Quiet.... Hospital Zone
This entry was written in my long-hand journal on 3/18/08. I’m posting it now because, well, after you read it, you’ll understand why it took a while to get to it.
Sunday night, at approximately 2:15 in the morning, I got a call from my mom. No call received at 2:15 in the morning is good news. This call was no exception. My father, who I already knew was ill, but refused to see a doctor, had taken a dramatic turn for the worse and was on his way to University Hospital. Now, two days later, I am sitting here, as I have for the majority of the last forty-eight hours, in my uncomfortable folding chair, watching him sleep, chatting with doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, nutritionists, technicians, and nurse’s aids, all the while pretending that I could help, somehow, if asked.
Mostly I’ve been sitting.
I’ve done that a lot these last couple of years; sit in hospital rooms. It is something that one does when you are the only reasonably healthy person in your family. I find it an odd sort of experience; or maybe, I experience it oddly. Most people, if you believe what they say, and I have no reason not to believe what people say on this matter, find hospitals disturbing at best, unbearably frightening at worst. I know that when I was young, and I had to stay in the hospital due to different diseases (pre-HMO, obviously), I would scream like a banshee on steroids as soon as my parents left for the evening and would not stop until I some how found myself a path to sleepdom, probably with a healthy dose of drugs slipped into my nightly chocolate milk by exasperated nurses.
This is no longer the case. Now, as an adult with an aging, and often ill family, I find the hospital… I want to say comforting, but that is certainly not true. There is nothing comforting about watching someone you love either in pain or hovering in a place that is neither a path to regained health nor a descent to inevitable death. That’s about as far from comforting as one can get in the generally comfortable world of the American middle class.
I think the word closest to the word I mean is “quiet”.
What exactly do I mean by that word, “quiet”?
Certainly, I don’t mean that the hospital is a place “at rest”. There is a constant pulse of movement based on the rhythms of necessity and punctuated by sudden jolts of emergency. Sometimes, when I sit in my hard, little chair and just listen, my aural experience brings me the mental visual of an ant colony; every one moving in what may look like random ways to the casual observer, but in reality is an intricate dance of interweaving purpose.
The quiet I feel is more internal. There is something almost soothing about knowing that you can literally do nothing; that you have to depend on others. It’s not only the patient that’s stuck in this position, but the chair sitter, me, as well. I can literally do nothing but be here, and most of the time I’m not really needed here for that. Let’s face it, the care would happen no matter where I sat.
Yet, I do sit here. I sit here to be a presence. I sit here to show my father that I love him. I sit here to watch what happens. I sit here to learn what those who have the ability can do and then try to explain it all to my mother. I sit here to encourage my father in his attempts to get well. I sit here to make myself feel better.
In my Spiritual Renewal group we talk a lot about completely surrendering our will; to letting go of our egos and our need to control. The Church fathers seemed to teach that only by doing this can one find true faith and then true happiness. I think maybe that is what quiet is, and I think maybe that is what I find here. I have no choice. I have to give up control; and in losing that control I find a kind of peace. I find quiet.
Sunday night, at approximately 2:15 in the morning, I got a call from my mom. No call received at 2:15 in the morning is good news. This call was no exception. My father, who I already knew was ill, but refused to see a doctor, had taken a dramatic turn for the worse and was on his way to University Hospital. Now, two days later, I am sitting here, as I have for the majority of the last forty-eight hours, in my uncomfortable folding chair, watching him sleep, chatting with doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, nutritionists, technicians, and nurse’s aids, all the while pretending that I could help, somehow, if asked.
Mostly I’ve been sitting.
I’ve done that a lot these last couple of years; sit in hospital rooms. It is something that one does when you are the only reasonably healthy person in your family. I find it an odd sort of experience; or maybe, I experience it oddly. Most people, if you believe what they say, and I have no reason not to believe what people say on this matter, find hospitals disturbing at best, unbearably frightening at worst. I know that when I was young, and I had to stay in the hospital due to different diseases (pre-HMO, obviously), I would scream like a banshee on steroids as soon as my parents left for the evening and would not stop until I some how found myself a path to sleepdom, probably with a healthy dose of drugs slipped into my nightly chocolate milk by exasperated nurses.
This is no longer the case. Now, as an adult with an aging, and often ill family, I find the hospital… I want to say comforting, but that is certainly not true. There is nothing comforting about watching someone you love either in pain or hovering in a place that is neither a path to regained health nor a descent to inevitable death. That’s about as far from comforting as one can get in the generally comfortable world of the American middle class.
I think the word closest to the word I mean is “quiet”.
What exactly do I mean by that word, “quiet”?
Certainly, I don’t mean that the hospital is a place “at rest”. There is a constant pulse of movement based on the rhythms of necessity and punctuated by sudden jolts of emergency. Sometimes, when I sit in my hard, little chair and just listen, my aural experience brings me the mental visual of an ant colony; every one moving in what may look like random ways to the casual observer, but in reality is an intricate dance of interweaving purpose.
The quiet I feel is more internal. There is something almost soothing about knowing that you can literally do nothing; that you have to depend on others. It’s not only the patient that’s stuck in this position, but the chair sitter, me, as well. I can literally do nothing but be here, and most of the time I’m not really needed here for that. Let’s face it, the care would happen no matter where I sat.
Yet, I do sit here. I sit here to be a presence. I sit here to show my father that I love him. I sit here to watch what happens. I sit here to learn what those who have the ability can do and then try to explain it all to my mother. I sit here to encourage my father in his attempts to get well. I sit here to make myself feel better.
In my Spiritual Renewal group we talk a lot about completely surrendering our will; to letting go of our egos and our need to control. The Church fathers seemed to teach that only by doing this can one find true faith and then true happiness. I think maybe that is what quiet is, and I think maybe that is what I find here. I have no choice. I have to give up control; and in losing that control I find a kind of peace. I find quiet.