Scene 07-Mother's Arrival at the Hospital

**************Scene 07 - Mother’s Arrival at the Hospital********************************

My mother remembers arriving at the hospital,

Moving through the maze of corridors - dead ends,
Trying to figure out where the put my son-

Seeing my son’s body,
Through observation glass.
Lying on a table,
tied down with wires and tubes.

Silent, Still.

And I said, Lethan, you will live.
Hear me!
You will live.

And I closed my eyes, and began to pray.

I heard a voice - behind me.

There was a doctor -
tall, long white robe, full white beard, kind face and -
and these eyes that, Knew things.

Are you alright, mam?

Me?  oh, I’m fine -
well, my son was in a, car accident
and I was Praying because -

Well, I am a clinical psychologist, and I have read several Blind studies that have shown the healing effects of prayer…

Mam, you don’t need to be blind to pray.

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

I imagine my arrival at the hospital like a scene from the medical drama ER with George Clooney - camera fastened to a gurney as it races down the hall - busting doors open like the Sheriff in an Old West Saloon - beautiful doctors pausing just long enough to deliver pertinent information before darting off in a dozen directions.

My mother wasn’t present for this dramatic entrance, but I imagine her trying to retrace the path through a labyrinth of white, sterilized corridors - adrenaline ignited by anxiety.

And - stop - in front of the observation window.

  She prays.

And I imagine the doctor appearing behind her - his face cast in the soft light from an overhead lamp - has a “folksy” wisdom that fills his eyes and dribbles down his long, white beard - if you remember the TV program “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”, I imagine this doctor to be the specialist from the next town over, come by to provide assistance.

What I find interesting about this moment is my mother’s reaction.

She has never been shy about her Christian faith, nor does she proselytize - and she is also a respected, professional psychologist and family therapist.  These are two spheres of her personal identity that, while they in no way directly conflict, are kept in clearly separated sides of her mind - professional / personal - one part focused on logical, tangible results while the other is involved with the ineffable comfort and completeness that accompanies her religion. 

And here - in a moment of great fear and uncertainty - surrounded by professionals focused on producing the tangible result of keeping her son alive - she reaches out and seeks spiritual assistance through prayer.  This seems like a reasonable choice - yet when approached by a fellow professional, she takes a step back and seeks to defend her use of prayer - her personal persona being presented in a professional location.


Here is a moment when her worlds inexorably collide - her professional, scientific mind attempts to use an interpretation of a clinical study to justify her natural, impulsive reaction that is driven by need and fear and hope and love and expressed through prayer - this collision between the spiritual and instinctual creates confusion. 

And the doctor responds with a simple affirmation - “You don’t need to be blind to pray.”  Her fellow professional acknowledges that there are times when there exists a need to rely on and put trust in something greater than science.

In the performance, this moment is just a moment - and we quickly move on - acknowledgement, support, and a shared hope between strangers that leaves a pleasant aftertaste in the mind.  When looking at this moment, it is easy to view it through the lens of religiosity - the prayer, the doctor as the archetypical angel - and as I arranged these stories, I saw this moment shimmering in such a light - but upon reflection, I see that decorating the scene with such grandiosity detracts from the beautiful simplicity of a human interaction. 

I have spent so much time (paradoxically?) deconstructing the simplicity of this moment because it highlights the confusing manner in which, during the experience of recovery, personas will collide and the barrier between one’s social worlds becomes blurred.  Recovery is never a part of life - once the recovery process begins, it is Life for the caregivers as well as the survivor.  This can be understandably aggravating and will assuredly create a “role confusion” in some situations - “As the caregiver, do I portray ‘the Professional’, ‘the Loving Parent’, or ‘the Friend-in-Need’ right now?”

And this is where I, as a writer, become stuck.  I wish I could offer clear advice - I want to conclude this essay with a step-by-step, “How To” manual explaining the ways one can synthesize these personas - I want to answer this confusion, but reality is not so generous that it supplies every question with an answer.

In the moment above, when the doctor cannot provide my mother with an answer, he acknowledges that her need for prayer exists.  This article seeks to acknowledge that this role confusion exists.

Scene 06 - God's Lap

****************Scene 06-God’s Lap*************************************

Sarah remembers, the night of her accident,

I was moved to a large, white, empty room.

And there,
I had a conversation,
with God.

