So Many Things

It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself at a hospital.

Everywhere you turn there is a story, exponentially more tragic than your own. As I walked to the Seventh Floor Nurse Station yesterday to ask for more water for my mother, I passed a room with a nurse sitting in the doorway, inside where two county sheriffs with bullet proof vests, and I saw a foot chained to the end of a bed. And as I waited for the nurse to arrive, an elderly woman passed with scrapes on her face and a neck brace and bandages around her ribs. And a blank look in her eyes. And her daughter behind, crying.

I caught her eyes. Both of us, daughters.

And yet, when the stroke team and neurology team and all the other teams stop by to talk to me and my husband, all I feel is that this is the epicenter of the universe. Right here in this windowless no-time corridor with beige tiles and hospital staff wearing scrubs with all the colors of the rainbow, distracting me with their brightness, how dare they wear happy colors I think…

And yet it’s hard to feel sorry for myself when so much is good. But good is not what was. When the doctors say new baseline I ask what that means and they say things like new new  and we won’t know for a while and I say where did she go and they say we are trying to figure it out.

And as I am wiping away tears, five people come up with flowers and t-shirts about prayer and God’s goodness and one has a bag with my mom’s favorite face cream and a bag of nuts because they know she is a vegan and they ask if they can do anything for me and my husband and I say no. And they say, God is good and tell me about the prayer chain and I am so grateful for all the love surrounding this beautiful human I call my mom. This beautiful human I don’t recognize.

How are you? A friend texts me this morning. And I write, oh so many things.

I’m reading Nikita Gill’s “Your Soul is a River”, and the other day, I read these lines: You carry both lightning and thunder in that space between your bones and soul. Become the storm you are hiding from; a hurricane does not run from the rain.

We are so many things. Just like the many stories of all the people on the 7th floor at UCSD Hospital. Sad and grateful and angry and confused and all of that in one breath. So let it be, I say to myself. All of it, even the part that feels really really sorry for herself.