Crescendo

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

Fall is coming tomorrow. Agricultural time is even more suited to me as I get older, nothing inside of me obeys a linear system. I must stop and think a bit to remember the season, to try to grasp where I am. I am reveling in the two days off for Rosh Hashanah, though I am not Jewish. I am sorely in need of some time off, and reflection, and I always need a new year.

Autumnal Equinox, for pagans, is the balance of day and night and the point of certainty that death is happening. When I am teaching my art class, this is the season we stream Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I skip ahead to the Autumn passage. The floating leaves represented in notes make the most sense to me. Time to turn on the music and let go as I stare at the complex sea of situations that is my job, newly scheduled and followed to the minute in linear time.

In the bigger picture, the crossover line at death is an illusion. I do not say this to try to be clever but because I know it is true. We arrive here with a mission, and make choices as to how we complete it. I have no time for or interest in activities which involve denying or ignoring this. We all come from the same place, and no one here escapes the cycle of birth/death /rebirth. No one wins. It is not a race.

PTSD (the way I understand it, I am not a doctor) is kind of a state of having trauma frozen in your body and mind. I might be carrying on with my day as I need to, but little pieces of memory float to my consciousness and make me fearful and anxious. It has been a big relief to see it this way, very unsticking. I believe I have healed some. Looking at frozen fear is the best way to turn it away.

In my nonlinear fashion, this is something that happened to me three years and five months ago.  I am in the hospital room at Maimonides in Brooklyn. Susanna’s body is still breathing, but attached to tubes and machines. This is before the attempted brain scan which would not be completed. This is after the conversation with the brain surgeon who has told me there is nothing he can do. He has hesitated and floundered over those words, a part of his job no one would envy, and my jaw as well as my heart and soul have dropped through the floor. Somehow, I have sat in this room and decided that I will move my body and walk across the street to buy coffee. I have said this to my Significant Other, but he has not heard me. He is millions of miles away from me, and I believe he will always, from this day forward, hate me because of what I have done. I have not saved Susanna, and I have remained alive. I must be a horrible person, as I have always suspected. As I walk through the lobby and into the street, and back again, I am sure everyone is looking at me and knows my daughter has been sentenced to die. I have been forever changed by this day. This will always be true.

An hour or two later, I have been consoled by a nurse in front of the room where the brain scan is to take place. She has given me cold cranberry juice. I have also been consoled by a couple from Bangladesh in traditional dress. They have told me their son, who is nineteen, is in a similar situation, and they have prayed for me. These are memories of love from strangers which have sustained me, in retrospect.

Soon after, I have said good bye to Susanna. I have held her hand and said this: “If you can come back, I will be waiting, but if you need to go I will understand. I will always be with you, and I will never forget even a minute of the time we have been together”. A man working has overheard me, and has softly mumbled “Oh, God!” and is crying.

In the time since, I have realized that if you witness someone cross over, this is a part of your mission. This is intimate, and important. If someone tells you about being present for death, this is sacred as well. These are the thresholds, the places where we can feel our true home.

My daughter was here, and when I was sitting in the hallway, having been given the cold cranberry juice and the prayers, I watched across glass as people who had come running tried to start her heart again. They tried for a long time, but she had to go. She died. This did not happen because I am a bad person. It just happened. I could not save her, any more than the sad brain surgeon, and I survived.

Fall again, and Susanna’s brother has just called from downstairs to inform me that he has lost a tooth, a molar. He is four feet and nine inches or so and will be joining his school band. We are here and Susanna is there, for now. We will see the leaves turn, because that happens on this part of earth. We will listen to them fall, crescendo, and be gone until next time.