Tuesday, January 15, 2013

no ordinary day

a couple of weeks ago, we got my brother's family Christmas card. it was actually a new year's card, and it is a tangle of grandkids — a six-year-old in a Santa hat, a pensive 18-month-old and a newborn, curled into a ball. grown kids and spouses and spouses-to-be. 

my smiling brother, though not in the center, is the centerpiece, the dog — mr. biggles — claims the prime spot on his lap. maybe biggles is trying to escape into the calm my brother is known for from the family mayhem. or maybe, like me, he is thinking: this almost didn't happen just this way.

i have written this post in my head for a year. even gotten permission, which i really rarely do. this post has been very hard to write, what from the remembering.

about how i was coming home from church on a dreary Sunday a year ago and had an unexpected voicemail from my sister. and a missed call from my sister-in-law. both when they knew i would be in church.

first of all, my sister prefers texts. somehow she likes to send me missives when i think: why don't you just pick of the damn phone? my sister-in-law always leaves a message if she can't get me. rarely a text.

so. on that day, a year ago today in fact, i knew something was wrong. thought it was one of my parents. listened to my sister's panicked voice, and she is just not the panicking type — asking me to call her back. i wondered why my brother didn't call.

i dialed the number thinking THIS IS IT, my fingers shaking. and when i heard her voice, she said something unexpected.

it's Gra, she said. he has had a stroke.

Gra is my brother. short for Graham. his whole life his name has been mis-prounounced. whether he was sitting in the first grade or on the bench at an away basketball game in high school, or on the first day in class in college, he was called GRA! as in RAH!  It's Gra. Long A. Graham. named for my grandfather and my father. Gra. not GRAY. not GRAH!

four years apart, we have kept an acceptable distance from each other — he the accomplished, me the baby whom no one could figure out. somewhere in the middle is my sister, the bridge to both of us. and here she was, calling, frantic. which she really never is.

stroke.

when i heard the word i grasped for air. thought at first, honestly: dead. or comatose. and for a split second i imagined my life without him. my family, without him. his family without him. the one who takes care of everything my parents can't. i was 3 again, and he was 7, holding my hand. 12, and he 16, taking me to see the Osmonds. me 21 and he 25, loaning me his camera so i could do a good job on my senior photography project in j-school. 

a hundred other pictures in that few seconds. 

and then my sister seemed to scream through the phone (which she does not do either — no, that would be me) that i should hand it to my husband, so she could speak to somebody who would not sob back. it was one horrible minute, let me tell you.

i listened to my husband's half of the conversation, understanding that Gra was stable. that was something. but they didn't know more. 

what i remember most about coming home that day is running up to my bedroom, throwing myself onto the side of my bed and on my knees pleading with God that he would be ok. i wailed, like my brother had heard me too often in my childhood —when he was embarrassed by my outbreaks, thinking, i imagine, that couldn't he for once have a sister who was normal? and then i breathed deeply, and calmed my self down.

i don't write about Gra much on my blog. mostly because i could never get the story of him right. he loves the Beatles, and has been known to sing their tunes at the top of his lungs when his younger sisters are hiding in the bathroom, listening. or years later on a family holiday weekend with the tribute band. he might love a party, but he loves science more, and he parlayed that interest into medicine, where for the past three decades he has been daily working to save people. and he loves his family even more than that. he would probably take issue with the whole saving people thing, just like my father would. but it is true.

but on jan. 15, 2012, my brother had a stroke and others saved his life. he was just walking up the stairs to get ready for church, and he stumbled, couldn't speak, his face numb, when only minutes before he had been eating cereal. it was that fast.

and his wife Marti knew exactly what was happening when she laid eyes on him. and in those next few minutes, she knew what to do.

a day after the stroke, i drove to the hospital and could barely keep from crying when i saw him sitting up in bed, talking, his speech a little slurred, but fine, really.

"this won't go on the blog," he said, smiling just a bit crooked, and i have honored that, not writing anything about those horrible days until now, and only with his permission. *

"don't sugar-coat it," he says, now, standing at least 25 pounds lighter than on that day last January, and looking 10 years younger than he did then. "it's what happened, but i have recovered well."

indeed. it's pretty much a miracle that he got the treatment that helps heal stroke victims quickly, within an hour of the onset of his symptoms. we don't pretend that his being a physician didn't help. but everyone needs to know if they have a stroke, what is available to them and to have an advocate, like he had in Marti.


my brother is better than fine. he is back at work, helping and trying to heal others. in this year, his son graduated from medical school and got engaged. my parents celebrated 60 years together, my brother toasting them, as any oldest child should. he welcomed a new grandson into his family just a few weeks ago. and on Saturday, he will be present when my parents meet my sister's first grandchild. blessings.

all things he would have missed, if not for the quick thinking of my sister-in-law, and of the many doctors and nurses who worked to make him well.

i know i could have done better by his story. but it's the end that matters most.

Gra will be 60 years old on May 28, but in a lot of ways, Jan. 15 is his birthday. a new start. and he is one year into that new life today.

so happy birthday, brother. i love you so.

