I hate being morbid. That's not my personality, and it is certainly not MG's.
But it's Saturday morning, and my wonderful sister-in-law, who came down to spend the week with us (she's a licensed physical therapist) to help MG adjust to being home, left for the airport this morning. My son - or maybe both of them - drove her. And all I could think of was the last time a member of my family headed out for the airport on a Saturday morning.
Foolish, I know. It's reflex. Like when I was in college and was coming down the road that ran between Sanford Stadium at Georgia and the railroad tracks in my 1974 Vega. It had been raining, and the roads were wet, and as I came around the curve a Volvo coming from the other direction lost traction, came into my lane, and hit me head-on. It totaled both our cars (which was no loss for me, considering mine was a Vega; but her Volvo was a different story).
Fortunately the injuries were relatively minor. But for a long, long time afterward every time I went around a curve at night and saw headlights coming from the other direction, I tensed and flinched and slowed down and pulled as far to the right-hand side of the road as possible
I guess every time someone I know heads to the airport, I will flinch inside.
MG has been home a week now. She's been really working hard in her physical therapy. My sister has come over from Dallas for the week,and will take the place of my sister-in-law, who needs to get back to her husband and kids. My kids are all here, of course.
It is understandable that our lives are focused around MG ... not letting her be alone, sitting with her when she sleeps, when she wakes, trying to take care of her every need as much as possible. We all have our jobs - recording her medicine dosages and making sure she gets them on time, who changes the bandage on her stomach wound, who gives her the twice-daily shot for protect her from blood clots, who adjusts her legs when they are uncomfortable or just start to ache, who helps her with her "personal" issues (it occurs to me how there is nothing personal when you're immobilized in a hospital bed like this).
I want the kids, in particular, to have as "normal" of a summer as possible. SB and The Heir will start their summer internships soon, and I'm thankful to God that both were able to land internships in town. That is another God-thing, because all of SB's connections were out of town and The Heir thought he was going to be reporting for basic training this summer.
The Young Prince was supposed to come to live in Gulfport with me this summer. I was lining up jobs for him down there, and he was going to find out what it was like to live in a one-bedroom studio apartment with the old man. That won't happen now, since we need all hands on deck here. I'm not sure what we're going to do with him this summer.
But the bigger lesson, to me, is a reminder that God was not surprised by what happened. Again, we can get all theological about whether God "caused" this or just "allowed" this to happen, and whether there is a difference (and whether the difference even really matters!).
What I won't argue is how now I see so many things - starting from years ago - that have put us in a position where we can, as a family and with friends, care for MG over the next few months. His mercies are new every morning, and He indeed knew each of us before we were even being knitted together in our mothers' womb.
(Not sure my tense is correct there; I'm not suggesting each of us has the same mother or that all of our mothers share a womb. Hopefully, you understand what I'm trying to say. It's from a verse in Jeremiah).
Wait - what I was trying to say was that I still want to make this summer as 'normal' for the kids as possible. I want SB to not only have a great work experience, but still enjoy being a college kid. Same for The Heir and the Young Prince.
But this won't be a normal summer. The boys are better at this than SB and I are, because they are, well, boys. I don't expect them to get involved in the intimate, day-to-day care of their mother. They do what we ask - The Heir is his mom's exercise coach, the Young Prince makes wonderful eggs every morning just the way his mom likes them - and they help outside MG's bedroom. The best thing may be that they have each other.
So much of this is being dumped on SB, the oldest and therefore the over-achiever who feels all the responsibility that most first-borns feel. She's always felt responsible for her brothers, for me, for her mom. And, like her mother, she has the attitude that "it's an honor and a privilege to serve."
MG was so excited that SB was going to be home this summer. It was going to be a "girls'' summer - with the boys expected to be gone.
And it will be their summer, but not the way either imagined.
I believe I wrote that we'd discovered a wound in the back of MG's head while finally clearing out the "rats' nest" of hair back there that the doctors and nurses in the hospital could not be concerned with. It is healing, but continues to give her problems and, I think, may be the cause of the headaches MG has been getting over the last couple of days - one more evidence of how the "little" aches and pains make themselves known as the body adjusts to the major shocks and surgeries.
Her ribs are tender. My guess is they've always been tender, but the pain in her pelvis over-rode the rib pain.
And her left foot continues to be a problem. She doesn't have much control over that, which the doctor told us was to be expected, what with the muscles and nerves that had been cut and stretched. He said it might be a year before she regained control. But it makes her toes, in particular, very sensitive to touch or to movement.
But again, I can't help but feel that's a good sign, an indication that the nerves are starting to reconnect and recover and are hyper-sensitive as they come back to life.
I've read stories of burn victims who scream with pain when something as gentle as a breeze blows across the surface of their skin. What brings most of us a bit of relief is pure agony to someone whose nerve endings are coming back to life and every little motion feels like it came straight from the gates of hell.
But I'm beginning to get a glimpse of what that must be like. It's not constant for MG, but at times it is very much like that. I accidentally brush her toes, and she's crying. My big feet bump the leg of the bed, shaking it, and the pain is excruciating for her.
Again, not constant - thankfully - but just enough.
