View from the Sidelines
Naked and afraid
I want to be better than I am.
Better at letting other people shine. Better at accepting a minor role. Better at finding peace and contentment from the sideline.
Because my ego tortures me.
My partner Kim suffered a stroke four days ago. Her family rallied, as it reliably does in crisis. Someone has been at Kim’s bedside for every minute of ICU visiting hours. Sometimes more than the two allowed visitors. Sometimes far more (I believe our record so far is five).
We have directed our barrage of questions to the doctors and nurses and everyone else we know who has any experience with strokes. Every question has been answered patiently and respectfully and thoroughly. The answers help assuage us, they provide the information that we use to anchor our hopes for Kim’s recovery, they feed our mostly-false confidence that we can predict what will happen next. But they don’t help Kim.
I wish that I could help Kim.
I wish that I could lay my hand on her head, Christ-like, and heal her injury and restore all her damaged brain tissue so that she won’t have to face months of struggle. So that she won’t have to question her past choices, seeking an explanation for her condition. So that she won’t have to doubt her future.
I don’t want her to go to sleep dreading the next day’s attempts to get her left arm and left leg to move, afraid for her failures. I don’t want her to spend night after night away from her dogs and her garden and her neighbors who unfailingly greet her as they walk by. I don’t want her to spend nights away from me. I don’t want her to bemoan her fate during tired moments and then feel shame for her passing weakness.
I don’t want her to suffer.
I wish that I could help Kim.
But I can’t.
I can encourage. I can commiserate. I can listen.
My exhortations may provide her a sugar high, but it will be Kim — and only Kim — who takes every single step, who decides what she will do and what is beyond her effort, who sets her expectations and feels the anger and frustration when she falls short of them. Although I fervently wish I could, I cannot save her from her fears and her disappointments.
I can hold her when she fails and celebrate with her when she succeeds, but I will be the team owner on the dais, the one who had nothing to do with the actual outcome of the Super Bowl, taking an undeserved bow among the players and coaches who made the result.
I usually don’t mind failure. I am not perfect; I fail every day. Sometimes I wonder if I don’t undermine my own efforts with the ease with which I accept that I may not read for thirty minutes a day, or take the time I intended to meditate or work out, or get to bed by 11pm. But those failures affect only me, and they are easily reversed the next day.
Failing others guts me.
I know I need to release my desire to control what I cannot. Railing against the wind and the rain, going to war against the sea, it changes not one thing. But it does bring me a sense of failure. If only I was better I could help her.
But I’m not.
And I can’t.
Apparently Reinhold Niebuhr knew what he was talking about. And perhaps one day, preferably sooner rather than later, I will find courage. And wisdom.
Until that day, however, I have only hope. And an ego to torture me.
I want Kim to get better soon.
