Storytime with Strangers

The weekend has been bursting at the seams with activity which is a stark contrast to all of 2020, in which we felt fully convinced at all junctures there was risk in taking a breath outside our home. We spent most of our days and nights isolated as a family, which has made the return to community even more novel and has made it clear how much we need one another. I could not isolate myself in a cabin in the woods and find any version of contentment; I would go rabid with loneliness.

There is a richness in knowing others and in being known. Because we recently engaged in our school community more than we did last year during virtual learning, I’ve had the opportunity to hear so many new stories and backgrounds. My favorite thing about parents is that they come to the table as so-and-so’s parent, but in actuality lived an entire existence prior to becoming a parent.

I’ve met immigrants from other countries, a woman hired on as a journalist by a chance meeting on a train, a love-match made while on vacation in Spain, and other folks whose eyes alight at the mention of Patrick Rothfuss or Malcolm Gladwell; closeted readers are easily identifiable by the spark in their eyes at the mention of a book that altered their day-to-day existence which is only understandable if you, too, have struck off on the same specific adventure with that author and understand the cost of being unable to put it down despite the pitch darkness and encroaching dawn. I have met ex-professional athletes, spiritual wanderers, and deep, thoughtful people who have, through our conversations, asked me to rethink my own perception.

This is one of the things I value most about the story of others: the ability to question your own grasp on reality because voices which counter your own narrative so clearly illuminate your own echo chamber. The story of others is the opportunity to travel to worlds I will never have the time or resources to see; I have visited Saudi Arabia, the coast of Spain, and Western Africa through the experience of friends. I have felt the deep grief of a parent with a sick child and their steadfast hope in science and the miracles of immunotherapy. I have experienced marriage to a less thoughtful partner and the rejuvenation of the self after the demolition of an ill-conceived partnership. I have journeyed through the death of a parent and the vacuum which remains in the absence of the one person you can call mother. I have felt deeply the trials and tribulations of infertility and the silence of the home of friends who have given up hope that they will ever have the families they always assumed they may.

There are so many narratives I won’t get to experience, but there is so much more I can see and know through literature and deep connections with the interesting humans around me. Of all the blessings of the waning global pandemic, one I hold in highest regard is that which allows a group of near-strangers the opportunity to gather together and share the triumphs and tribulations of their short experience on this planet. What a wonder it is to be a human amongst others who have experienced such a full array of loss and living, triumph and defeat. What a miracle it is to live a thousand lives because those around me have made such courageous decisions and have allowed me the privilege of knowing those small pieces of themselves.

I have missed your stories. I have missed your wounded pride and glorious elation. I have missed our shared mourning, elation, and commiseration over warm cups of coffee. I am so very, very glad to share this space, this breath, and this moment with you.

Finis

I am running from my death and yours, panic-stricken, eyes ahead. My approach to this is half denial and half desperate spiritual exploration in the search of some sort of balm to make it all less frightening. Some theory, some understanding, that will make the inevitable conclusion of life less traumatizing.

I am running from my children growing older and the resulting atmospheric emptiness. On this one, though, I am also running toward that freedom; additional time to write, to travel, to linger in Tim’s company without interruption. But mostly, I am dreading the silence. I am not good at being alone. My default setting seems tilted toward chaos, noise, light, chatter, and the warmth of another’s body.

I am running from the narrowing of my consciousness, from the kind of close-minded decisiveness I sometimes see in others as they age. I still want to embrace the not knowing with an open heart and the curious eyes of a child. I want to travel to foreign countries and look around and be humbled by all the things I do not know. I hope, on most matters, I continue to feel heavily uncertain, burdened by the fact that I will always know less than I desire.

I am running from the closing in of comfort, consistency, and routine. And this one is the trickiest of all because routine with children is my life-blood. Their nap times and bedtimes are small pieces of freedom and so I am a zealot about the schedule of our lives. But when this tricky period is over, I hope that I travel and adventure unimpeded by the risk it poses to routine. 

