My illness, of course, was not just something that happened to me. It happened to my family and my friends and the community where I live. And they were all involved in some way. And it changed my relationship with them all and them with me.
It is weird being fifty and single sometimes. I remember a divorced friend without living parents saying there was no one legally responsible to take care of her. Ditto for me. Single, no children, no living parents.... I'm pretty much on my own.
Being so on my own has its advantages. I don't have anyone else to worry about and can come and go as I please. The dogs will follow me wherever but a spouse might not. I don't have to worry about uprooting my children when the call from the District Superintendent comes and I've been appointed to another church. I like it that way, at least sometimes. Other times I wish there was someone around to talk things over with or hug me when I'm low. I have wonderful friends who fill most of those needs, but you know what I mean. I long for that one person who always has my back.
I have one brother, Steven, who lives in Boston with his spouse John. They are both busy professionals and travel back and forth between a house in the city and one on the Cape. My relationship with Steven has been tense and difficult for many years. I really don't know why. I think we just push each other's buttons somehow. I don't think it is intentional; I just think it is how we relate sadly enough. But that is what I have lived with for several years, especially during the time I was our parents' primary caregiver.
When I went to the hospital, I didn't call Steven because I didn't think I'd be admitted for the next month. I thought I'd go through the ER, get a breathing treatment, some medication, and be sent home to rest. I don't have a health care power of attorney set up because I never imagined I'd go through something like this. Steven is HIV+. I always assumed he'd get sick first.
Once it was obvious my condition was serious, an angel from my congregation called every Steven Baker in Boston that she could find online. She finally reached him and he got in touch with my medical team. They apparently advised him to come here to see me thinking I wasn't going to make it. He was here twice, I understand, once that first weekend and then later as I was coming out of the coma. I have glimpses of memory from his second visit at least. Poor guy, I was pretty tough on him. First I had dreams that he had some evil alter ego who was trying to kill me and when Steve came in with a surgical mask on I ripped it off his face, accusing him of trying to get in to finish me off! Then I told him I'd die if he left me. Like I said, poor guy! But I remember how soft and sweet he was to me. I remember him begging me to go to sleep and my saying that I'd die if I did. I remember how gently he touched my face.
My friend Jill was amazing during all this. She was at my side every day. She acted as my advocate for Steven's sake. She screened visitors. She was an angel at my side. She is also a great source of information. Sometimes I have a hard time recalling if an event took place before or after I got sick and she'll tell me. She reminds me with a straight face of some of the nutty things I said as I was coming out of the coma. She tells me who came to see me and how they reacted. What a gift that is to me.
Recently I told Jill that I had a dream that Steven was sitting at my bedside crying, saying what a lousy brother he had been to me. Jill said that it wasn't a dream but a memory. Apparently it was when I was really bad and they weren't giving me great chances of surviving.
During the two weeks I was in the hospital after I came out of the coma, Steven and I were in touch daily. I remember that it would take me all morning to find the strength to write an email but I did. And we called each other. It was great. And I hoped that it would last, that this crisis would change things between us and we could be close again like we were before. But now, four months or so later, nothing has changed. Emails go unanswered. Separate lives are played out. Crisis over. Back to the familiar routine.
This Tuesday I'm headed to Atlanta to spend time with my cousin, Terri. We grew up together, the four cousins. Terri and her older sister Sue, Steven and I. We were thick as thieves. Life goes on and we grow apart. Terri and Sue have issues, Steven and I have issues. But we can't deny the bond that remains. When you spend the summer in the garden with Papaw, eating tomatoes picked from the vine, you share memories that will never fully diminish.
I'm going to see Terri because I miss her but also because she is sick. She has cancer and it is bad. Part of me doesn't want to go because I know it will be hard. I know what this means. But I go because I wouldn't miss this time with her for the world.
I've never believed in regret, or at least I've never wanted to carry regret with me as I got older. I remember moving to Chicago in what....1982 or so. I was 21 or 22. I was green behind the ears. I was scared to death. Mamaw told me something I'll never forget. She told me that I should go, even if I fell flat on my face and had to come home, I should go and try. She said, "You don't want to wake up one day an old woman and be sorry you didn't try. There's nothing wrong with falling on your face; that isn't failure. Not trying at all is failure."
And so I have tried to live my life like that. I have changed careers, gone back to school twice for advanced degrees, moved half way across the country with no job or place to live. I have loved with passion and had my heart broken more times than I care to think about. I have left cities I loved to be closer to my parents so I could care for them. I have lived fully and without much regret. And I am happy about that. Thanks, Mamaw.
So I go to Atlanta not only to love on Terri and support her mom and husband, but I go to make memories of us that I can carry with me. Will it be hard? Oh God, yes. But I wouldn't avoid the hard for the sake of the memories. I don't want to wake up one day thinking, "I wish I would have gone to Atlanta no matter what." I don't want to lose her without telling her again how much I love her and what she has meant to my life.
That's something I worry about where my brother is concerned. I think he lives with some regret when it comes to his family, including me. So I want to give us another chance. I want him to read this blog and then see if we can start over. It shouldn't take another crisis to bring us together. It shouldn't take almost losing each other to find ourselves again. I may be rejected and that's okay. I'd rather be rejected than stop trying to mend whatever is broken between us.
Far too often we get so caught up in who is right and who is wrong that we forget what binds us together in the first place. We forget what we have meant to each other. Sometimes we even forget what we were fighting over in the first place. Will we forsake loving someone just to be right?
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