My Mom's Heart

The monitor was grainy. Black and white in the dimmed room. The mass of tissue indistinguishable under the ultrasound wand being pushed between my mothers ribs. Blobs of gray snow and black shadows smeared across the screen until the rhythmic beating became clear. "Take a deep breath, Mary Frances". The technician instructed my mom, yet I couldn't help but inhale deeply and hold my own breath until directed to exhale. The ER nurse in me was watching intently; both fascinated by the technology and curious professionally, looking for cardiac abnormalities. Reading an echocardiogram is by no means my specialty but my eyes strained anyways, while looking for any valvular anomalies, or calcifications or blood flow aberrations. It was a detached, medical, calculating, diagnostic and safe place for me to be while my mom lie on the table in front of me. I didn't have to think about the fact that she had recently suffered a heart attack.
She was on vacation in Hawaii visiting my sister Martha when she noticed a general malaise and an increasing shortness of breath upon walking even short distances. And here I have to say that even on her best days my mom could never be accused of being a great historian when it comes to describing her physical symptoms. When I talked to her on the phone from 3000 miles away her description of how she felt was, "I just don't feel right". Hardly worthy of a 911 call. And to be fair, people can have "silent" heart attacks where the usual symptoms of chest pressure, nausea, sweating, etc. just don't occur. But it's hard to know with my mom, Mary Frances... a woman who can find a silver lining in just about any rain cloud. Like, oh, I don't know, seeing the loss of a limb as an alternative weight loss program, for instance. But the lingering fatigue and winded feeling upon her return home, landed us an appointment with her doctor. And mom's reaction to Dr. Wingren, holding the EKG in his hand explaining how she had had a recent heart attack? Classic Mary Frances..."Really, well I'll be." Puffing her way back out to her car after receiving the bad news, my mom said, "I don't know, James, do you really think I had a heart attack?" The question reminded me again of the powerful combination of Polyanna and denial that I was raised with and that I now employ as a coping mechanism in the face of bad news. But not this time..."Yeah, mom, I think you did".
I pulled back from the memory and looked at the pulsating screen of grainy lines. But this time I saw something I hadn't earlier. I saw the beating heart of my mother. I was no longer an analytical nurse looking for answers. I was a mess. I understood for the first time in my life the actuality that my mom is mortal. That she is finite. That the heart that I was watching beat with the precision of a clock right in front of me, was winding down and would stop someday. The rhythmic beating of her heart was hypnotic in the darkness of the room and with each beat I was drawn deeper into the blackness of the space inside. I felt more connected to my mom at that moment than I had since I was a child as I could actually see the source from which all of her love poured out of her. The valves would close, perfectly white, and then open again to a black depth that seemed bottomless, was bottomless. That unending source of love that has been with me from my first breath here. I was overwhelmed by the thought that I could actually see the endless ocean of love inside my mothers heart. It became timeless as I sensed the heart of my grandmother and all of her love and her mother and her great grandmother and on and on. I couldn't look away. Somehow that piece of meat on a TV screen transformed into life and love and a connection between generations that flows now through me into those that I love.
I can choose to see my mom's heart attack as devastating as it signals change and loss. But I know, deeply, that it it will always be there for me and in a very real sense beat through me. I am so grateful for having experienced it all. Thanks mom.

What Are They Doing Up There?

I guess I'm just not well suited for it. The long haul, the monotony, the sameness, the tedium of being an adult. There is a gene I'm missing that almost everyone else seems to have. I think it gets activated at around 21 or maybe 30 years of age at the latest. I wouldn't know. It's the one where career building and learning about the details of money/society/politics/business kicks in and adulthood starts. For some it comes later in life and I'm still waiting at 47. "Maybe 50" I'm thinking. But that just sounds wrong. Fifty isn't for starting to figure things out. Fifty is for looking back and seeing your accomplishments and for watching that nest egg grow and for fantasizing about warm sandy beaches that you'll be able to visit when you retire in 15 years but won't because of the arthritic hip and your irritable bowel syndrome. It's not like I want to be an adolescent my whole life...that's not it. Partying and hanging with my buds isn't something I've ever wanted to do. It's more like I don't give a crap about the things that most people my age and even most people a lot younger seem to think about and talk about and worry about and spend time learning about. Retirement planning, 401-K's, investments, golf, meetings with division managers, the two week diving vacation in the Truk islands. I feel wrong. I feel like there is some big secret out there that I never was let in on. I think I cut class the day they discussed growing up. I have no idea how the system works. I read about the Federal Reserve and promissory notes and I'm more confused than ever. I laugh when I hear the term "futures markets" even though no one is joking. I can remember as a kid sitting in the backseat of the car driving in some city looking up at the sky scrapers thinking "what are all those people doing in there". I had the same damn experience last month. Millions of square feet of office space climbing up into the low fog of Seattle and I think the exact same thing! So I'm asking, "What are all those people doing up there?" I imagine dark power suits and meetings and business class airline tickets tucked into expensive shiny leather briefcases. I imagine stress and fluorescent lights and lots of money and after work, drinks like single malt scotch with the guys from the office...but what are they all DOING? Discussions of outsourcing and synergy come to mind but what they hell are they doing up there?
The other day my mom asked me why I never wanted to get into the management side of nursing. Thoughts of meetings with number crunchers came to my mind. Thoughts of data analysis and spread sheets came to mind. Money streams, patient flow, blah blah. I'd rather just actually take care of patients and help them to help themselves get better. It is hard work and yet at the end of the day I don't ask myself what I did all day...I work and take care of people by poking holes in their skin and pushing chemicals into their blood streams and...jeez, that just sounds messed up. But that's another topic for another day. I'm missing something here. Again with the question, "what are all the managers doing up there...why is it that managers make more than the people who actually do the work?" The system is totally backward in my mind and that once again makes me feel weird...like I'm missing something. Maybe I just can't beyond the concrete operational (geek reference to Piaget and the development of the intellect) thinking of a 9 year old. Like I'm missing that last piece of the puzzle that has it all make sense. It keeps me asking over and over in my mind how we all got to this place where we accept it as normal and right. It all seems cockeyed and haywire. It all seems false and strange. How is it normal that people spend most of their waking hours in cars driving to, and then hanging out in, buildings for pieces of paper so they can give those pieces of paper to other workers who raise their children and grow their food and build their houses and do all of the other things that normally would give them a sense of joy and accomplishment? Do you see where I'm going with all of this? The more I ask these questions of the normal world the more crazy and "childish" I feel. "The sane people in an insane society appear crazy"...that old chestnut. As I get older but just as unable to answer all these questions I feel, not quite crazy, but stupid, inept. Just asking the question seems stupid. Take the blue pill! Invest in futures (corn is looking awesome right now!) and enjoy the Glenlivet. But dammit, there is no blue pill...there is no 401-K. My retirement plan is to move to Dharamsala and spend my few social security rupies on chai and dhal and watch the snow melt off of the Himalaya's, breathing incense and spinning the occasional prayer wheel. Childish? Sane?...depends on whether your looking up at the skyscrapers or out from their tinted windows. Looks like I'll never grow up.

