Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3
The last time I was in the hospital the scar set itself much deeper. It carved its way deeper than my flesh, under the surface of my skin, below muscle and bone. I remember seeing Marion for the first time after the accident. She looked at me and couldn’t hold back tears. Mom either, she cried for hours. Tess wouldn’t visit. It was Jay who listened to me and held up the mirror. I should have cried too. White gauze bandage wrapped tightly over my skull. Thin brown hair poked up in spikes by the ears and forehead. White plaster covered my nose. I squinted at myself through swollen, pinched eyes. Red, purple, black. A patch of tape covered the hole where a tracheotomy tube had pumped air into lungs. My arms were pulled up by metal wires and were wrapped in plaster, traction to support broken limbs. A white sheet covered hips, groin, thighs, knees, shins, toes. Parts of my body I could no longer feel. A picture of horror, like a mummy rising from its sarcophagus. Almost laughable. Almost me. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. I told Jay I’d let him be the first one to sign the cast on my nose.
The nurses said as soon as the casts came off a physiotherapist would get my arms back to normal in no time. I’d be ready to roll out of there and would never look back. Ready to take the first baby-steps into a different life. A different body.
The ward psychiatrist visited daily and told me thoughts of suicide and anger were completely normal. I asked her, even if I wanted to end my life what could I do, hold my breath? She scratched a few notes on her clipboard, then told me to talk through the anger, to face the emotional pain. There would be negative self-talk. She asked me how I explained the accident, how I made sense of it. I told her sometimes life is a whiteout, you drive in unfamiliar territory, maybe a little carelessly. Sometimes you run into barbed wire. She squinted at me for awhile, then told me to continue to ask the hard questions. How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Show the insides, cry when you need to. I said she must have done this before. She frowned, so, I dictated suicide notes to her, and she wrote them down. She said you have support around you, but a lot of the time you’ll feel like you walk through it yourself. Then she looked at my legs. She blushed and said sorry, then she penciled something on her clipboard.
When you inhabit a new body, you have to get used to not doing what you would normally do. You start to do a few things you’re good at. You practice punch lines, memorize trivia, you write things down. You hold your breath occasionally, you laugh, you post things on various website message boards, you look at the clock and realize you should have gone to bed hours ago.
The minister said death is the final evil. Suffering dies with it. The minister said death has no sting. Not the bite of barbed wire. The sudden madness of a trusted dog. Not the insult of unresponsive synapse. Sam was buried beside his twin brother who died a few days after their birth. Here lie Michael and Sam de Boer. Made into His likeness, Born once to die, Born together again for Glory. People said it is unfair that some are chosen to die young, that not everyone gets to live this life to a ripe, old age.
* *
Her question still pulses through me. The day she asked it is my favorite day. We were walking through the park, hand in hand, silent. We were in Stanley Park, after visiting the Aquarium. Marion loved to visit the beluga whales. We used to laugh at the whiteness of their awkward bodies, press our fingers against the glass to get a sense of their underwater grace. She could stand there for over an hour, pressed against the glass, watching them turn in the water, smiles set as they rolled effortlessly in the deep. We walked through the park after visiting the whales and I was thinking about the silence between us, the sound of the grass beneath our feet, the weight of her hand in mine.
She stopped walking at some point and looked at me. I smiled. She lifted her left hand in the air and said, “Why do you love me?”
I stood silent for a moment, surprised, and then started to laugh. I could have said so many things. I could have told her that I loved her nervous insecurity, the way she bit the corner of her lip unconsciously when she waited for the answer to a question. I could have told her I loved the way her skin smelt, or the single freckle on her nose, that I wanted to marry her because she walked slightly pigeon toed.
She blushed at my laughter and started to look to the ground, but I wouldn’t let her. I cupped her chin in my hand, and brushed a wisp of hair behind her ear. I said, “You give me the grace I need to change.” It was the most honest thing I have ever said.
She looked at me for a moment, clenched her jaw, and nodded her head. I pulled her to my side and we continued walking.
I try to write suicide notes, but they don’t end up that way. I can never write past the first sentence. Instead, when I face my confinement, the new limitations thrown upon this body, I go walking with her again through that park. When I wake in the middle of the night and remember I inhabit a body, I let her question pulse through me. I turn my body so that I face Marion as she sleeps to let her know I wait for her to press herself against me again, feel my pulse, and realize that my blood flows through me with all the underwater grace of those beautiful, white whales.
© 2010 Andrew Kooman
All rights reserved
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Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3
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