say, bracing for the news. We’ve moved him to intensive care she says. A sigh of relief - I’m not too late - not to late to say good-bye.

I see him - can this be my father? It’s even worse than seeing him in the nursing home for the first time. This skeleton of a man lying on the bed gasping for air, yes, it is - I gently kiss my father on the forehead and tell him how glad I am to see him. The vigil begins. I sit by my bed stroking my father’s hand. He gasps, the body that he’s abused for so many years along the path of a very difficult life finally betraying him. I have so much respect for this man - for the strength that he’s shown in taking responsibility and aging well. I talk with the nurses - doesn’t look good. Yet, through the night as we sit with him, my father rallies. The sun rises, and I realize I’ve fallen asleep on the rail of my dad’s bed. The monitors are quiet, and the levels are all good. So tired……exhausted, really. We go check into the motel and get some sleep. A few hours later we’re back - my mom leaves the room, and my dad and I are alone. I’m concerned - feel awkward. I offer my apologies, afraid that my father will wonder why I brought her there. A smile crosses his face, and he makes a simple statement - so much water under the bridge. There is wisdom here, wisdom and healing. So tangible that I can feel it.

Another day passes, and the call comes while my mom and I are away getting lunch. Call your roommate right away the nurse says, with a tone of urgency that frightens me. Did she say what she wanted I ask? Just call her she says. The phone is busy. I call again and again, still busy. I go out to interrogate the nurse - please tell me everything she said. Reluctantly she admits knowing more - you’ve been robbed she tells me. I urge the operator to break through the line, visions of an empty house and dead or missing pets flooding my mind. I listen, numb, as she tells me what’s been taken, and feel relief at the fact that the pets are OK. Ride it out girl, ride it out. Breathe in, breathe out….that’s it, that’s the rhythm. I’ll be home tomorrow I hear myself say.

Well, you get the idea of my month - I could go on, but I won’t. There’s the sickness, the lovely car accident, the brilliant financial maneuvering of the government agency that is the bread and butter of the agency that pays my bills - leaving all of our jobs in jeopardy. All I can do after a certain point is laugh - a bit hysterically, but laughter nonetheless. Ride it out girl, ride it out. Do whatever you have to do not to drown with it. After all, life is something to be survived, right?

Flash ahead a week or so

I sit in the theater riveted to the screen. Emotion fills my body sweeping me away as I watch the interplay. Beauty, freedom, love, excitement - all there to be observed…… to be enjoyed vicariously. For them I feel. I feel joy and wonder at what it must be to love and be loved. I feel incredible sorrow at the loss of that love, and incredible joy at a life that is lived well, and to the full. So foreign these feelings…….. then another scene comes, and I’m overwhelmed. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and it’s a story on a screen. This beautiful woman, wrinkled by the experiences of over a hundred years walks across a deck and leans over the water in complete freedom - the kind of freedom that seems to come attached to a life lived without room for regret. I weep. I can’t stop weeping at the beauty of it, and the absence of that kind of beauty in my own life.

To live - to feel, to experience, to lose, to love. Ride it out girl - the theme of a life to be survived, not to be lived. All of a sudden, I am overwhelmed with this amazing desire to know what that feels like. To be the heroine rather than the narrator - the object of the story rather than the impartial observer. I spend the evening thinking - and burning a candle in hopes that it’s light will somehow help. Desperation has an amazing way of breeding open resourcefulness.

I wake - and something is different. Almost intangible, but it’s definitely there. Seize it girl, seize it. Take full advantage of it - don’t let it slip away. Something is different. Could it be the seed of change? Cynicism threatens - yeah, you’ve gotten your hopes up before….. but I don’t let it steal this from me. I slip into meditation, the way I love to begin my day, but rarely do, and follow it with a healthy breakfast - food to be savored rather than wielded as a weapon. I think about my day, and then my week, and then the immediate future. Perhaps a walk, perhaps a ceramics class……… then I realize it. I want to write. Not fiction, not about these wonderful characters and their wide range of experiences - I want to write about my life.

For the moment, life is good and I am at peace. Seize it girl, seize it.