The noise of the morning broke into my mind waking me enough to take that deep breath to clear my lungs and the sharp pain in my right shoulder and neck gave their usual reminders. I rolled over slowly and laid my feet on the ground, knees arched up from the floor since it was just this thin mattress laid directly on the surface where I sat. Coughing deeply and then gritting my teeth at the pain, I stretched my arms forward and upward until finally came the loud crack that meant I could at least begin to get up.
There’s messy, then there’s squalor, and then there’s this little one room bedroom apartment on the second floor of a government subsidized apartment complex that I have come to be in. Walking to the window, still dragging my right leg a bit, I lean up on the window frame. What’s left of the faded plastic blinds hangs in pieces from the several bits of string that used to hold the slates together in some form. Looking out over the field where the sub-urban sprawl meets the broken land and further beyond to the dusty fields where crops of failure wither, I see what has awoken me.
Coming quickly across the horizon, almost like a wave is a massive grey wall of slanted rain pushing forth before it a brown cloud of frenzied earth. I haven’t seen a storm like this in a long time, since I was a kid. I can smell that fresh smell before a rain, when the rushing wind has pushed out that rotting odor of whatever was sitting around and left just the clean air. I hear the howling yowls of the movement coming. It won’t be long.
***
Thinking back, back into the recesses of my memory, I can still see her face – hear her voice. We were driving down the road. “When will you be well.” She said. “You’re always sick.”
“I’m well. Well enough,” I responded, ”I’ve only missed a day this week to this and it’s the first time in a while. It’s like a storm – in my mind – like a fire, a little ember burning when you start a fire. If I catch it early enough it’s not so much I can’t cope, but Wednesday I just couldn’t even think.”
I had forgotten my medicine the night before and this morning, I explain to her and that’s why it was starting up again. “You know, since the doctor switched these pills up – I haven’t had a full blown headache – just these little storms. I’ll take them before we leave tonight.”
We drove down the road a little further and my loving wife kindly said, “Ok. I just want you to be well.”
I didn’t tell her about the cramps anymore that day or that at one point it was so stiff, I couldn’t even turn my neck. No, I didn’t tell her about the flashes of pain that shot from my neck to the center of my brain causing my hands to tremble with weakness. Why should she worry? You can’t stop the storm, not even the one that blows through your mind.
***
“Daddy, wake up.”
I try to focus on my daughter’s face, but I’m still not awake enough to see it clearly. The details are so hard to see when you first come to. It’s more of an impression, like the smudges of a Monet in low light.
I look back out the window. The storm seems to be off in the distance enough.
***
“Why are you here?” He always asks questions. He never gives answers. He says I had the answers. If I had the answers, maybe he should come see me instead of me coming to see him.
“I’m here because I am.” There take that – I opened the door, I walked in, I’m here. It’s not that hard.
“No why are you… h e r e?” Like saying it slower and with more feeling is going to make your stupid point more meaningful.
I look around his office a bit. I’m sitting on a soft maroon sofa that comes up around and engulfs you when you sit down, like a big woman giving you loving embrace. He’s got degrees on the wall – like that Masters of Arts means he’s got any idea what any of it means.
“I told you, I’m here because I have to be.” Ok, there’s some ground. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be, would I? I came, because if I didn’t then I wouldn’t be out – out here in this, this…
“What else…” he drops his hands from his mouth, where he’d been holding them up as I answered and sat in thought, as if to try to give me the cue to push words out myself.
“…because, I must be here to keep on… doing this… life thing. – I dunno, this is dumb.” I cross my arms and pull my legs up under my like a five year old who just got told he can’t have a cookie.
“I understand, if it’s any conciliation.” He leans forward as if he’s telling me a secret he wouldn’t even tell his mother, “I feel the same way. I’m here because I have to be… but also because, I really do care about you. I just want you to be well.”
We sit for about 30 seconds in silence, it’s not at all awkward though. It is almost as if both of us are just waiting for the other one to be ready to continue.
“Thanks.” I am genuinely appreciative. He doesn’t have to care and he does.
“Have you seen your daughter lately?” He asks, with tears welling up in his eyes.
“Yeah she walked over here with me. She’s sitting in your lobby waiting on us to finish.”
A single tear falls from his eyes, but he doesn’t reach up to stop it. He just stares at me with those deep gray eyes. Reaching out from the chair he was sitting in, he puts a hand gently on my right shoulder.
“Does it still hurt?” He asks as he pushes slightly on it.
“Always,” I say, which is only partially true. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt, but then when the hurt is not there, I miss it, because where the hurt was it just feels empty. No that’s not right, it just doesn’t feel – it’s empty – almost not there at all and that’s worse than the pain.
“Do you remember what happened?” This is all starting to sound very familiar all the sudden, like I’ve had this conversation with him before. Maybe a few times, maybe…
“Do you remember?” Of course I… wish I could. I finally admit in a whisper, as if to myself, “No.”
He wipes the tear off his face. “I’m sorry.” he says
***
“Daddy, wake up!”
There’s a rush of wind across my face and I feel almost as if I’m flying through the air and then nothing.
I sit up quickly and there it is, the pain again. Better the pain than nothing .
***
We’re walking down the sidewalk, my daughter and I – talking about what Daddys and nearly teenage daughters talk about. We’re walking to my appointment with the counselor again. She’s always there on the days I have to go to the counselor – life is cruel like that sometimes.
When her mother left, she just said, “You’ll always have her with you, as long as you want.” Those words were a blessing and a curse. My daughter always seems to be there when I need her the most, but she is always there when I can’t hardly stand to see her. It’s like the pain, it is the pain.