* my brother says it's ok to write about his life as long as he gets a percentage of the royalties.


writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Friday, January 4, 2013

the third day

pulling lights from the tree always gets me. on the one hand, i'm anxious to pack it all away and get on to the work of January. yet as i wrap one unlit strand after another around my elbow and put them in the box for another year, it often feels like the light is dimming inside me along with those from my tree, one twinkle at a time.

of course this is ridiculous. there is plenty of light inside me somewhere, but lately, it feels like i am almost choosing not to let it out. 

on new year's eve as i left the grocery store, a woman walked through the doors with a smile stretching so wide across her face that i looked around to see what could be so delightful. turns out, nothing — she was simply smiling. i huddled to myself against the wind and aimed for the car, wondering just what could make someone walk around that happy, all the time. i was also well aware that my expression would bring a passerby the exact opposite question to mind: why would someone frown so?

i spent that day as i often do on the last day of the year, taking stock of the things i have done and ought not to have done, understanding that i am not as right or as true as i sometimes think i am. the last few months of 2012 found me using angry words against the very people i love most, distancing my children and friends, and the reality of that leaves me feeling mired in the weight of me

in all of my thinking, i promised myself i would make the changes in this new year that would make me more loving, less critical, less judgmental. no longer would the glass be half full. and i would tell the truth when i screwed up, not making excuses for my bungling of so many situations. not anymore. 

on the first day of this new year, it took me exactly two hours to learn that even in truth telling, i will always be a bit broken. sometimes, like in the past couple of days, it feels like most of me feels broken, shattered into minute shards like the ornaments that fell from my tree this year, and most often from my own doing. on other days, somehow, i'm cracked, but the cracks hold together.

i spent the second day of 2013 second-guessing every decision i have made, pretty much in my life, praying that surely it is not in my DNA to hurt others, over and over again. and if it is, asking how i might go about deleting this fatal flaw.

a good friend who knows my heart and life very well said she sees much light in me. she didn't know that i had wrangled with those very words, that image of myself, as i began this post five days before. she says that none of us is all good or all bad. we are mixed up parts of both, and everyone has days when the light does not show through.

like any strand of Christmas lights, some of the bulbs do burn out. i have spent hours, sometimes, going through a strand to find that one defective piece, removing one bulb after another until i just throw the whole thing out and start over. but i can't throw my whole self out because half the light in me seems at best, dim in these early days of 2013.

on the third day of the new year, i went about my way, walking the dog, checking off the details of my work day. i've said before that when you work at church, God is pretty much in every corner. so there is no escaping the broken pieces of self, nor more than you can escape the light that flickers, even in the shadows of a darkened nave. God is there and watching, waiting i think, for those calls for help.

at the end of the day, i sat with my friend/priest/boss and we talked it all through. i cried a bit. we prayed a good long prayer, me saying right out loud that i wasn't really sure it would work. he said, yes, in his experience, prayer worked in even those most extreme situations, to bring about reconciliation of self, of others torn apart. so we closed our eyes and prayed for light. for love. for healing. 

i was late picking the dog up from doggie day care. as i waited for the kennel worker to bring him to me, i overheard a woman on the phone explaining that she would get to work as soon as she could, but she was in a domestic situation and was uncertain of how she would get there.

she had just dropped her dog off at the kennel for the first time, uncertain, too, of when she would be able to get him. she was about my age, a soft face and graying ponytail, and there was something about her that showed great beauty.

sometime in me wavered, but i heard myself say:

do you need a ride somewhere? where do you work?

at a gas station, not far from here, she said.

so a few minutes later, the dog and i invited donna into our car. the dog licked her, and she talked about her own dog, a pug, she had rescued not long ago, and how he was going blind.

he is in good hands, i told her. the best. they will care well for him.

as we drove down the dark highway toward the quick mart, she spoke of being escorted by police from her home earlier that day, the same place where her fiancĂ© had tried to kill her in october. he'd been in jail but had posted bond and showed up. she called the police, left all of her belongings except for the dog and walked out with no place to go.

she had left him before, sleeping in her car in 23 degree weather, so as not to be hurt again. but she did go back. until yesterday. his court date was to be this morning, and she was to testify. 

he thinks if i'm dead i can't testify against him, she said, and i felt my throat catch, my own trivial self-inflicted problems fading. this was a woman's life. her life.

i'm intelligent and educated and embarrassed that i have gotten myself into this situation, she said. things like this don't happen to me.

they happen to anybody. this is not your fault, i told her.

as we pulled into the lighted parking lot of her work, i told her about the shelter for women in her situation, a place where she could find food, clothing, shelter and support. the police had told her about it, but she didn't know how to contact them, so i offered to get the number. she wrote the number of the gas station on a sheet of paper, squeezed my hand and disappeared into the busy quick mart to begin her job overnight job.

at home i found the number, reading online that: 
• One woman is abused every minute in the United States*
• that it takes seven attempts for a victim to successfully leave her abuser*

i thought of all the women right in my town who died in the last year at the hand of someone who was supposed to love them, one of them in a shopping center i frequent. i have been distanced from this world, i think, but on the third day of this year, a beautiful woman in the midst of this very crisis shared a ride and conversation with me.



later on, i called donna, giving her the number. she had tried to leave him five times, she said.

it's finally time to do it for good, i told her. don't be a statistic. and she promised she would call right away. 

God put you in my life today, she said. 

no, i said, He put you in mine.

in the night as i tossed, still selfishly worrying about my own petty problems, i prayed for donna, that she did make that call, and that soon, she would find new light. 

*interactofwake.org

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.