This morning, I startled myself by asking Maria “will I ever be the same, do you think?” She rushed over to me and hugged me closely. “You will be the same, you almost are already,” she said. “Not,” she added smiling, “that you were ever normal.” I wonder sometimes, walking in a cemetery a couple of times a day gets you thinking about life, I wonder what my inscription would be. I got a message yesterday from a man named Jamie who had open heart surgery a few years ago. He never talked to his surgeon about the operation, he never discussed it with his wife or kids, he has never read anything about it until my Recovery Journal.
He thanked me for writing it. “I think I was never the same after it,” he said. “I’m afraid to ask.”
I was afraid to ask also, and I am not certain Maria would tell me the truth, not right now, as the recovery continues. And how could she know, really? I know I am different sometimes. Things bother me, irritate me, upset me. I withdraw often into myself, out of the sight and observation of people. I need to walk, hours and miles, every day. Sometimes there is a lonely feeling. I spent years investing myself in the idea of holistic health, I avoided conventional doctors and their tests and medications, and here I am, drowning in the great and story sea of American health care, sitting in waiting rooms, my calendar filled with appointments, forms, carrying my bags of pills everywhere so one nurse after another can write them down. I have pills in the morning, pills at night, shots and pills in between.
Jamie and I are different. I do talk to doctors about it, and to my wife, and to my friends sometimes, I think about it and write about it. I don’t really care about the operation either, except when I do, like today when we are trying to figure out why my heart is not yet pumping strongly enough to cleanse my body of fluids, and they are building up in me. Then we need to talk about it.
These things will organize themselves – today I go see a new cardiologist and this will complete my new line-up of doctors in the wake of my surgery. So far I like them all, they are nearby, they have all the information they need, and I imagine they will help me to continue to heal and be healthy for a good long while. That’s the plan and I like it, is very different from the one I foresaw a few years ago, but life is about change, and so is growth. Consistency is, in fact, the hobgoblin of small minds. We change or we become irrelevant and perish, literally or figuratively.
Jamie and I do have the same question. Will we ever be the same? I admit it frightens me sometimes. I am no longer sure of what I am, let alone what I might be. Will I look back on this post in three months and smile and ask Maria is she remembers the day I was worrying about this silly thing and can now shake my head and laugh? Or will I be different, changed in body, changed in mind. After all, they did stop my heart and it is different now. It is quite a question and I know I cannot answer it now. Instead of worrying about it, I will wade into my next book, try and write a great and insightful chapter.
This is the wonder and the mystery of life, after all, life happens every single day, and the test of my worth and dignity as a human being is how I accept this reality. I will I will not really be the same. How could I be? And why, really, would I want to be? There is no human being that does not need to grow and learn and change.
My heart is full of love and yearning, I am learning new things about me and my body every day. I wrote back to Jamie early this morning. “Jamie, perhaps it is a good thing that we will not be the same. Have you considered that?”