“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
James M. Barrie (1860 - 1937)
One year ago today my wife died, but through the marvels of modern medicine, a handful of luck and a one of the nation’s most talented brain surgeon she survived a ninety-nine in hundred death sentence. Since then everything has changed but everything remains the same. As we celebrate her first birthday of a second life, we are blessed to have a chance so few are privileged to experience. As pages turn it is not without a price to pay for what was lost in the flood.
In attempt to find comfort in the routine of her previous life, my wife shortly after her release from the hospital, dove head first back into her career against everyone’s better judgment. It was a period of denial that the event ever happened, a desire to prove the world was no different, refusing to accept that she was even lucky. I’ve come to realize she did not experience or comprehend the threshold of death. For her it was the easiest of progressions to stroll into the afterlife as convenient as slipping out of a jacket on a sunny day. Ultimately, it was my near death experience not hers. I had experienced it as if I had left my body hovering above her in the hospital.
For over thirty years her identify was one of a powerful executive, a consummate professional that was sought out for an unparalleled depth of knowledge and ability. Throughout a varied and diverse career she managed multiple offices with a staff of over thirty, established a new Midwest division of six offices for a national corporation and held leadership positions in every aspect of a complex financial industry for a dozen companies. She did all of this without post secondary education using her perceived inferiority as a strong motivational tool to push ahead of her peers. Driven to succeed does not adequately capture the years of working 80 hour weeks. For a lifetime she possessed a defining personal identity which was her foundation of self assurance. Between heartbeats on that day one year ago everything about who she was changed.
Twelve months of healing and evaluation has revealed the final extent of the collateral damage emerging from a shifting fog of uncertainty and hope. It has been a challenging time for both of us as I sit helpless watching her reconcile her new life against the old. In her solicitude, she excruciatingly compares her previous person with the limitations of the new. For months her primary focus was to hide each new disability as they became apparent while attempting to continue her career. Short term memory loss, reduced analytical capacity and significantly diminished reading comprehension unleashed a flood of emotions I have never seem as she struggled to hold on to an exposed root of self respect in a seething river current of personal loss. The detailed neurological assessments have uncovered her amazing ability to adapt, to compensate and how brain function while so fragile responds in mystical ways.
An area of significant impact was her ability to process the spoken word, part comprehension and part short term memory. As a result she has developed an acute visual perception. In order to process the spoken word she will write the message out in her hand with an imaginary finger so that comprehension bypasses the disrupted audio paths and is communicated to the brain visually. It astounds me on resilience our brain is, finding new pathways to repair damage. She was so good at compensating in other ways that the disability was hidden until the neurophysiologist tested a fully range of brain function.
Slowly over the months it became apparent that the collateral damage exceeded her ability to function at a high level in her career. The constant struggle and deception took the fight out of her as she reluctantly came to realize that she no longer wanted to work so hard making people believe nothing had changed. The experience has been only what I can describe as a recovery from a modest form of Alzheimer’s. It has given me a fearful perspective of the unimaginable horror of descending into Alzheimer’s without hope of recovery. It is with certainty that we all will at different rates descend into humility suffering indignity of losing what we cherish. If only by the grace of god, we live long enough whatever fortifies the core of your soul will be taken from you, beauty, mind, body, memories, family, privacy, independence, leaving us all naked at the door of death. Without ceremony we transgress to frail, tattered broken reflections of our former selves, a slow process yielding to nature. Each small loss of mobility, functionality, range, stamina and endurance signals the eventual slow waltz with life’s close. There is no apology for my morose ramblings for they are only a statement of truth whether or not we want to recognize the final and inescapable law of nature.
Gradually through a curtain of tears and fears she accepted the new direction life has taken, but the shift is still undermined by the loss of self assurance, confidence and self identify. This has fundamentally changed our relationship and the level of nurturing she requires. A previous relationship of equals, powerful and decisive, a collective balance is now in flux and redefinition. The fine balance of shared responsibility has been disrupted, at times taking on a parent and child persona as I am possibly overcompensating in a sheltering protective fashion. I find myself doting on her as if she is helpless which she is not, but I find her much more pensive and unsure of decisions. She is in the final stages of obtaining approval for long term disability which will complete her transition to her new life.
One of the remaining mysteries has been her loss of appetite for which I have taken her to specialists and physicians over and over without discovering a cause. Every time we recieve a clean bill of health. She has lost 40 pounds and is now struggling to fill a size 0. I think she has stabilized at this weight which is of no apparent concern to her. The extreme weight lost probably makes me more protection because she seems so frail. At a critical point during one of the visits to the neurosurgeon, he highly recommended that she quite smoking because there is a number of small defects on the other side of her brain and smoking is a significant factor in increasing the risk that these defects can develop into another rupture. He also suggested that she get a chest x-ray because an unexplained weight loss such as hers could be cancer. As we walked out of the doctor’s office she lit up a cigarette and looked up at me to say “I think that went well.” I have to admit it was one of the few times in our marriage I totally lost it. It was a blur but I think my first words were “What fucking planet do you live on!!!!!” It remains an unresolved issue, a small defiant stand on personal choice and independence she is unwilling to relinquish.