The body is an amazing creation, wonderful in both its capacity to feel pleasure and pain.
Perspective changes. We were sitting around talking to day about how long this has been going on, about how long MG was in the hospital, in the trauma unit, in a coma ... and SB mentioned how it seems like it was only a few days. Indeed, from this side of things, it just doesn't seem like we spent three full weeks at the hospital, watching and waiting and worrying.
That, too, gives me hope. I've written about this before, but people have told me how they or a friend went through something similar and in what seemed like "no time at all'' they were back on their feet. Of course, when you press them, "no time at all" turns out to have been eight months.
Still, I realize that in eight months, we might very well look back and say this didn't seem to take any time at all.
One can only hope.
MG woke up and said, "I believe I just had a Roecker response."
I laughed. From the time Roecker - The Heir - was a baby until, really, even today, he's always responded to potentially overwhelming situations by going to sleep. When he was a baby, I remember MG took him and his older sister to an Alabama-Tennessee football game. I was in the press box, of course, and watching them through my binoculars almost as much as I watched the game. SB was a little over two years old, Roecker not quite a year. They got settled into their seats at Legion Field (this was in the days when the game was still played in Birmingham), and as soon as the noise started in ernest - the crowds yelling and the bands playing and the speakers from the scoreboard blaring - Roecker went to sleep. It was his reaction to too much stimulation. So here was MG, with a two-year-old next to her and this baby sleeping in her lap.
It was worse the next year, when MG was very pregnant with The Young Prince. We were in Knoxville, and she had a three-year-old sitting next to her, and an almost two-year-old draped across her almost seven-months along belly. And again, The Heir passed out on her stomach, head on her chest, arms around her neck, almost as soon as the game started.
This morning was a tough one in that MG wanted to get into the wheel chair and get her hair washed. That's an ordeal in itself, but it was like every movement hurt her despite all of our - mine, SB, and Brittany - best care. I didn't realize how quickly the back of the wheelchair would drop and neither MG nor I were ready for it and it was not comfortable. Even getting her back into bed it seemed like every movement was the wrong one, and we hurt her.
As soon as we got her back into bed, however, MG went to sleep. Hard. For quite a while.
Her "Roecker response."
People ask about my job. My employer has been amazingly understanding. I flew out to Houston this week for a meeting, and my boss told me he didn't know how long he would lose me for when this happened and was pleased that I had chosen to stay engaged as much as possible. There are changes going on in the company, and I was hoping to be considered for some of those changes. Maybe I still will be, but at the same time I have to be flexible to be able to be with MG as much as possible, and I appreciate that all the people I work with not only understand that but encourage me to take the time I need to do what needs to be done.
I, however, tend to worry. I have admitted my paranoia in the past when it comes to work. Maybe it's all those years as a beat writer, responsible for a covering, at various times, a recognized professional sports franchise and then, for 15 years, one of those publicly unacknowledged professional franchises that make up major college athletics. I had to be ever-vigilant, and even on vacation I was constantly checking in to make sure I knew what was going on. It was 24/7, and at times caused me problems with MG (the time we were at her brother's rehearsal dinner in St. Louis and I spent half of it on my cell phone, outside the restaurant, taking calls from head coaches around the country as Alabama was in the midst of a football coaching search.)
However, two years ago when I was put in a position where I felt I had no choice but to change professions, I decided I would never cling to a job so tightly again. All my life I had tried to maintain balance and keep my family first even with such a demanding job - in fact I once asked about a job opening that I wanted to be considered for, only to have the editor tell me he needed someone whose priorities were screwed up so that the job was first and foremost, and that he knew me well enough to know my priorities were not screwed up and he respected that, but it wasn't what he needed for this particular job - but I also know that job was a large part of my identity.
As I began this new career path, I determined I would not let that happen again. Don't get me wrong - I love this job, the people, the purpose, the relationships. But I think God keeps finding ways to remind me that the job is not my god, and is not the answer, is not the foundation, is not to take preeminence in my life ever again.
That's hard. Maybe you can relate, but it's very hard for me because I've been wired for so long to be on a 24/7 news cycle and staying on top of everything. Not that I don't do that now - I can't help the way I've been trained to work - but I know now that I have to be able to let some things go.
That's way too much about me.
The room is full of flowers, which MG loves. We have plenty of chocolates, too, but she's not been in the mood to eat that and I'm trying my best not to.
It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the sky is clear blue, the grass is green (and a bit long). I'd like to get MG out into the sun, on the small deck off the bedroom. I'm not sure we'll do that, after the disaster of the wheelchair this morning. But I know she'd enjoy it.
MG told me her goal was that in a year, she'd be there to "walk" with SB when SB graduates from college. I told her while I was sure she'd be walking, I didn't think the school would allow her to walk "with" SB to get her diploma.
We laughed.
But as MG lies there doing her upper-body exercises, faithfully working what muscles she can to try to be ahead of the game when real physical therapy starts, I'm convinced that MG will be back sooner than the doctors' prognosis. That's just the way she has always been, and I can't imagine her being any other way.
All things considered, everything is good. The boys are back from the airport, so my fears once again proved foolish.
It is indeed a "normal" Saturday morning.
By our new definition of "normal."
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