Loss

There were three of us in the same high school class who chose to study medicine. We passed our admission exams together, and celebrated the fact with a hearty meal and a generous libation of red wine, a once-in-a-lifetime event. We were already making plans for future specialties and career prospects.

Then one of the three collapsed suddenly at home and died of a previously undetected heart problem. That was in the twentieth year of our lives, the third of our studies. Our trio became a duet.

Sitting by myself on the balcony at the Asa Wright Nature Centre. Waiting for the dawn chorus. Hungry and waiting for breakfast. And wondering: Am I too familiar with Death?

We first came into each other’s circles in 2008, when Uncle Steve died.

For the next few years, we watched each other from afar.

But then, in 2011 when I started in the Intensive Care Unit, we moved into the same neighbourhood. I saw Death more and more, especially during holiday season.

As I dwell on the recent death of my oldest son, I can’t help but think of my father, who dealt with his share of losses.

At the age of 16, he lost the use of his (dominant) right arm during a polio epidemic. The response from one girl he asked out was “I don’t date cripples.” How’s that for a confidence-booster?

After graduating from college in 1927, he went to work as an accountant on Wall Street, just before the onset of the Great Depression. Talk about poor timing. But one of his proudest moments was that after working a few days around the clock, trying to balance the books, he kept his job through the Depression.

The three years from 2013 to 2016 were the worst of my life. I am still recovering.

In June of 2013, I had a mental health crisis, diagnosed as an acute psychotic event and eventually bipolar 1 disorder. The loss of my mental health was crushing. I was fifty-two years old and married with two amazing young adult children. I had a great career as a physical therapist and was seemingly thriving in a master’s program. After a manic weekend with little sleep, racing thoughts, compressed speech, grandiose plans and euphoria, I was hospitalized in the psych unit. After a week of acute care, I transitioned to a two-week partial hospital program. Unfortunately, two months later, I sank into the other “pole” and struggled with a clinical depression. With a lot of support, love and compassionate psychiatric care, I gradually resumed working and carried on.

When I was sixteen, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. It’s a story that many recognize. A teenager from a troubled home life, seeking love, and believing it found in the first boy who showed kindness.

My strict parents were far from pleased by the news, but allowed me to keep the baby. The baby’s father, however, quickly disappeared.

I was determined to be the best mother I could be. Yet, my own mother had other plans. From the moment my daughter came home from the hospital, I’d often wake to find her in my mother’s room, who would insist that I return to bed—alone. I was confused that the nurturing woman who held my baby was so different from the cold mother I grew up with.

“Life without hope is like a bathroom without soap,” our mathematics teacher Mr. R—who often lapsed into unexpected philosophical musings—said aloud to a class of seventh graders.

The class of twelve-year-olds burst into giggles, finding it funny.

It took me a decade to realize the profoundness of the loss embedded in that statement.

She came in to the clinic without an appointment.

She stood silently in the hallway, hands clasped—holding herself together. I had seen her before, maybe once or twice, always during busy times. She didn’t speak unless she had to. When she did, her words were slow, as if newly learned.

When I called her in, she sat on the edge of the chair. Her file was nearly empty: “Late 60s, female, muscle pain.” No chronic illnesses. No medications. It should have been a brief visit.

“How long has it been hurting?” I asked.

She shrugged.

When I imagine an orphan, I see a curly-haired moppet who dances her way from a hard-knock life to easy street, or a Dickensian lad who struggles to find his place in the world and fulfill great expectations.

When I imagine an orphan, I do not see a 77-year-old woman with wrinkling skin, graying hair, and sagging body parts. But, as of November 1, 2014, when my beloved father died in my arms, I became an orphan.

Due to this loss, I no longer have an older relative to guide me, support me, and love me. Since 1986, I no longer have Grandma to remind me to “take care of business one day at a time.” Since 2007, I no longer have Ma to remind me that “this too shall pass.” And for over 10 years, I have no longer had Dad—my best friend—to support me in every possible way. These losses consume me; time does not heal them.

“I’m a fool,” Jack Kerouac writes in Visions of Cody, “the new day rises on the world and on my foolish life: I’m a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, the wetness on the wire fence bugled me to belief, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss…”

Dear readers,

Loss is a fact of life. In fact, one might argue that this life itself is a prelude to loss.

The first big loss I experienced was the death of my surrogate grandmother, Mrs. Slattery.