A requirement of the short term disability policy is that she stop working which was a struggle at first but now she quietly sits at home cleaning long forgotten items while spending time with her mother. The days drift by in a series of never ending errands and casual meanderings as her daily interaction with the outside world shrinks. After thirty years of making her clients successful, catering to their every need, becoming close in decades old relationships, I’m astounded how quickly they have all disappeared without a trace which makes me angry at their shallowness.
Although not obvious to her I watch each day like a hawk gauging her level of satisfaction and personal fulfillment always concerned that her departure from the spotlight will manifest itself into depression. On occasion she will look at her laptop with wistful eye of a life departed, but just as quickly her gaze will focus on the dust that has accumulated on its lid as she goes to get a dusting rag. Each day I pray she finds solace and balance in her second life. When the times are right I probe by asking her simply “Are you happy. Is everything going alright?” The answer always takes much longer than I feel it should, revealing an unresolved internal debate, but is unquestionably “Yes I’m happy”. I intentionally leave an awkward silent pause to allow for the recrimination or retraction that never comes.
None of us can know what the future shall bring. We all travel our separate road making decisions based on the moment. Even in retrospect I’m not sure we can judge if those decisions are for the better or the worst, they are just a milepost in a journey that ends sometime and someplace in the future. Personally, I’ve always had to reconcile my family legacy of early departures to the afterlife. As they say “We don’t make old bones.” This lifelong realization might be an underlying factor in my frantic pace; a life line that could be measured in years not decades if family history determines the odds and probabilities. What will I leave behind unfulfilled? As we all walk to the fateful edge of existence what dreams will be broken, what desires will haunt final our thoughts, what love will be lost in the flood?
As each natural disaster cleanses the land with undirected violence, sculpting the earth into new patterns we learn anew to navigate our altered world by the sun and heavens having faith in those things unchanged in a changed landscape. Adapting to circumstances while picking of the pieces of our life we walk into an uncertain future only knowing those things that we lost in the flood but always thankful, hopeful to experience another spring morning, another summer afternoon, another sunset, another starlit night, just another chance to breath.
In attempt to find comfort in the routine of her previous life, my wife shortly after her release from the hospital, dove head first back into her career against everyone’s better judgment. It was a period of denial that the event ever happened, a desire to prove the world was no different, refusing to accept that she was even lucky. I’ve come to realize she did not experience or comprehend the threshold of death. For her it was the easiest of progressions to stroll into the afterlife as convenient as slipping out of a jacket on a sunny day. Ultimately, it was my near death experience not hers. I had experienced it as if I had left my body hovering above her in the hospital.
For over thirty years her identify was one of a powerful executive, a consummate professional that was sought out for an unparalleled depth of knowledge and ability. Throughout a varied and diverse career she managed multiple offices with a staff of over thirty, established a new Midwest division of six offices for a national corporation and held leadership positions in every aspect of a complex financial industry for a dozen companies. She did all of this without post secondary education using her perceived inferiority as a strong motivational tool to push ahead of her peers. Driven to succeed does not adequately capture the years of working 80 hour weeks. For a lifetime she possessed a defining personal identity which was her foundation of self assurance. Between heartbeats on that day one year ago everything about who she was changed.
Twelve months of healing and evaluation has revealed the final extent of the collateral damage emerging from a shifting fog of uncertainty and hope. It has been a challenging time for both of us as I sit helpless watching her reconcile her new life against the old. In her solicitude, she excruciatingly compares her previous person with the limitations of the new. For months her primary focus was to hide each new disability as they became apparent while attempting to continue her career. Short term memory loss, reduced analytical capacity and significantly diminished reading comprehension unleashed a flood of emotions I have never seem as she struggled to hold on to an exposed root of self respect in a seething river current of personal loss. The detailed neurological assessments have uncovered her amazing ability to adapt, to compensate and how brain function while so fragile responds in mystical ways.
An area of significant impact was her ability to process the spoken word, part comprehension and part short term memory. As a result she has developed an acute visual perception. In order to process the spoken word she will write the message out in her hand with an imaginary finger so that comprehension bypasses the disrupted audio paths and is communicated to the brain visually. It astounds me on resilience our brain is, finding new pathways to repair damage. She was so good at compensating in other ways that the disability was hidden until the neurophysiologist tested a fully range of brain function.