And I closed my eyes, lay my head in God’s lap,
and God told me I had to make a decision.

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

If you read the previous posting, you know my beliefs about God.  If you didn’t, take a few minutes and read it now - it will provide the context for for my reflections on this experience.

Returning to the script above, what I find beautiful in this moment is the decision.  At first glance, one can easily assume the question is “to live or to die” - but notice that Sarah never actually tells us the question, nor does she provide an answer. 

Reflecting upon this moment as part of this writing process, I came to a different interpretation: the decision cannot be “to live or to die” as that has already been decided - Sarah did have her accident, she did live, and she did receive brain injury - these  circumstances are beyond her control.  In light of these initial factors, I suggest that the decision is how she will face her new reality - accept and work with her circumstances or try to change what has happened.

This experience may be a powerful interpretation of a dream or she may have been visited by God - regardless, the decision is one that must be faced by every survivor.

My Spiritual Beliefs

Following the script, the next scene in Who Am I, Again? brings up the experience of God and I feel that discussing the experience of God necessitates the question of God.  Furthermore, variations of a holy experience are discussed several times in the piece, so I will take the following entry to provide my answer to the question: Do I (Lethan) believe in God?

If a label must be implied, I am agnostic - I do not claim to know if there is or is not a God.  But to answer such an infinite question with a trite word or phrase - I believe/do not believe in God - seems flawed, so follow this:

We start by defining “God”.  I do not believe in the personified image of God - big dude, long beard, massive finger that he points at things with - this example is comical, but images of God in human form are consistently used to present God as an understandable concept - God?  We’re just like him.  As a storyteller, I understand the use of this idea, but do not subscribe to it - nor do I believe that most “believers” honestly view God in this humanoid form.  By my understanding, if God exists, God must be a force of perfect infinity that exceeds our even conceiving of comprehending its completeness of perfection.  If a concept is, by definition, beyond comprehension, how can I even hope of comprehending of it.  This leads to my agnostic view - not from a lack of thinking about the question, but a recognition that, by my logic, I cannot know.  If prodded, I would place myself on the atheist side of the agnostic spectrum - I find too many logical conundrums in the concept of God and would prefer objective evidence - but similarly, when reexamining this story, I have not found a fully satisfying answer that explains divine experiences - personal or collected from interviews.  For these reasons, I cannot claim to know whether God as a conscientious force exists - it is beyond me.

I do, however, believe in a collective energy - a force that might guide the course of macro and micro universal events.  I use the words “might guide” because sometimes this guidance happens, and other times not.  This is the energy that creates sudden serendipities from unexpected events - the odd decision to visit a new coffee shop where you meet the person who changes your life - going to work and being fired on the exact day you were planning on quitting - the situations are always specific improbabilities that, while improbable, nevertheless happen. 

The serendipity of life.

When examining the timeline of my life, there are many unrepeatable moments that have brought me to my current location.  These are moments that could have taken any of infinite other different directions, but for some particularity of what happened, that moment changed my life; moments in my life - apart from the accident - I think of approaching the local librarian about storytelling and being taken under his wing to find an unexpected career path - of deciding to try out a boardgames event where I met my girlfriend (now of nearly 3 years) - of visiting my philosophy professor and hearing her tell of her son’s experience teaching abroad in South Korea - the list could continue indefinitely.

I challenge you (the reader) to look at your timeline of life and recognize improbable decisions or occurrences that brought you to where you are now - maybe how you met your husband or wife, your current employment, where you currently live; something brought you to where you are now, and I suggest - more often than not - some of those events were almost absurdly improbable.  It is events such as these that I feel come from the energy or serendipity of life.

In a similar way, I do feel the course of this serendipitous energy is affected by people.  Groups coming together creates a powerful energy - as is demonstrated countless times in history - and if the motivation behind this energy is positive and pure, I recognize that great good can occur.  Some might suggest that the energy I describe is God by another name - and I have no problem with that - I don’t use the term “God” because I do not apply an independent consciousness or motivation to the energy.  I also do not imbue this energy with any objective “good” - the same way positive energy can lift one up, negative or despairing energy can drag one down and may produce a negative result. 

