You hear your phone ring in the dead of the night. It is the voice of a close relative or friend reduced to stuttering out a grim reality that has devastated them with shock.
‘....’ has been rushed to the hospital. They are in the Intensive Care Unit. You better get down there for there is no guarantee they will live.
‘FUCK’....So, FUCK!!!@!!!
You hurry to the hospital and thoughts are racing through your mind. How much they mean to you and how deeply you love them. The great times you have shared. And the thought you might not have any more moments to share. A sense of guilt enters the fray about you never fully expressing their true meaning to you. If they die, how will you realise absolution?
On arriving, you sit silently in the waiting area as you wait for a doctor to fill you in with details and just how bad the situation is. All around are others in various states. The standout is all are wide-eyed due to being overcome by the situation. There are no words you can offer. Just offer a vicarious form of support through sharing in their experience.
A doctor comes to you. Your nearest and dearest has had a stroke and is paralysed on their right side. The concern is they have to perform emergency brain surgery to release a blood clot in their brain. This needs to happen or else they will die. They could also pass during the operation. If the operation is successful it only gets them out of immediate danger.
They give you the opportunity to visit before rushing them into surgery. A brief visit that only fills you with further dread of the ‘maybe’
The Doctor leads you into the Unit. You pass all types of people in dire situations. Some are young children that send chills up your spine.
On reaching your loved one you are taken aback by all the monitors attached. All the tubes inserted into them and the number of people surrounding them as they are prepped for surgery. You kiss them and whisper ‘I love you’ in their ear. You hope this registers in their subconscious and it represents some strength to them.
As they are hurriedly wheeled out it strikes you that the kiss could be the last kiss goodbye.
You sit in the waiting room with your head between your legs. The thoughts of ‘maybe’ races. It represents shards of glass in your head. As defined by their torment and the seeming eye before storm demeanour in them. The eventual storm if it arrives will blow you away.
It is not like previous experiences in palliative units culminating in the death ward. You have the surreal comfort of finality. Where you have accepted your loved one's fate and are just trying to provide comfort and dignity in death. In a sense fluffing up their cloud before they are whisked off to the pearly gates of Heaven.
No Disney in this situation.
Tick Tick....Tick Tick....Tick Tick....
Someone tell me how the surgery is going. Or how it went?
You are so impatient. You want answers but none are forthcoming. Back to the ‘maybe’, the shards of glass are getting sharper in your head.
A Social worker comes to you to try to give you comfort. You appreciate their efforts but you diminish them. In a sense, they are condescending for how can they know what I am truly feeling?
You feel bad for being a bastard by thinking this. They are allowing you the opportunity to vent but you can’t do this for you are struggling to process everything. You are accepting of the prospect of death but you still have lingering denial.
Tick Tick....Tick Tick...Tick Tick....
The feeling of loneliness is overwhelming. It is not because you are alone with others there to support you. It is more because the feelings are so unique in how you process them. Grief has such uniqueness that is different in every individual.
You sit, you get up to pace, you hope and sometimes you resort to prayer.
The only constant is the dread of ‘maybe’
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