And then, quite unintentionally, a month passes. Two months. I ask myself, “How will I ever catch up?” Folded into that question is a lot of flaw and wonderment quintessential to… me. Its dissection deserves its own spotlight.
Just not today.
There are benefits to time passing, like getting to sit in the seat of knowing how things turned out. Some fun facts since my last post: I found my W2s. My AK property taxes weren’t actually due yet; the statement I received was the projection, not the bill. The mail-order prescriptions issue was resolved by… a decision to not take them anymore anyway. The dog is feeling better (and is getting huge, by the way). And I don’t think I had food poisoning. What I did have was kidney stones. I still have one poised to descend, in fact, at a time that will remain unknown to me unless I opt to have it surgically removed. Charming.
I’ve had two humbling months, launched by a long overnight in writhing pain and “throwing up toenails,” as my second urgent care nurse aptly described it. Several unrelenting hours of bathroom yoga gave me time to reflect. And breathe. And visualize. And try just about every other thing I’ve ever learned to do in the throes of severe discomfort.
Sometimes, I just skittered along in observation: thank god this tile is so cool. I could just lay here like this until I fall asleep. There’s an impressive draft under this door. I really need to finish scraping the old caulk off the shower frame. Is this dog hair? It’s dog hair. I don’t care. That’s how much this sucks. But it’s not childbirth. Isn’t that what they compare kidney stone pain to? That has to be what this is. This is awful. It’s not childbirth, but it’s definitely my new number two on the pain scale. How are there cobwebs on the toilet bowl brush already? Remember to wash these bath mats. Oof. No. Really? Yep… I am definitely going to throw up aga–
Other times, I rode the drill of acute discomfort down, down, down. No resistance. Just right down into the heart of agony. I cycled through the words I’ve used to describe all the time leading up to your passing. About its context. About my gratitude for the level of closure I feel—which I do. But on that drafty, dog-haired, cool tile floor, the actual awfulness of your dying was overwhelming. Perplexing. It made me feel angry and sad and even more stricken.
If I had been alone that first night, I would probably have gone to the hospital much sooner. But because I was nearly certain I was not dying, and because my person kept waking up and checking on me, and because I knew he would rally in a heartbeat to do whatever needed to be done, I let it drag on. Because I hate causing unnecessary fuss. And because I knew I could run up the white flag at any moment of my choosing if I just couldn’t bear it anymore.
You didn’t have that comfort. That crushes me. Then confuses me again. Did he feel anything like this, I wondered? While I want to hope you didn’t, the reality is that what you felt was probably worse. And just as the mind does when it really tries to wrap itself around death, my ability to comprehend what is real just sort of… stops.
I will say a lot of pretty and contemplative things during my remaining days—about you, about us, about life and being human. But the truth is hard and awful. I know it. I don’t and won’t deny it. I acknowledge my choice to be present with the enduring influences of your humor and compassion over and above the dark, sticky things that hang among the limbs of our family tree. I acknowledge the ever-present sticky and dark. I acknowledge their presence with me in this room while I write. In my life, I have spent an inordinate amount of time naming, knowing, and disengaging my Self from that goop. I am as versed in my Self-ness as you were in futures, forwards, and derivatives.
Which brings me to this: I have persisted in nursing a belief that if you had just known what to do—how to be, what to choose, when to call it quits—you would have done it. You did knowable things to perfection. I have mulled, despite knowing that knowing isn’t what makes the difference. I know that fatty foods and prolonged sedentary states cause the diverticula in my colon to become inflamed. I know that more water and less animal protein helps keep my ureters happy. I know that routine can be life-saving for people with neuro-diversities. But guess what? I had a milkshake at lunch today, have taken just 2,083 steps as of this sentence, and I still can’t seem to land a solid bedtime/waketime schedule. And that’s the easy stuff.
At this writing, I am also on day 15,104 of my life on Earth. And even though I have committed these 365 days to reflecting, making the most, celebrating, and mindfully living whatever time I am so fortunate to have left… 63 of them have passed since I captured any of it here. That’s nearly 20% of my project days (using far more generous math than your derivatives calculations). I have some explanations about where the time was spent (kidney stones, work, a quick girls’ trip, parenting, puppy training, unpacking, etc.), but not so much about why. Why was shopping for a good teething toy for the dog more “moving” to action than, say, contacting the 504 plan manager in our new school district? Why, when I know the former lacks any consequence in comparison to the latter?
All reason and knowing aside, we act as we are moved to act. I believe we can become skillful at choosing the action, once moved. But in all my inward-journeying, I have yet to put my proverbial finger on the place before thought, where the movement is born. I’m familiar with the moment just after, the one where I recognize, “Something wants to happen/be done here.” I know you were, too, because you said so often (ad nauseum, really), “I don’t know what to do.”
I believed you.
I still believe you. Mostly. I believe that when people like you and me and the millions like us are hyper aware of how much there is to do or that it is possible to do, it is also dangerously easy to fall into a belief that all of these things must be done by me. Realizing something wants to be done but then not knowing what to do creates a self-imposed but still terrible flywheel of anxiety and near-panic. Especially when it seems the world around you (or worse: within you) expects that you are the one who can either do the thing or know what the thing to do is. So when you don’t, it feels like failure. Cue the anxiety. Commence a quiet panic.
And completely ignore that in all likelihood you are the only one who knows about the weighty list of doable yet undone things.
It’s terrible.
That’s it. The panic and anxiety are terrible.
I say I still mostly believe you because the troubling part isn’t the not knowing what to do. The troubling part is realizing you don’t know why you don’t do what you already know you should do or need to do. It’s disturbing knowing that it doesn’t matter what I know… and not knowing how to influence what ultimately moves me. How do I do that?
I’ve delayed posting this because (brace yourself) I also hate not knowing how to answer the question. And in absence of an answer, I would delay posting for the next 268 days.
Except having answers isn’t the point. I don’t know (yet) is just my current state. I don’t know why I cannot move to do the things I need to do or that I want to have done so they stop being so weighty. My not knowing isn’t for lack of seeking or exploring or trying to resolve the disconnect. In fact, it’s because I have sought, explored, and resolved that I am so perplexed. When I couldn’t be still but also couldn’t find a position that brought any relief, and when I was throwing up toenails long after there were none left to throw, I flopped down in an ER bed, said yes to a CT and Toradol, and welcomed a 3mm stone into the world 7 days later.
But for these invisible things… Here I am! What am I for? Hello?.. it’s less clear who to ask or where to go for comfort. Our tolerance for—our enjoyment of—this liminal space seems more to the point. The living and the dying are in the quiet before the answer, before we are moved to act or called into stillness.
At least, I hope it was quiet for you there. I will that you existed in a moment of rest and letting go, however fleeting, that there was levity. That your last thought wasn’t something like, “But I haven’t taken out the recycling yet! What will everyone think?”
I think, brother, losing you is a last call to disengage from the flywheel. To take a breath and rephrase. To instead declare into the quiet : Here I am! I am here for something. Hello.