I am running from physical discomfort and the inevitable changes of aging. I lay in bed this morning, feeling the warmth of the blankets and the soft curvature of the mattress and wondered at the peace in my body. Nothing hurts. The warmth of bed in cold darkness is a delight. The first taste of coffee as the drug jolts my system into overdrive is raw pleasure. Moving from room to room with ease and without consideration for aching joints or injuries is a temporary gift. I am running from the decline of my body, this miraculous tool which has taken me up the sides of mountains and halfway around the world without even the whisper of a complaint.

I am running from my death and yours and the grief I know will undermine the very foundation upon which I am rooted. Everyone I know and everything I know is going to die, and that is a fact which fills me with urgent vitality and desperate sorrow in the same exhale. I do not wish to be here without you and I do not wish to leave before you. I wish to exist, forever, alongside you. And it is this wish, this very impossibility, from which I most desperately flee. 

What a sweet gift to own: departure hurts like it does because I have loved so deeply, eaten so fully, laughed so heartily, and connected irrevocably to the beauty of this place. Oh that it could go on forever with you beside me. It is a marvel to be alive at all and ecstasy to share it with someone so dear. What an inconceivable gift that of the billions who live here, you and I should share the same breath, a pint in a darkened bar in a foreign land, and embrace, together, the uncertainty of the precious and numbered minutes which lie ahead.

Fox and Tree

Fox, who had been friends with Tree for a long time, paused at Tree’s trunk while returning from a successful evening hunt. It was morning and the sun cast beams of light, highlighting the brave, early buds erupting from the newly thawed soil. Tree did not turn to greet her as she passed, which had been their custom since she was just a playful kit.

“Tree,” said Fox, “Are you okay? The winter thaw has come and the flowers are pushing through the ground. It is Spring!”

Tree sat for a long while and only looked at Fox.

Fox looked closer at Tree and noticed his branches were thin and bare, some of them having broken over the course of the winter.

“Tree,” said Fox urgently, “where are your buds? Your bark is peeling. You do not look like yourself, not even a little. Are you sick?”

Tree looked at Fox and responded slowly and rhythmically, “I am very tired, Fox.”

“But Tree! It is Spring! Your favorite season! Shall I ask the young squirrels to pay you a visit? Surely that would bring you some cheer!”

Tree smiled as sunlight highlighted his trunk, “I am so glad it is Spring. But I am very weary, Fox. I am glad you are here so we can have this morning together.”

“But we will have every morning together!,” said Fox defiantly.

Tree smiled sadly at Fox. 

“Tree,” said Fox with alarm in his voice, “I will see you tomorrow when I return from my hunt.”

Tree did not respond, but pulled Fox into an embrace with his lowest branches.

“Oh Fox,” said Tree, “I will miss you very much.”

Tears streamed down Fox’s cheeks and clung to his whiskers before falling to the ground. “But Tree!” shouted Fox,” You will miss the wind blowing through your branches and greeting the new saplings. You will miss the fall celebration and the gathering for winter solstice! You will miss the twinkling of the stars and the songs of the pines!”

“I know, Fox. But I am very, very tired,” responded Tree.

“You will miss the squirrel babies as they steal seeds from the children. You will miss the kiss of sunshine on your branches! You will miss the morning dew and the first snow and the look in the air just before dusk. You will miss it all!”

“I know, Fox. But I am very, very tired.”

“But Tree,” said Fox, eyes downcast and tears falling rapidly, “I will miss you.”

Tree pulled Fox even closer, holding him with all the strength the old Oak could muster. 

“I will miss you, Fox. I will miss you most of all. But I will be there when the first snow falls and in the meadow as the sun drops behind the mountains. I’ll be the wind that carries you swiftly through the night. You will feel me in the silent hours before dawn, when the world is still and darkness is king. And when you pass by this hill where we have shared so much, you will hear the echo of our laughter and remember all the ways we were together. I will miss you very, very much, Fox.”

Silence fell in the woods as Fox curled up in a tight ball in the hollow between his friend's giant roots.

