Life and Death, Again

I took my third oldest son to the ER Sunday night. It had been a weird day. Where Saturday was a celebration of family and life and all the good things we could do together, Sunday was a day of reckoning. I felt attacked on every side and ended up walking by myself toward the freeway filled with dark thoughts, mostly about why I am still here. It was only later that I came home and learned that Ben had fallen while rollerblading and injured some tender skin that might need stitches.

I took this cute picture with Ben in the ER.

I still was taking pictures to commemorate what we thought would probably end in stitches when a button panel on the wall caught my eye. There at the bottom was a blue button that read, "CODE." I immediately had a flashback to watching the videos of Abigail's birth and hearing the anesthesia doctor say, "We've got a problem here." I remembered a nurse I know telling me after the code blue was called, there was a group of people standing outside the OR praying for me. A lump formed in my throat as I thought of those people praying for me while I was unconscious and, very briefly, dead. Were they the reason for our miracle? Most of the day of February 25, 2020 has been reconstructed for me by people sharing stories, pictures, and videos. In fact, these things were shared so quickly after I revived that sometimes I think I remember being in the room when everyone surrounded Abigail and welcomed her to the family. But I was not there. I was being sewn back together and then carted into the ICU with a whole new team of nurses I had not yet met.

Of course when Abigail was handed to me, still breathing like a champ after a few hours of exhausting life, I was very glad I had pulled through to share her moments on earth with her.

But afterwards, that's the hard part. Afterwards, after the funeral, I just wanted to crawl inside that hole in the ground with her. I didn't care if I had to be buried alive. I had the eerie sense that I had cheated death, that I should have died but didn't.

Bill says I couldn't die because we had an agreement. "You promised."

I did. We were driving somewhere and I think we had just turned onto the freeway. We were talking about near death experiencers and how sometimes they say they were given a choice to return to their bodies or stay in heaven. He wanted me to promise that if I was given a choice, I would choose to stay. So I did. I promised.

I don't remember receiving a choice, but I know I couldn't break a promise and I came back.

The problem is that I feel torn between worlds now. Aside from feeling like maybe I should have died but didn't, I also have children now on both sides of the veil. Every time I had brushes with death before, I had been the one bargaining with God to let me stay to raise my kids. I felt strongly that they needed me. But to have one who doesn't need me in a place where I can't reach her--it's an excruciating kind of pain. There's a different kind of bargaining now. If you want me to stay, please give me a sense of purpose again. Please help me to find joy again. Please help me to have righteous desires. Sometimes I feel like these prayers are being answered. I started doing my own research on NTDs for a writing class I'm taking this semester. I'm being creative, making art, poetry, and DIY projects for the house and the kids. I'm growing an entire indoor seedling garden. There's even a little pepper growing on one of my outdoor plants. Purpose.

But on days like today that start out with high emotional demands and physical pain that lingers even after two and a half months, I want to curl up into a ball and die. That's it. I just want to die.

I'm not being dramatic. The sense of purpose just disappears and I spend the day arguing with myself over whether life has any meaning at all. I watched butterflies fighting the wind by latching onto the ground and hanging on for dear life. Dear life.

We recently listened to an audiobook of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. He's a china rabbit with real rabbit fur ears who goes on an unexpected adventure that lands him briefly with all sorts of different people. 

Once he watches a little girl die, he loses his desire to love ever again. "It's too painful," he explains to another doll who tells him she is over 100 years old. She tells him he might as well just dive off the shelf of the toy store and end it all now if he doesn't intend to love again. He doesn't really want to do that. She offers to push him but he declines politely. Very soon after, the 100-year-old doll gets picked up and taken home by a little girl who falls in love with her. As she's leaving, the doll reminds Edward the rabbit to open his heart again. "Someone will come for you," she assures him.

He repeats her promise over and over again in his mind for years, just sitting on the toy store shelf. "Someone will come. Someone will come."

My purpose isn't to tell the end of the story (you can read the book yourself). I only want to share this bit because it hits so close to home.

I still love my kids and my husband. I still do all I can to serve them and help them prosper. But on certain days or certain hours I lose my ability to be in love with anyone. It hurts too much. I would rather write off love than to feel this depth of pain. The desire to be past the pain, to stop feeling it, is too strong and interrupts my grateful thoughts.

