bluetrust

My stepmother found my father slumped over and unconscious this morning when she came down for breakfast. She called for an ambulance right away and they rushed him back to the very same intensive care ward he left just last Thursday. My family says that he had a "serious" stroke and nobody will know how bad it was until he regains consciousness. I had my doubts, fearing that he'd just have a series of strokes and die without waking, but he did wake up about an hour ago. He's on a ventilator and can't talk, but the nurses had him try to lift his arms and legs, and he followed the instructions pretty well in spite of the drugs.

Immediately, it's apparent that he's having trouble with the left side of his body. It may be temporary, or it may be permanent, but at least his intelligence appears to have been spared.

Thank fucking God that it's just motor skills.

His mom died last week, and I'm sure that was hard for him. She had a stroke many years ago and it wiped out the part of her brain that stored and accessed memories. Basically, nothing since 1985 or so has existed for her. She didn't remember me, mistaked my dad for her husband, and so on.

I'm relating this little family snippet about his mom because often my dad would take me to lunch after visiting her in the nursing home, and he'd inevitably say something wistful like, "Don't ever let me get like that. I'd rather die than be a vegetable." Then a couple minutes later, he'd amend that with a slightly better, "It's almost a blessing actually. She's happy for the first time in her life. There's nothing left for her to worry about."

We'll know tomorrow what the extent of the damage to his brain was.

When the first emergency happened with my dad just a couple weeks ago, I felt like I had the shit kicked out of me. It was so unexpected, so brutal, to have your dad suddenly thrust into an emergency room very far away, and hear about surgeons frantically trying to get his heart working again. It was terrible. This time around, it's different. I've felt an eerie calm since it happened.

Over the past couple of hours I've realized that as much as I need life to be fair, it won't ever be. It's not fair for the worm whom the bird eats. It's not fair for the father who's looking forward to a second chance at life only to have a stroke and be disabled. It's not fair for the son, upon hearing this to drive out to the water to watch the sunset (waiting for news on the cell phone) and then realize that his car won't start. Life is not fucking fair, and I think it was immature as hell of me to expect it to be so.

The only strategy that makes sense from here on out is to ride the waves of disappointment and disaster until they settle down, and be prepared to ride the next waves when they inevitably come as well. All that there is to hope for in the end is to have taken the worst of it with grace and poise, because there is no cushioning of sharp edges in life, no gentle caretaker that steers us away from bad things, life is every bit the cold jungle that we fear it to be.

And that's okay, because the gentleness that does exist comes from other people. Love and friendship are very real and the only thing that redeems this crazy place.