***
“So, what do you want to talk about today?” This is a new tactic, he’s asking me to set the agenda.
“Ummm… how about man’s free will versus God’s sovereignty?” – I smile wryly.
“Are you mocking me?” He asks as he adjusts his sweater vest, repositions his glasses and folds his arms.
As if to mock him properly, I grab the backside of my jeans and tug them up a bit and then tilt my ball cap sideways like a hip hop master, folding my arms dramatically full spread across to my elbows like, ‘Yuh, take that.’
“Me. Mock you, why no. I merely meant to suggest we might discuss…” I trail off a bit as my mind spins around. I take a deep breath and try to calm myself. I can feel the cramp in my neck trailing up to my head and down my shoulder. I used to take meds, but I just don’t anymore.
“You ok?” He asks forgetting his indignation. For being a real jerk, he is awful genuine. I cringe at the pain and the storm I feel coming in my mind. “Pain again, huh? Let me ask you, I gave you medicine…”
“NO!” I stand up screaming, the pain thumping and pumping through my skull.
He smiles wryly. “Do you know why you won’t take your meds?”
“I don’t like them. They make me, tired.” That’s only part of it, honestly I don’t really know why I don’t like to take them – I just don’t. He leans back in the chair. I sit down. “Ok, why don’t I take them?” I ask. “You tell me, do you know why you don’t take them.” he says – never any answers – always questions.
“No.” I slump as if defeated. He keeps staring at me with those deep gray eyes. “How old is your daughter now?” He asks. “She’s not quite a teenager. Not a child, but not a teenager yet. That perfect age.” I answer. He frowns and insists, “How old is she… now?”
***
“Daddy, wake up!”
I open my eyes. The light cripples them and so I blink them. Something is pushing against my side. I feel like I’m looking up into the sky, rolling over toward my left and instantly it’s like I’ve smashed into the floor on my right side. Oh the pain…
***
“I’m sorry Daddy.” She looks at me with that woeful look that only a daughter can give a dad.
“What for baby.” I stopped shuffling down the sidewalk and sit on a bench for a second.
“That you have to take me with you.” She stands as tall as I sit, looking me in the eyes.
“It’s ummm… ok. I like having you with me. It makes it easier, I guess.” I don’t tell her that she’s the only thing that keeps me going. The only reason I even get out of bed at all anymore. These walks, from my room to the counselor. Our talks, all hours of the day and night. The time I have with her, this is all I really have left.
“Daddy. Do you think you’ll ever be well?” She looks so sad as she asks me.
A man walks by and stares for a brief second, we must be a sight. Me looking like a complete bum not having shaved in weeks and wearing the same clothes most of the time and this little perfect darling.
“I just want you to be well.”
***
There he is staring at me with those gray eyes again. Waiting for the answer to one of his questions.
“What was the question?” I smile and chuckle a bit.
“I asked if you were ready to talk about the accident?” He looks frightened.
I must have blanked past part of this conversation, so I ask, “What accident?”
He really looks like something awful is taking place, he’s really pretty pale. “We were just talking about how you got hurt. How your daughter…”, he trails off.
“How my daughter what…?”, now I’m getting mad.
“Listen to me carefully.” He looks serious, more serious than I’ve ever seen him. “I need you to trust me for this moment.” He pauses and I nod back. “Close your eyes.” OK-closed, I peak out of one a bit and then close them. “Quiet everything else and listen inside of you – what do you hear?”
***
“Daddy wake up!”
When I opened my eyes, I saw the headlights coming at me. I blinked and felt the airbag explode, but I was already going through the side window. I saw the car below me, maybe above me – and then I felt my right side explode into the pavement as I saw the car explode beyond me.
In the months that followed the wreck, as I went through physical rehab and then they started sending me to the counselor – she was always there with me. When I was going to be released, my wife came by that one time, just once to tell me that my daughter was going to stay with me forever.
***
“What did you see?” and so I told him. “Listen to me carefully. Your daughter is not out in the lobby. She was in that car.”
And like a storm, winds raging and waters pouring forth, the dry land forced before it, my mind – my soul was frenzied up like the earth stirred by the front of the rolling wave of what was inevitably coming.
“You were driving your daughter and you home from a trip to the city and you fell asleep at the wheel because of your headache pills. You have to remember. I can’t let you leave the hospital today otherwise – for your own safety.”
I look at him. I close my eyes again and eternity passes in that moment.
“Daddy. Wake Up!”
I open my eyes and there he is staring at me with those deep gray eyes.
“Well?” He looks so serious.
“Well, what?” I say. He stammers a bit, “Do you want to stay here or not?”
“Can my daughter stay with me?”
He looks at me, less seriously now, softly smiling. “Yes. I just want you to be well.”
****
[This is a story about me confronting one of the greatest fears any father has, that I might ever lose one of my daughters and somehow be directly responsible. It's pretty much based on my life except that critical accident just never happened. The thought of it did as I drove home from the city with my sleeping daughter next to me in the car late one Saturday night after a very long day. I asked myself how I would respond. My heart and soul immediately ran away from the question. So, I had my answer and this story.
We all have our fears, our pain and our hurts. We each try to hide them, even... especially from ourselves. Healing requires that we confront that fear, that we confront that pain, that we experience the hurts else they become all that we have and drive us to places of unhealthy behavior, even madness.
My prayer for each of us is that the one true Counselor who confronts us both with Truth and in Love, the Holy Spirit, will lead us from these delusions we create to make our sadness seem bearable, so that He might help us find true healing in Christ. This would be so much better than living trapped in the mindstorm of our lies.]
