Looking to my chest I see surgical tape has fallen from where my chemo port was removed a few weeks ago. A tiny scar to memorialize a mighty battle.
My gaze falls to gardens outside the window. The ones I have begun to weed after an absence, and then a whisper...
...I am back.
My thoughts move fast as our minds tend to do. Slipping, backward and forward, back to now.
Ouch, not that thought...this one feels better. That memory stings, I will put it away for later. This one, I can bear it, almost or at least today.
Then a sticky memory...
...it's been two years.
Since I lay in a hospital bed.
Sweating and delirious, I wondered how my fever could ever go down with the hot May sun streaming in. And I wondered how hard things could happen on a beautiful day, like it should be impossible for trouble to coexist with blue skies. Maybe gray skies, but not blue. When people hurried by on the sidewalk below my window, doing routine things, oblivious to the trouble a few stories up.
My eyes closed, silent pleas on a loop like late at night when my babies were young.
Please stop, please stop, please stop...
...my roommate's cries had filled our room after her doctor said there was nothing more he knew to do. His words had sneaked under the flimsy curtain separating our beds.
And his voice had been certain. Sympathy but distance too, he wanted to end the conversation quickly, move on. Perhaps he had tucked his heart away from all the sadness of trying to fix broken bodies.
For he would soon be standing by another bed. The one after that and the next one, in between the happy ones, the good ones, another hard talk...
...I am sorry, there is nothing more we can do.
These things happen, they do.
My roommate had pleaded with him as I tossed in my bed. Please stop, please stop, please stop.
There we were on that sun-kissed day, while all those people bought a cup of coffee, chatted with a friend, planned their dinner menu.
My roommate introduced herself, between hiccups and sobs...
....hello, are you there? What is your name?
I am here, my name is Julie.
My name is Mary, and I am scared. The thing is, we used to have a plan, and now there is no plan.
I held my breath, for I had assured (okay, myself) that I have a plan, when people would ask about my health.
How are you, Julie? I'm okay, I have a plan.
And she had no plan. God help us.
My husband had stood beside my bed in his pressed suit. He had just come from a business meeting with projections and graphs, good plans too. Staring at the floor, a grimace and eyes closed, while Mary cried and cried I want to live.
He will never be the same, we will never be the same, I thought to myself.
That was Then.
I am jolted back to Now, looking down to my garden. It is a sunny day and nothing terrible is happening. Beauty brings sweetness today, for I am steady on my prosthetic leg, proud to be walking better, able to bend and weed. Yes I am improving, I say to myself.
Then comes this sure idea...
...hard stuff finds us, it does.
Sometimes we have a big hand in it, bringing trouble on ourselves, even if we don't admit it. Sometimes we are innocent bystanders caught up in hard times created by others.
And other times it feels like the dumbest, most pointless, of luck.
We wave a white flag, begging God to carry us. We look to angels, we look to others. We look to our own hearts, praying that we are strong enough to bear our story.
Our minds might threaten to leave us then, but in the morning we find they've stayed through the night.
When I was sick I lay on a couch...
...how did I fall into this hole?
A real live Alice in Wonderland, I watched fairy tales about heroines who fought mighty dragons during the day. At night I crawled to the bathroom because my leg with the tumor hurt too much.
I pulled myself onto the toilet...
...my name is Job.
Then one day my doctor said...
...Julie, you must lose your leg. If you don't, you will never be cured.
My husband had grabbed my hand.
How are you, Julie?
(Broken, stunned, sick and sad but with faith).
Yet only these words came out...
...well that's a lot to take in. Right?
And my question hangs around, still now. I whisper it some mornings, my mind groggy and not quite awake...seeking a sweet conclusion to memories that prick and goad, still.
Still.
But I am one of the lucky ones now, not in a hospital bed. Forgetting that trouble exists, at least for long stretches. Remembering that Carpe Diem should not be embroidery hanging on our walls. And new people are fighting battles, slaying their dragons, perhaps someone who sauntered below on that day when Mary cried and my heart broke, when all seemed lost and wrong in the world. Now it is they who are crying to the heavens, where if Mary has left this earth, I know she is an angel. And while I try to reconcile how life holds joy and suffering, suffering and joy and round again, I look to see the flowers that survived, right along with me.
Never giving up, they had whispered...
...she will be back.
So if you are going through something that feels too hard and too wrong and too much and too long...
...please, please try your mighty best to trust that healing can happen.
That time will carry us to new places. For on my perfect day, at my perfect time, no sooner and no later, I marched outside with my best thistle-pulling oven mitt...
...to say with a smile, I am back.