Sometimes I think it wasn't a miracle at all that I lived. Just a mistake. Because how can I live in a world without Abigail? Like the rabbit, I repeat reassuring things to myself. I'll see Abigail again. We'll still have a mother/daughter relationship. It will still be beautiful. But it never feels like enough to cover the loss--all the things I will never get to do with Abigail.

Other people around me are so busy with their political fights. I don't care. Not really. I want my daughter.

Update: I wrote this Sunday night after coming home from the ER with Ben. We were in good spirits and then the lights went out and it was time for bed. That's when I get thoughtful and it's usually when I cry. I wrote this and cried and went to bed. 

I woke up around 3:30am to go to the bathroom. When I got up, I felt really awful physically. I walked back out to the minifridge to take some liquid iron. I'm terrible at taking supplements regularly so I take them when I feel awful. I woke up Bill and he saw that I was in distress. He came over to help me, and my dizziness, weakness, and nausea just got worse and worse. This felt so familiar. It's how I felt before I flatlined in the OR. 

I sat down and asked for water and then promptly passed out, hitting my head on the door. Bill, poor Bill, was having deja vu, too. He tried to wake me up but I wouldn't wake up. He tried to check my heart but was panicked and had trouble figuring out what to do. Then he saw me gasp for air, just like I did in the OR. Four or five gasps, he said. I do not remember this because I was still unconscious. I just know that when I woke up, I felt just as awful as I had before losing consciousness. He helped me to lie down on the bed and get comfortable. 

Then we were both afraid to go back to sleep. Every time I looked at Bill, his eyes were big and he was watching me with a lot of emotion behind them. I am sure it was as awful for him as it was for me. I felt weak enough that I thought I could go to sleep and die. I saw Bill worrying so much and remembered our deal. I said in the hospital they had replenished my potassium and other electrolytes, so maybe I should try to eat something to get my strength back. He googled potassium and brought me a cooked sweet potato and some sliced peaches. Bill got on the phone with our OB on-call doctor at four in the morning. We had a choice of going to the ER for the second time in one night or going to the OB in five hours when they opened. We chose the latter. My good husband fed me, bite after bite, until I said I wanted to try to sleep again. Once, I opened my eyes and saw him still watching me with worry. 

I slept deeply and woke up in the actual morning still feeling pretty weak but better than before. 

We got blood drawn for tests today. I'm home now, and at the point where I can go to the bathroom unattended again, so that's good. 

So far nobody knows what this is. It's still just a fluke. Vasovagal syncope, a fancy word for passing out. There was some perfect storm of circumstances that led to my episode. It's funny, I feel like the 100-year-old doll just offered to push me off the edge and I politely declined.

I feel like, unlike the china rabbit in the story, I'm not near the end of my miraculous journey at all, but still very much in the middle. But maybe I am near the end, and it feels this hard because it's the transition part of labor or the senioritis part of highschool. Either way, the road feels so long and undoable much of the time. I have to open my heart consciously to love, over and over again. And it's so painful. And it's so hard. But here are the only scraps of joy I find. Joy in the middle of so many hard things: Missing my daughter, fighting with my loved ones, and trips to the ER that thankfully don't end in stitches. Mysterious fainting spells where my heart stops or slows beyond detection and I'm left gasping for air without any further light and knowledge about why this is happening. Trying to make a difference and feeling exhausted most of the time. Feeling insignificant or bothersome, wondering why I'm still here. In between are the tire swing projects, Abigail's beautiful and thriving flower garden, sweet little boys that tell me they love me and miss Abigail, campfires and smores, and my devoted husband who tops them all. There are stunning sunsets and sparkling stars and incredibly artistic brush strokes evident in the play of light and darkness in any patch of clouds in the sky.

Why do I try to make the bad and good in life balance out, as if they ought to rule each other out somehow? I guess, like the china rabbit, I have to wait patiently if I want the joyful reunion. That's when the imaginary scale tips and all the good we cannot even imagine unfolds to our delight.

I must keep repeating to myself, "Someone will come. Someone WILL come."

I hope it's Jesus and I hope it's soon. ❤️