“I will miss you very much too, Tree,” whispered Fox, tears falling gently from his eyes until his lids grew so heavy he could no longer keep them open. Tree watched Fox and his meadow and the clouds floating gracefully above for a few minutes, the rhythmic in and out of his friend's slumber a comforting hymn, until he peacefully and quietly closed his own.

Covid-19

 

There is a tube near my patient’s mouth that releases moisture from his inhalation and exhalation that drips and tickles the bare skin of my arm as I scan the patient in front of me. My PPE is supposed to shield my skin, eyes, and mouth from the droplets of Covid-19, but the gowns are not long enough for my arms and as I evaluate his vessels for the blood clots so consistently found in patients with the disease, the yellow gown hikes further and further up, exposing the skin of my forearm to the excretions of his breath. As I work, I think of the drip, drip, drip of a leaking faucet and I envision the appearance of the droplets as they slide moistly downward. He is thirty and unvaccinated with no pre-existing conditions; I overheard the nurse talking to his family who is from Wyoming about trying to get him off the ventilator and ECMO machine as soon as possible to preserve brain and respiratory function if he recovers.

The rooms of those who face the toughest battle with Covid are filled with dozens of IV lines which enter the body from access points in the arms, chest, and neck and there are so many devices plugged in that there is barely room to navigate my machine. Unlike x-ray which can be performed quickly and at a distance, ultrasound is intimate. It is the nature of the work that our bodies touch our patient’s, that we lean over them in a hug-like maneuver to evaluate left-sided organs like the spleen, and that our exams are often 30 minutes or longer as we methodically search for abnormalities.

I liked the intimacy of my work before Covid, but now our forced proximity is that which threatens my own health and that of my pregnant patients, my transplant patients, and my own young children who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated. I have become accustomed, over the years, to patients telling me phenomenal tales in the darkened hum of the exam room; I have heard stories from an activist of the civil rights movement in the sixties, salacious details of a love affair which spanned the distance of oceans, and have wept with a patient who revealed the depth of suffering they still experience at the loss of their wife of fifty years. These are the secret whisperings of my work before Covid-19 and the beauty of the darkened trade I became enraptured with nearly a decade ago. 

But in the years of Covid, my patients are mostly silent and intubated and the rhythm of my work is that of the whirring of the ventilator as oxygen is forced into their scarred and failing lungs and the thumping of the ECMO machine as it pumps deep red blood from a line in their body to the machine for oxygenation in lieu of the ceaseless choreography performed by a healthy person’s heart and lungs. The body of my patient shakes in rhythm with the machines keeping him alive, it is a mechanical and unnatural rhythm as his body absorbs the forced breath and forced blood and forced life as his weakened body clings somewhere between here and whatever comes after.

In the wake of the vaccine, the work has become an ethical mental juggernaut. The bulk of my patients are now those who willingly disavowed the vaccine in favor of a cow dewormer. They are placed in the care of physician and nurse teams who are exhausted by the ceaselessness of all this death. I go from the room of the immunocompromised patient with a liver transplant who received two doses of the vaccine early on and had just received his third dose when developing symptoms who did everything he could to avoid infection to the room of someone who ignored vaccine science and the opinions of epidemiologists, physicians, and researchers.

I look at the distressed face of my transplant patient and I feel deep sorrow, compassion, and empathy that he is here. He should not be. I move next door, to the room of the young man who chose a story of personal freedom above the one that prioritizes community, collaboration, and the ways we belong to one another. Unlike waves prior to the vaccine, our anti-vaccinated patients are here of their own volition. I feel the drip, drip, drip of his vent tube on my bare skin and I feel rage and a sense of hollow detachment as I interrogate the internal jugular, the subclavian, and the brachial vessels as I have for hundreds of patients before him. I wonder, as I search for the signs of clot, if in his state of unconsciousness he can feel my weariness and bewilderment. Toward the end of my exam, the moisture accumulates until the sleeve of my protective gown is wet enough that it sticks to my skin as I balance on one foot over his ravaged body. I perform the best exam possible despite the insidious supposition that, if our roles were reversed, he may not do the same.