Please recognize this is NOT a suggestion of a “alternate religion” or a substitute for religion - this is simply my views on spirituality and what I believe about divine power.  I also encourage you to hold your personal beliefs, provided they do not lead to harmful action toward yourself or other people, and I am glad if your belief helps your life.  As an agnostic, I acknowledge that do not have the knowledge to determine what is divinely real, but this is the set of beliefs that helps me to find peace in the incomprehensible universe.

This is where I come from when discussing God.  Please note, I do not intend this belief to discredit or explain away any experiences of God - experience in any form is ineffable (too great to adequately communicate) and the experience of God is, again by definition, incomprehensible by anyone other than the person experiencing.  Instead, when discussing an experience of God, I will describe what this experience represents and/or questions it raises.


This was written to explain what I believe in my spirituality and to encourage conversation.  Beliefs are a near impossible thing to change through discussion, and I don’t seek to change any beliefs you have, but I would love to hear your thoughts - ideas that support or refute my beliefs will be encouraged, as long as they are delivered respectfully and without malice.

I also recognize that, as of now, these ideas are somewhat abstract and might seem a little “hocus pocus-ie” - I do not intend this and do not feel fully satisfied with my above presentation, but don't want to risk losing the focus and momentum of this blog because I’m stuck on an idea.  With that in mind, I would appreciate your questions to help me recognize where I need further clarification.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to your responses.

Scene 5-My Mother's Call

***********************Scene 05 - My Mother’s Call****************************

My mother was in her home office when she got the call.

It was late, after eight,
i was finishing up paperwork and the telephone rang - who…-
I picked up the phone,

and learned my son had been involved in a  serious automobile accident,
He had been life-flighted to Geisinger Medical Center,
He was in a Coma -

and there are moment when the world will freeze,
Thoughts, emotions, they don’t make sense,
Frozen as you try to comprehend…

But the world continues to move,
and I needed to tell his father - he was at work - I needed -

I put down the phone.
Collected my things.
Turned out the lights.
And made sure to take the dog out before I left.

I didn’t know when I would return.

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

In his book, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell presents the “Hero’s Journey” as a sequence of events that is common in many heroic tales of folklore.  He goes on to suggest (as roughly summarized by me) that this sequence is common because it metaphorically mirrors the “journey” a person undertakes when he or she is shaken from normal events and goes through a “life transformation” - raising a child, puberty, marriage, etc…  The first stage in this journey is “The Call to Adventure” - when the hero of a story begins his or her quest.  In popular culture, we often think of a hero choosing to take on a quest, but an adventure may begin from some unforeseen circumstance or unintended event - in Campbell’s words “The adventure may begin as a mere blunder…” 

My mother was in her home office when she got the call.

It’s important to remember that brain injury affects more than just the survivor - the process of healing involves everyone.  In an instant, the world changes and everyone involved with a survivor begins his or her personal journey.  My mother is a psychologist and was finishing paperwork at her home office when her world changed.  In my storytelling, I use words to freeze-frame and slightly dramatize this instant, because it seems that moments of such great import should be given more emphasis - sustained a second longer so that realities can adjust - but in truth, the universe never slows - one instant will continue to last exactly one instant. 

In that instant, my mother did a remarkable thing - with emotions and information and questions crashing around her, she kept going.  I have been blessed by a family that, while often highly emotional, also has a pragmatic streak the size of the Mississippi, and - in that instant - my mother had the wisdom to recognize that This was what life had laid before her - it would be taking a great deal of her time so she had better make sure that things were as orderly as possible before she goes began on the road.  She didn’t deny or avoid reality, but did her best to be ready for it - this was not her decision, but the energies of her reality had shifted and she acknowledged the path that was presented to her.  No one chooses brain injury - the call comes and the hero must answer it.

Accepting the situation - first by mother and then by my father as soon as he was informed - was instrumental in shaping my path of recovery. A realistic approach that allowed my parents - and later me - to see the situation, evaluate choices, and take action on that information.  I do not mean to imply that this was an emotionless approach to recovery - emotions were always high - but my parents had the pragmatic wisdom to see that these emotions were recognized, acknowledged, allowed to remain - but told to stay off to the side so that they didn’t block a more realistic view of things.  This approach was certainly not the easiest way to approach recovery - nor can I say with 100% confidence that it always allowed the best decisions - but I do believe this approach provided a consistency-of-method to how my recovery would continue.  This consistency allowed me to feel that the progress of my recovery was stable, helping to create the ground work for my recovery in full to achieve the best possible results.

