You Promised Me!

I arrived at the meeting room early, like usual. I'm chronically early. Obsessively early. Maybe even pathologically early. I can't help it. I hate being late.

I looked through the doorway and there, across an empty room, I saw her. In my head, at that instant, I heard a voice. Calm, assertive, definite.

"This is the person you will spend the rest of your life with."

The voice was so real, so tangible, that it never occurred to me to question its origin or purpose.

"This is the person you will spend the rest of your life with."

Oh, no. Not me. No way.

"This is the person you will spend the rest of your life with."

Relationships don't work. I've tried them. No way.

"This is the person you will spend the rest of your life with."

Leave me alone. I'm not interested.

"This is the person you will spend the rest of your life with."

Is it any wonder that, eleven years later, when I found myself sitting by her bedside, watching her in her coma, listening to the machine that was forcing air into her body, praying she wouldn't die, that I would look up to the heavens and scream, "You promised me!"

Primal Scream

Part of an ongoing personal history... the story of living through my partner's coma in 2001. I'm writing it down for the first time to reach out to others who have lived through, or are going through life's losses.

The nice thing about living on 35 acres is that you can go outside whenever you want and scream your head off and no one will call the cops.

Why was I outside screaming my head off? I was trying to keep my heart from hurting so much. I wanted the pain to go away. I wanted Some One to hear me and make my world right. The love of my life was in the hospital, hooked up to a dozen IVs, breathing through a tube down her throat, with more tubes sucking the blood out of her neck and taking it to a big machine that cleaned it and sent it back to her neck and down to her heart. She was in a coma and I couldn't find her any more. That's why I was screaming my head off in the middle of nowhere.

The land I was standing on was in Colorado, in view of Pike's Peak. It was once healing land, where the original inhabitants of those vast, open spaces would gather to pray to their gods, asking for things to be made right. They would chant, and drum, and dance, knowing that some unseen Force would hear them. And here I was, in the age of computers, doing the same thing. Except mine was a bit less organized and not quite so reverent, I suspect. Mine tended more toward anger and shaking my fist up at God. I was violent and demanding of answers, resentful and desperate, longing and willing to bargain, terrified and alone. I think the ancient dwellers of this land were a bit more evolved than I was in my frantic grief.

When the echoes of my screams faded away all that was left was the blowing of the wind. Perhaps I will find my answers there.

In the years since this event I have been on a spiritual quest, looking for the answers to the big "WHY?". That journey has led me to become a grief and loss counselor. If this message has touched you, please share your experiences with me, either through comments here, or by emailing me if you don't want a public view. (See my profile for the address.)

The Wisdom of Harry

A true story from my life experiences. Part of my ongoing personal history.

I looked into those eyes, so gentle, so caring, and repeated my question.

“How do you get through this?”

Harry said, ever so calmly, “You just do. You just do.”

Those were not reassuring words. Harry and I were in the hospital cafeteria, trying to eat. Eating isn’t easy when you spend your days sitting in the Intensive Care Unit beside the bed of your mate, waiting for death to come, praying that it doesn’t.

Harry’s wife was in the room next to ours. That’s how we met. He was old enough to be my father. His first wife had died of breast cancer. Now his second wife was on a ventilator, with fate uncertain. He had been through this before. I was hoping his experience would have brought some wisdom, some secret of how to dull the pain, how to diminish the terror I was living with every hour of every day. But instead I get, “You just do”, like some perverted ad for running shoes.

Harry was a man of the cloth, a retired minister. I had expected some words about God and prayer and Jesus and miracles and faith making you whole. I had expected Bible verses. Something. Anything. Just a little bit of heaven to hold onto. “You just do.”

“You just do.”

Those turned out to be the wisest words I have ever heard.

Please share your life experiences with me, either through comments here, or by emailing me if you don't want a public view. (See my profile for the address.)