Birth, death and rebirth

On January 2, 2021, while talking with my brother and enjoying my coffee and breakfast, I felt a sensation up the left side of my body. My arm and then my leg started making spastic motions. There was no pain, but I had no control of the left side of my body. I tried to walk, but I could only crawl. Some motion in my left eye was evident and my speech was somewhat slurred. Immediately the word “stroke” came to my mind and it gripped me with terror.

I rang my doctor and she believed that I had had a stroke. The use of my arm and leg gradually returned as my speech became clearer. I was more hopeful, but she said: “Get off the phone and call 911. Go to the hospital by ambulance immediately.” She was serious and I followed her orders. Lots of things happened in the ER and I will spare you the details.

Now that I am home and feeling better, Louise Gluck’s poem, “Wild Iris,” comes to my memory. Like a plant: I live, I die and I am reborn. We go through this in life, but an emergency can rearrange those 3 stages in a new way. In the dark tunnel of the MRI I died to the “self.”. It showed there was damage, but not much and they said it would not be lasting. There would be recovery, but it would take time.

Another trip to the hospital 10 days later shook me to the core. It was due to a severe Plavix allergic reaction. I had the neck of a football player and subcutaneous blood wrapped around the inside of my neck and chest. In a way this was more frightening, because they found a mass behind my esophagus. Again my body was vulnerable. Unknown events were quickly taking place within it.

I have returned to find a voice again. An oath to live–hoping to continue to see my son accomplish great things in his life. And for me a renewed purpose in living with this new-found vulnerability.

(These beautiful pink roses were a gift from my sister Carolie and her daughters Ally and Maddy. Made my day and recovery.)

Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

Louise Gluck