Lord of the Couch. By JRR Tolkien

"If Frodo Baggins says goodbye, again, to one more hobbit I'm going to shoot myself...and take out a few other people with me". My wife Sheryl just groaned, stewing away in her own pain and trying to ignore my empty (unarmed) threats. It's what happens when people sit too long suffering through an entire day of non-stop TV...by choice no less. We weren't even sick with the flu or on forced bed rest trying to pass the time. It all began when we thought it would be fun to have a New Years Eve party involving our two teenagers and whatever friends they wanted to have over for the day and watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back.
I remembered each movie being about three hours long and steeled myself for a butt numbing veg out of epic proportions. Now I love movies. I love the emotional impact and the visual beauty and the transportation to landscapes both interior and exterior that move me like few things can. I remember being rocked by the L.O.T.R. movies years ago and was looking forward a repeat. But doing the back to back thing was kind of daunting. Thank god it was dark, cold and rainy as it begged for the Great Indoors all day. To avoid the ordeal that the hobbits endured, staving off starvation by eating lembas ( geek reference to a sort of Elvish hardtack) we had prepared for the day. As Sheryl and I mounded bowls of pretzels, chips, guacamole, salsa, crackers, and hummus next to the gallon of assorted soda's onto our kitchen table, Corwin our 16 year old ordered the other teen staple of long haul movie watching...pizza. We planned for the movies to begin at 1pm thereby giving us plenty of time for stretch breaks/pee breaks/get outside and MOVE breaks plus a short dinner break. We figured that, as Frodo rode off into the sunset with Gandalf nine hours later (!) we would have just enough time to shout out our "Happy New Years!" by midnight. We planned wrong...for Corwin grabbed the 'Directors Cut' version of each film. You know, the one where Peter Jackson couldn't part with any scene...no matter how insignificant, tangential or LONG.
Have you ever seen the end of a marathon long after the winners have crossed the tape? Where the runners barely arrive, exhausted and flagging, soaked in sweat? That's what we had prepared for...the 26 mile as kicking of a 9 hour movie day. We hadn't trained much, not owning a TV and all, so we knew that there would be some end of the day fatigue. But we were not ready for the Ultramarathon of the Peter Jackson version of L.O.T.R. Have you ever seen the end of an ultramarathon? Probably not as watching people run non-stop for 100 miles doesn't make for very interesting television. The finishers of an ultramarathon look, well, bad. Incontinent of stool, poop running down their legs into their shoes, gaunt and dazed and skeletal they look a lot like the ER patients I see. Our 9 hour marathon had just become the ultramarathon of moviedom. And while the adults in the room shifted nervously, the teenagers couldn't believe their luck. Twelve glorious hours of couch surfing, TV and junk food all sanctioned and encouraged by the adults who always nag them to turn off the electronics and go outside for some exercise!
As Sam and Frodo began their long and epic journey I was starting to relate to them. A dark and painful road lay ahead. By the middle of the second movie, six hours later, we had shared many ordeals; black riders, bands of murderous orks, a guacamole shortage, the end of the Dr. Pepper, the wandering eye of Sauron and the onset of 'flat butt syndrome'. A painful and debilitating disorder characterized by numb ass cheeks, agitation of the lower extremities and a strong desire to spank yourself. By the end of the 3rd movie, approaching 2:00am, the pain of Sam and Frodo baking in the lava fields of Mt. Doom paled to our own agony of indigestion, arthritic joints, muscle atrophy and chair sores (a lesser known form of bed sores). But just as the love and friendship of Sam and Frodo deepened through shared hardships, so did those of our family. In the future they might not sing songs and write poems about our ridiculous yet heroic movie day, but it will be remembered for a long time to come. Roll the credits!