Vulnerable…alone

The symptoms and internal alternations produced by a “brain bleed” – a ‘small stroke’ I called it, are uncommonly diverse and unexpected. First off, the patient is disabused of the ‘small stroke’ denial. This is a major assault on the brain, potentially life threatening. A re-occurrence almost totally so. Or at least, that’s “the Word” from the realm medical. Delivered in sonorous tones, with serious face, it can produce the required sense of “whoa…let’s slow down here!”

As other signs emerge – headache, anxiety among groups larger than 3 or 4, weariness over virtually nothing, and sleep time haunted by unfathomable dreams and sudden wakefulness and creeping exhaustion all accumulate to produce one effect: I am vulnerable. 

Throughout my life I have dealt with woes large and small with the denials and remedies of normal humans – “it’s getting better”…”a little rest will straighten it out”…”it’ll pass in a few days…” Always a sense of agency, or control and of the ability to overcome, override, return to normal in time…. Yes, in time, which is seen as your healing friend. It still may be my healing friend, but it also stands quite small ahead of me, perhaps not much of it left; perhaps my reservoir of time is mostly used up, A not unreasonable thought at 78, almost 79 years. Feeling vulnerable, being vulnerable, is a relatively new and fearful state for me. No matter many protestations of love arrive; no mater how much concern and good wishes come forth, the internal awareness is; “I am alone in this. It is my brain this breached, my emotions that run amok, my anxieties that may threaten my own very life.” Thanks or the hugs and the blessings, they are appreciated and helpful in great measure, but they do not crack the shell of me, here, facing… what?

Tonight the awake time is not filled with pain at least, or even with anger or terror. Tonight it is just; “Here I am…me, with only myself and I, the same face and heart and brain. All others stand apart. Whatever wisdom or patience or calmness can hold this vulnerability at bay, it must ultimately come through me alone, if not only from me.”

So I begin to reflect on my faith – not the beliefs I hold and will argue about or proclaim – but the trust (if any) that is bedrock in my person. What do I trust? Who do I trust? Is there a trustworthy force, person, or event upon which I can ground my alone-ness so as to recover with some semblance of dignity? For unaccustomed illness strips dignity away, layer by layer. I am one of the fortunate ones. I have my faculties, I have control of most of my functions, …but the higher ones betray me: anxious among my own kind, helpless to fear and old terrors when unconscious, forgetful of the day, the time, just a little disoriented about …”it’s what day?”

Vulnerable…alone in the night. Loved, but with no immediate lovers and caregivers to clasp your hand. The plight, I imagine, of every sufferer at some or many points. Glad only for one absence: pain. Now, if only sleep will return, I can sink again into that blessed unconsciousness of sleep, where one can as much a king as a tormented soul, depending on “genes, breakfast, and digestion” as Karl Ridd used to say. Enough tonight…