Scene 8-You will Live

Hey everyone,

Two and a half months ago - as I was preparing to make the next post - my computer died.

It's been a mission  scrambling about trying to get things together so I could get a new computer while living here in China, but it has been completed!  I have a beautiful new computer and am back to writing this blog!  Please read, comment, and share with your friends - I'm really excited about these writings and hope we can get a good conversation going.

Thanks for reading...and now...after two and a half months delay...

****************** Scene 8 - You will Live *******************************************

My father remembers that first night, staying at the hospital.

Sitting next to my son’s bed

I didn’t sleep.

Couldn’t sleep
in the uncomfortable hospital chairs.

And I knew You would live.

I didn’t know why, I didn’t know how,
but I knew,
That for once in your life you would listen to your mother.

************************************************

In times of stress, my father has the ability and tendency to find a space of quiet focus - expelling the distractions of the world and directing his energy primarily to the task at hand.  I have had the privilege of seeing my father attain this state at many times in my life - in situations ranging from difficulties at work to “Oh Shit, there’s a bat in the house!”  From my vantage, it seems my father finds this focus so he can direct his attention toward creating a strategy of how to deal with the conflict - he aims to discover what he can do.

Yet in the scene above, there is nothing he can do.

I imagine my father sitting in the hospital room - straight back, hands on thighs, eyes facing my bed but focused inward as he reaches for an inner quiet - a solemnity coats the scene as he some way in which to prepare - the only certainty being a lack of certainty.

And he comes to a truth - “You will live.”

If there is to be any sort of planning or preparation for his son’s recovery, this is a necessary truth for any action - if it is not true, there is relatively little planning that can be done - were death to occur, the path my father must follow will be presented to him - laying his son’s body and soul to rest while finding acceptance and peace within himself.  Please note, I do not intend to minimize the difficulties involved in a personal journey of acceptance after death, nor do I suggest that decisions are not an important part of the path - but from a pragmatic standpoint, in this situation, the only way my father can prepare for what might happen to his son is by establishing: “You will live.”  This truth, however, is immediately qualified, “I don’t know how…or why…” and in that qualification, he recognizes that he cannot presume to know what it means to “live”.

While working at The Crumley House, I came to recognize the privilege of my recovery, as - due to physical and cognitive limitations - many residents at the at the Crumley House will likely never attain the same level of social competence as I have found in my recovery.  Alternatively, in my travels since composing Who Am I, Again?, I have met numerous individuals who could - and do - traverse this world with few knowing about their brain injury and recovery.  Yet there is  a constant indisputable truth for all these survivors - they Live.  As with giving birth to life, the Return to life after brain injury is dressed with infinite variation and complication - to attempt a prediction of what life will look like after brain injury is to practice in folly.

While I doubt, in this scene above, that my father with through so thorough an analysis of his actions, it happened that by accepting a necessary truth - allowing for the many possible paths recovery may take - my father laid a groundwork for my recovery - a groundwork from which I could heal and flourish most in whatever path my recovery might take.

When researching and composing the storytelling, “Who Am I, Again?”, I remember interviewing my family about their experiences as part of my recovery - there were four of us sitting in the living room of my parent’s house - mother, father, sister, and I - arranged around a minidisc audio recorder.  When this moment was discussed, my father went through a physical change - slight, but noticeable - his focus drifted inward as he re-lived this memory.  When he spoke, I remember him displaying some slight discomfort - subtlety shifting in his seat - as he revealed this moment of vulnerability - I believe a vulnerability caused by the above discussed uncertainty.  Then, when he noticed a moment to escape this unease, he did so by attempting a joke poling fun at my rebellious teenage tendency of refusing parental authority - “I knew that…for once in your life, you would listen to your mother (and live).” (discussed in Scene 7)

At the interview, my mother, my sister, and I allowed him to escape from this moment of vulnerability by giving a slight laugh/groan in response to his joke - while the objective “humor” of this statement could be debated, it is representative of my father’s style of humor - it could even be said that my father was making a “dad joke”.

What I find interesting - when my father is returning to a moment of terrifying uncertainty, he finds solace by making a “dad joke”.  This retreat to pseudo-humor highlights another necessary truth that was present the night my dad sat by my bed - he is my father - that relationship will not change - and, as part of that relationship, my father can be expected to make the customary “dad jokes”.