Waking Up

There are problems involved in waking up.

Some of us live in a dream. Some of us sleepwalk through life, afraid of what we'll experience if the meds wear off. Some of us exist in a nightmare that doesn't seem to end.

But there is a call for all of us to wake up.

"Wake up, o sleeper,
Rise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you." (Eph. 5:1)

Katherine is in the process of waking up now. For the past two weeks, it’s been as if the anesthesia is finally wearing off...Narnia is thawing. She really had us fooled before. She seemed so alert and ‘with it’ at times in the ICU that we thought she was more aware of what had happened than she actually was. We explained that she had been through brain surgery, that her life had been in grave danger, but that God was answering our prayers for her healing. She would nod and give us a thumbs up, or point up to heaven and then make a fist, which meant “I am strong in the Lord.” We learned to communicate fairly well through hand signals, and thought we were all on the same page.

And then it turned into Groundhog Day, where we had to live through everything all over again. And again...and again...the effects of short-term memory loss. That has given us the gift of repetitive loss. For instance, things which we thought had been understood, processed, and accepted are felt as fresh wounds. As our efforts at communication have become increasingly successful, our knowledge of this has deepened.

One morning I walked into the room and heard a croaky but insistent “Mom!” while I was still washing my hands. When I came around the curtain, Katherine was frantically beckoning me to her side. “My eye,” she mouthed/croaked, “My eye!” I looked at the eye in question through the fake glasses patched on one side. “Yes, it looks so much better,” I told her. It took me a few seconds to untangle her next comment: “I had no idea!” “What?” I asked. “That it turns in!!!”she said while pointing to her nose.

She had just seen herself in a mirror for the first time...that she remembered.

Another day, she was lying on her side, holding onto the rail in an attempt to alleviate the pain in her hip. With sad eyes, she looked up at me and said, “Wus.” “What??” I kept asking her to repeat. I eventually deciphered, “Worst. This is the worst thing there is. THE worst thing that could happen.” Believing it is important to let her grieve, I agreed. “Yeah, this is about as bad as it gets.” She nodded. “But we still have you,” I added in a moment or two. “And James still has his mommy. Would you rather be here like this or be in heaven now?” (Trust me, I wouldn’t be asking that kind of question if I didn’t already know how this particular person would answer.) Her response was to give me the chunky baby thighs sign, accompanied by a lop-sided grin.

On a third occasion, when she was having a particularly bad day, she communicated words even more heartbreaking. By this point, her speech had begun improving to the point where we were understanding about 75% . That day she felt that something had been misunderstood and miscommunicated by a staff member, and for some reason it was absolutely vital that we get it. She was talking to me and her nurse Phil. “I just want you to believe me! Inside, inside (she pounded her chest for emphasis) I’m normal! I’m normal inside!” Of course, she didn’t sound “normal” as she said this. Right now she sounds kind of like a fifth-grader’s imitation of a “retarded” person coming through a robot's voicebox. (A temporary condition, I hope and pray.) Phil and I were both grabbing for the tissue box. “I just want to go home! I just want to hold my baby!” She rocked her empty arms. Phil and I mostly just listened as she got it all out. She wiped her eyes, pulled herself together, and held my hand. In a barely audible tone, she mouthed, “It’s a nightmare, Mom. A nightmare that doesn’t end.”

An endless nightmare...well, maybe a prolonged, drawn-out one. We know that all dreams, even bad ones, come to an end.

Personally, I hate waking up. It’s unpleasant on multiple levels. I usually wake up tired, grumpy, and aching. I cringe at leaving the soft haven of my squeaky old canopy bed for the harsh realities of morning. Many times I put the pillow back over my head and tell whichever family member is bugging me that I “just need to finish this dream to see how it ends.” But we all know that can’t be done. (Unless maybe you’re still in college.)

Waking up to the cruel reality of her broken condition is hard for Katherine. It is even harder for those of us who love her dearly. But it also indicates that healing is taking place. She is returning to life, with all of its pain and challenges, joys and delights. She has felt some tingling in her face, which is similar to when your foot or your arm’s been asleep and then the feeling starts coming back like pins and needles. It’s not pleasant when that happens, but it’s better than complete numbness.

Sometimes even pain is better than feeling nothing at all.

Katherine’s crisis has forced me to wake up as well. Something like this has the effect of instantly clearing the cobwebs, dissipating the fog. I’m guilty of sleepwalking through a lot of life, of living in fantasyland much of the time. This has jolted me back hard to the reality of the frailty and brevity of life..."la condition humaine." I carry an awareness that every day could be my last. I am not the captain of my own ship. None of us are here for very long, anyway. I’m on a trip that’s well beyond halfway over. (Unless, God forbid, He makes me stay here ‘til I’m 110 for being such a slow learner.) I remind myself that I could lose the ones I love most at any minute. I am trying to prioritize more than ever before. What REALLY matters today, at this hour, in this present moment? WHY AM I HERE?

It is time.

As Paul warned the believers in Rome:

“ This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” (Rom. 13:11)

...Arise, shine, for our light has come...