Here & Now

This blank page has been sitting on my laptop for hours, the cursor blinking like a second hand. I’m not sure where to start.

There are things that happen in your life that make a line. There’s before it happened, and then after it happened. Births, deaths, marriage, divorce, vasectomy… things like that. After, things are different. Things have changed. You remember before, but you live in after.

I’m in an after now. Now things are different. I’m different.

 
I wrote that back in January, after my sister was diagnosed with cancer. It’s even more true today. A few weeks ago everything changed, and now I live in after. Again.

My mom fell 8 feet and hit her head on a block of marble. Doctors later determined that she had suffered a stroke, which led to her fall. After several touch and go days in ICU, and major surgery to relieve swelling in her brain, she did eventually wake up. But her road to recovery will be long and hilly. She may never be able to care for herself again, and frankly no one can tell us what to expect.

While my mom was in hospital, my sister was admitted to the same for chemo. And while they were both in the hospital, a storm blew over a ginormous tree into my sister’s house, taking out her roof, her living room, and her front porch.

But wait, there’s more. The hits just keep coming.

My 19 year old daughter was helping my ex-husband work on my sister’s house, when she fell from the roof and broke her leg in 4 places. She was admitted to the same hospital as my mom and sister, and required 2 surgeries and 6 pins to set her leg.

Having 3 close relatives in the same hospital at once is like living in a nightmare land where fluorescent lights flicker and you never know the day or time and there are crazy horned midgets around every corner. I might have been hallucinating the midgets- I haven’t slept much in the past few weeks. There was a neurotic nurse who came in every time my eyes closed for more than 15 minutes, screaming “DON’T MIND ME!!!” while she turned on every light. There’s a special place in hell for her, and there are dirty hypodermics there.

Today I’m home with my daughter, finally. My mom is now in a rehab facility, working on learning to move her body again. My sister is staying here with me until her house is made whole again. And for the first time in … three weeks almost… I’ll be sleeping in my own house tonight.

I’ve longed to be home every moment I was running from room to room, floor to floor, nurse station to station, coffee machine to coke machine in the hospital. I dreamed of my bed, my Bunn coffee pot, my couch and my shower. I’ve ached for my desk and my vodka. I wanted my family together and safe.

But now that I’m here, I am totally overwhelmed.

Dealing with my completely immobile daughter is hard. She’s got the best attitude in all the land, but she’s utterly helpless and still drugged to the gills. The pain meds make her vomit, but the pain is unbearable. She’s so uncomfortable that she’s crying in her sleep.

Watching my sister’s hair fall out in clumps on my kitchen floor while she threw up in the sink had me totally undone. She begged me to just shave her head, to get rid of the patchy thinning stuff, and so we sat on my back porch tonight and cut her hair with the number one guard on the razor. She now looks like a pale little monk.

I offered to shave my hair in a show of solidarity, but she accused me of stealing her thunder, so I get to keep mine.

Max tells me I’m strong. But I don’t feel strong; I feel like curling up in the fetal position in the corner and sucking my thumb like a toddler. I feel like driving my car until it runs out of gas, and then walking until my feet give out, and then rolling under the closest bush and digging a hole to hide in. I feel like crying, but I’m scared I’ll never stop.

I miss that neurotic nurse, because at least she knew what she was doing. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t know how to soothe my sister’s nausea. How to keep my daughter from bumping her pins. How to reassure my 10 year old niece that everything is going to be okay. How to be the strong one.

Because each time I think we’ve come through, and things can’t get worse, and everything’s gonna be okay- something new comes along to push me on my ass again. And I sure don’t have the energy to push back.

I wanted to come home so badly, but now I’m scared to death being here.

So, this is after. Sorta. This is more during. I have no idea what after will look like. But I know that we’ll never be like we were before.

But right now, this moment that’s happening around me, that’s what is most important. Not the past, not the uncertain future- now. Right now, my niece is drawing on my daughter’s cast while she sleeps. It looks vaguely phallic, but it may be a tree. Here and now, my 17 year old is making ice cream and singing along with Jack Johnson. My sister is curled up in a chair with a book and a quilt, and she keeps absentmindedly rubbing her palm along the stubble on her head. Now, my dog is sleeping at my feet- and god I missed him. Right here, right now- that’s the part that matters most, and that’s what I need to remember.