The Home and The Heart, part V

Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Chapter 5

The Pain of Love

It was not that she wanted me to stop coming to see her, but she wanted me never to abandon her.  If God was with her, so was I.  But the hospital forbade us from being together.  As I, every day, walked through the hallway of the CVICU and approached her room, I stopped for a moment to steel myself at what might await me, and her, that day.  Would this be a day of darkness, or of light?  Would there be agonized moans, or would there be the sounds of a distant flute?

After weeks of delay, she finally was operated again, and given a pacemaker.  By now, she was slowly moving her right leg and foot.  Her feeding tube remained in place, but the therapists had tried to make her swallow spoonful of thick liquids.  She was trying hard to come back to light, as death and darkness had loosened their grip on her.  I would spend my days in learning, doing, all that I could to scatter the clouds still over her.

It had almost been a month that she had been admitted to the hospital, and she had now gradually started speaking simple words again.  I worked hard on her, but with loving gentleness.  Making her count from one to ten, asking her to recite the days of the week.  She managed sometimes, and we celebrated those little but momentous victories.

A nurse painted her nails, and I could not admire the nurse more for her gesture.  The speech therapist, a wispy woman from West Virginia, was kind and understanding, and we looked forward to her visits, as there was an added pleasure when she worked with my wife.

She sometimes brought little bits of jam and ice-cream to try and see if my wife could swallow.  After a month of not having had anything palatable, one day the therapist asked my wife to try a bit of orange sorbet.  I remember the joy on my wife’s face as she nodded her head from side to side, expressing her pleasure at the sugary ice mixture on her tongue.  The exclamation “Delicious!” was on her face, as she found herself unable to utter words of gratitude.

The speech therapist was determined to see her get better, and I remain eternally grateful to her.  My wife was to go through a real-time X-ray to determine if her swallowing was acceptable, or if food was entering her airway.  This speech therapist, Maggie, wanted to oversee this whole exercise, and we of course wanted it to complete successfully.

But it would be many days before that study could be scheduled.  And day after day, waiting in loneliness and disability was taking a heavy psychological toll on my wife.  And one day, as I was sitting by the bed-side, a hospital administrator came and told us that they had done the study on my wife, and unfortunately my wife was not able to swallow, and that soon they would be making a hole in her stomach and feeding her from there.  I was crestfallen.  This setback was crushing.  I explained this news to her, making it seem a very temporary inconvenience, and she nodded in fake understanding.  She did not deny that she had been taken for the X-ray without me.  She had no idea what I was saying.

An hour later, the same administrator returned to the room and apologized.  He said he had made a mistake and it was another patient who had failed, and my wife’s evaluation was still to happen.  I experienced a mixture of happiness and anger.  I was happy that there was a mistake, but I was angry that there was a mistake.  I was so sorry about the woman who had failed the study, but it was an unjust and sloppy insult to my wife who, days ago, in a moment of defiance and resolution, had proclaimed to her mother on speakerphone: “You shall see, I will overcome this.  I will come and see you when I am well again.” 

She was taken down for the swallow evaluation a few days later, and I watched the X-ray screens as she was fed a little water, or a little oatmeal.  She could not chew, and she could not drink plain water.  But she could swallow alright.  She did overcome that hill.  The feeding tube was removed, and bland, thick pastes of food were now to be brought to her three times a day.  She ate almost nothing of those pastes.  I started making some better tasting semi-liquid meals at home and brought them for her.  Those tastes reminded her of home, and she ate a little from those plastic cups.

As the time came closer for her to be discharged from the CVICU, to another section of the hospital, I thought of ways to kindle her memories.  I showed her old photos, and played old, familiar songs.

One of those songs was especially dear to us.  It starts with the words: “The pain of love is sweet, oh so exquisite.  And this beautiful pain nourishes these two hearts.”

I remember the evening when she started slowly humming these words as I played that song.  Did my love nourish her heart?  I have no doubt.

The sun was setting beyond the greyed window, but the light inside her was getting stronger.  Her flame, deep inside her being, had stopped flickering, and was a steady glow now.

She wanted me to take her home, but it was impossible.  She would ask me again and again, not understanding why she was still in this prison.  Was she not well?  What had happened?  Why could she not move her arm, or eat?  I could not explain to her, given her impoverished comprehension.  She still was very, very fragile, and was connected to wires and IV lines.  We made her sit in a chair some days, and she felt a deep unease and would want to lie down again.  Unable to verbalize her desire to go back to bed, she tried getting up from the chair herself, and fell down and stuck her head on the tiled floor.

The doctors came rushing.  They feared that her brain might start hemorrhaging again.  But the steady glow inside her did not flicker.  The CT scan did not show any new bleeding.  Her inner light was pale and still feeble, and cast many shadows, but it was steady.

The gods were now with her.  Her prayers had been answered.  The fragments of that old song, for at least some moments of her agonizing day, day after day, in that vast alienating building, were on her dry tongue and on her dry, parched lips.

(to be continued)