Escape to Nowhere

So today is Easter, which is a ‘holiday’ I have not much celebrated for quite some time, and am not really celebrating today.  Much like so many such days, I am alone, contemplating the whys and wherefores of having had my life burned to the ground 16 months ago tomorrow.

A few days ago, tired, sick and scared, I drove myself to the ER at the instruction of my doctor’s office. I was in pain and had evidence that I had some internal bleeding, which it turns out had occurred but had stopped by the day of the trip to the ER. After much testing and sitting around waiting, they were unable to tell me why I was in pain and urged me to have further testing in order to ascertain the cause of the bleeding, which had come and gone.

In the past, when either I or my beloved wife had any type of medical crisis, we were there for each other, could discuss how best to handle it, and would care for one another until the crisis had passed. And believe me, we had some doozies, including one instance where I had a major heart attack at the precise moment when her cancer recurred for the first time.  A scary narrative, to be sure, but we dealt with it, supported each other, and got through it.

It is impossible to describe the feeling of desolation I had Thursday morning walking into the ER.  The idea that had something more severe or debilitating happened, rendering me incapacitated, there would have been no one to notice until perhaps there was the ripe smell of decomposition coming from the house.  Since then I have tried to think if there is somewhere I could go where I might not feel so isolated, so on my own. There is not.

Make no mistake, I know there are many friends and family members close by that care a great deal, and who would go to extraordinary lengths to be helpful to me in any kind of emergency. But that is significantly different than being in the kind of marriage in which I was for 20+ years.  Never lonely, never isolated, never frightened. My friends and family have their own lives, their own families, and are not responsible for alleviating my sense of dread, my sense of isolation. That is not in their job description, nor should it be.

There is no good answer to this conundrum. It is one of life’s most horrific occurrences. There is nowhere to which to escape. Well, except perhaps one…

03-27-2016:MPC