Slowly over the months it became apparent that the collateral damage exceeded her ability to function at a high level in her career. The constant struggle and deception took the fight out of her as she reluctantly came to realize that she no longer wanted to work so hard making people believe nothing had changed. The experience has been only what I can describe as a recovery from a modest form of Alzheimer’s. It has given me a fearful perspective of the unimaginable horror of descending into Alzheimer’s without hope of recovery. It is with certainty that we all will at different rates descend into humility suffering indignity of losing what we cherish. If only by the grace of god, we live long enough whatever fortifies the core of your soul will be taken from you, beauty, mind, body, memories, family, privacy, independence, leaving us all naked at the door of death. Without ceremony we transgress to frail, tattered broken reflections of our former selves, a slow process yielding to nature. Each small loss of mobility, functionality, range, stamina and endurance signals the eventual slow waltz with life’s close. There is no apology for my morose ramblings for they are only a statement of truth whether or not we want to recognize the final and inescapable law of nature.
Gradually through a curtain of tears and fears she accepted the new direction life has taken, but the shift is still undermined by the loss of self assurance, confidence and self identify. This has fundamentally changed our relationship and the level of nurturing she requires. A previous relationship of equals, powerful and decisive, a collective balance is now in flux and redefinition. The fine balance of shared responsibility has been disrupted, at times taking on a parent and child persona as I am possibly overcompensating in a sheltering protective fashion. I find myself doting on her as if she is helpless which she is not, but I find her much more pensive and unsure of decisions. She is in the final stages of obtaining approval for long term disability which will complete her transition to her new life.
One of the remaining mysteries has been her loss of appetite for which I have taken her to specialists and physicians over and over without discovering a cause. Every time we recieve a clean bill of health. She has lost 40 pounds and is now struggling to fill a size 0. I think she has stabilized at this weight which is of no apparent concern to her. The extreme weight lost probably makes me more protection because she seems so frail. At a critical point during one of the visits to the neurosurgeon, he highly recommended that she quite smoking because there is a number of small defects on the other side of her brain and smoking is a significant factor in increasing the risk that these defects can develop into another rupture. He also suggested that she get a chest x-ray because an unexplained weight loss such as hers could be cancer. As we walked out of the doctor’s office she lit up a cigarette and looked up at me to say “I think that went well.” I have to admit it was one of the few times in our marriage I totally lost it. It was a blur but I think my first words were “What fucking planet do you live on!!!!!” It remains an unresolved issue, a small defiant stand on personal choice and independence she is unwilling to relinquish.
A requirement of the short term disability policy is that she stop working which was a struggle at first but now she quietly sits at home cleaning long forgotten items while spending time with her mother. The days drift by in a series of never ending errands and casual meanderings as her daily interaction with the outside world shrinks. After thirty years of making her clients successful, catering to their every need, becoming close in decades old relationships, I’m astounded how quickly they have all disappeared without a trace which makes me angry at their shallowness.
Although not obvious to her I watch each day like a hawk gauging her level of satisfaction and personal fulfillment always concerned that her departure from the spotlight will manifest itself into depression. On occasion she will look at her laptop with wistful eye of a life departed, but just as quickly her gaze will focus on the dust that has accumulated on its lid as she goes to get a dusting rag. Each day I pray she finds solace and balance in her second life. When the times are right I probe by asking her simply “Are you happy. Is everything going alright?” The answer always takes much longer than I feel it should, revealing an unresolved internal debate, but is unquestionably “Yes I’m happy”. I intentionally leave an awkward silent pause to allow for the recrimination or retraction that never comes.
None of us can know what the future shall bring. We all travel our separate road making decisions based on the moment. Even in retrospect I’m not sure we can judge if those decisions are for the better or the worst, they are just a milepost in a journey that ends sometime and someplace in the future. Personally, I’ve always had to reconcile my family legacy of early departures to the afterlife. As they say “We don’t make old bones.” This lifelong realization might be an underlying factor in my frantic pace; a life line that could be measured in years not decades if family history determines the odds and probabilities. What will I leave behind unfulfilled? As we all walk to the fateful edge of existence what dreams will be broken, what desires will haunt final our thoughts, what love will be lost in the flood?
As each natural disaster cleanses the land with undirected violence, sculpting the earth into new patterns we learn anew to navigate our altered world by the sun and heavens having faith in those things unchanged in a changed landscape. Adapting to circumstances while picking of the pieces of our life we walk into an uncertain future only knowing those things that we lost in the flood but always thankful, hopeful to experience another spring morning, another summer afternoon, another sunset, another starlit night, just another chance to breath.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come. “
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