I do not mean to imply that it was ONLY my parents pragmatism that allowed for my recovery - there are infinite variables that factor into any circumstance - but I do believe that the approach taken by my parents was beneficial.  Not only did it encourage pragmatic and rational decisions, but it provided a bit of shelter from the torrential waves of emotion tormenting each moment of recovery - created a land where things tried to make sense. 

Every person involved with a recovery is a hero, and each hero faces unknown challenges.  It is the hero’s responsibility - as a survivor or caregiver - to face these challenges and find the path to transformation.

That’s my two-cents on the subject.  Thank you for reading - please comment below.

My Accident - what happened

**********************My Accident - What Happened**************************

The introduction of “Who Am I, Again?” setups up the story correctly - I was early in my senior year of high school when I was called upon to take my sister to her small, rural, Quaker elementary school - Greenwood Friend’s School - for an overnight party as part of the newly established middle school - at the time, there were only 4 middle-schoolers enrolled in the school.  I was a relatively new driver, and had just had an adolescent spat with my mother, so it was exciting to get out of the house and just drive. 

At the school, after letting my sister run off with her friends, I had a discussion with her middle-school advisor - as I used to attend the school, she was also my former French teacher.  I remember feeling a sense of maturity talking with my French teacher - I was an almost adult (17 years old), not just a kid like my sister and her friends, and I could have conversation about more adult things - plans for college and the artistic projects I was currently involved in.  The way she respected my plans while sharing her experiences - and the fact my parents were nowhere near me - made it feel like one of my first truly “adult conversations”.

My last memory is as stated in the performance script - “..watching her wave goodbye, through my rearview mirror, as I drove off into the night.”

The accident occurred on a quiet, narrow, country road - it’s not the main road between my house and my sister’s school, but it’s a route that takes a little less time and is much more interesting for a new driver.  I don’t remember the drive leading up to the car accident, but I have been told that a car had just passed me - traveling the opposite direction - when he saw me loose control and crash into a telephone pole (through his rear-view mirror).  My guess - I was driving a little two fast (10ish miles over the speed limit), and - being relatively new to the road - when I passed the other driver I swerved just enough that my wheel dipped over the side of the narrow, country road, making me lose control for just a moment, but that moment sent me into the telephone pole.  That’s my guess at what happened - not proven, but it makes sense to me.

What can be proven are the events that followed: the man who witnessed my accident rushed to the nearest farmhouse, banging on the door, asking to use the telephone (occurred in the BC era - Before Cellphones); fortunately, no other major accidents had happened in the region so the hospital was able to immediately send out their emergency rescue helicopter; and the volunteer emergency crew - that just happened to include our auto-mechanic and family friend - responded in record time and flew me to Geisinger Medical Center, the large regional hospital.

Those are the facts surrounding my accident and rescue - a nearly textbook-perfect rescue situation; several friends have commented on how lucky I was - except that I had an accident.  I recognize this good fortune and have no doubt that the timeliness and quality of the rescue were factors that allowed my exceptional recovery, but I also realize that a rescue alone cannot predict the path of recovery; be it a solider on the field of battle, a young mother tripping down the stairs, an athlete in an accident on the way to the game - when brain injury occurs every survivor begins a long journey.

My recovery has been a gift - whether that gift comes from God or circumstance is inconsequential: I have been given the opportunity witness and experience a full journey of recovery and then to use my training and talent to share that story.  By terming it a “gift”, I do not mean to make light of any of the tragedy in this experience - but I did survive, and by surviving believe I have gained a rare understanding of a tragic situation - this privileged understanding is what I term a gift.  It is my hope that with this gift, other survivors and caregivers will be inspired to recognize their own tragically gained gifts, and by sharing experiences can help to educate the world about the realities of brain injury and recovery.

That’s where I began my journey, and where I hope it continues to go.  In these first several entries, I’ve tried to setup the logic behind my thoughts as well as introduce the performance piece - I’m not sure where we’re going from here. My goal is to post two entries a week as I comment on “Who Am I, Again?”, but there will likely be some missed and/or late entries do to life situations.  Follow along, subscribe, share with friends, and please leave comments with thoughts on my writings or parts of your own story - I’m excited to see what you write.

Until then, all the best and chat soon.