Stage 4
After the doctors left the room, I turned to Kyle and said: "are there any stages after four?" She shook her head sadly. I knew that but wanted a different answer.
If you know Zoe, you know she takes control of the uncontrollable by organizing the living hell out of it. She's on her way over to the hospital now, and will have this place sparkling in a matter of minutes.
Avery sends me photos of the tiniest flutter of movement in the woods behind the house. "Look, mom! That was a squirrel!" She sends me audio files of birds. The Eastern PeeWee. You should listen to it.
Cameron makes pithy jokes about the efficacy of leeches and hugs me in his shockingly strong arms.
Zach "dropped by" from his job in Ohio, looking like a tree, and waxed poetic about the way buildings at the university where he works are named after fast food chains. He brought me a burrito, like an offering.
Asher and Elijah came for the first time last night, making the grown-ups tear up by saying unremarkable things like "are you all better now, mom?
I try to show photographs of the kids to the doctors treating me so they what? Care more about me than somebody with three kids or no kids? I try to be a good patient--which is mostly about being patient--and make a lot of jokes so they like me. Do I really think they let the grumpy people die first?
I'm just trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as possible so I can try to know what frames and scaffolding to build in my brain--what words and touches and people and experiences and songs--will let me live in this stage in a way as accepting of reality as possible and simultaneously fighting that reality as much possible. Maybe there's a better way.
If you know Zoe, you know she takes control of the uncontrollable by organizing the living hell out of it. She's on her way over to the hospital now, and will have this place sparkling in a matter of minutes.
Avery sends me photos of the tiniest flutter of movement in the woods behind the house. "Look, mom! That was a squirrel!" She sends me audio files of birds. The Eastern PeeWee. You should listen to it.
Cameron makes pithy jokes about the efficacy of leeches and hugs me in his shockingly strong arms.
Zach "dropped by" from his job in Ohio, looking like a tree, and waxed poetic about the way buildings at the university where he works are named after fast food chains. He brought me a burrito, like an offering.
Asher and Elijah came for the first time last night, making the grown-ups tear up by saying unremarkable things like "are you all better now, mom?
I try to show photographs of the kids to the doctors treating me so they what? Care more about me than somebody with three kids or no kids? I try to be a good patient--which is mostly about being patient--and make a lot of jokes so they like me. Do I really think they let the grumpy people die first?
I'm just trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as possible so I can try to know what frames and scaffolding to build in my brain--what words and touches and people and experiences and songs--will let me live in this stage in a way as accepting of reality as possible and simultaneously fighting that reality as much possible. Maybe there's a better way.
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