We went out for hot dogs the day of the surgery. We had never gone out for hot dogs, at least as far as I can remember. Carter, my best and oldest friend since pre-school, who has always been (and probably always will be) at least two feet taller than me, his mom and dad, my brother, father, and mom were all there. We laughed together, but each of us carried our own internal anchor heavy weight of fear.
It was a sweaty-hot day in mid June, and we were running late. We had the car - a navy blue Volvo SUV named Thor - all loaded up with my drums - which had been given to me by our neighbors. We were on our way to the Cedars, a home for the developmentally disabled, to play music for them. That’s when it happened. She turned her head to back down the street, and all of a sudden, she lost her sense of sight, smell, and hearing. Ringing in her ears. The car stops. A spinning vertigo of darkness consumes her whole. She’ll resurface to tell me:
“Call your father.”
Today, I’ll hear the story for the millionth time. Our attempted road trip across the country. The beet-red Volkswagen van. Breaking down in Chinle, the yellow, dusty town in which alcohol is banned, and dogs, which might be coyotes, lay out in the middle of the highways, where the blistering Arizona sun must feel the best.
Earlier in the day, before going out for hotdogs, we had had cocktails at Carter’s family’s apartment. Their place is in Pacific Heights, the “old money” part of San Francisco, where the houses rival hotels in size and elegance. We played video games. I remember playing some baseball video game that I didn’t give a damn about. No one did. None of us were thinking about anything but the surgery.
Stranded for days in Chinle with nothing to do, we decided to go on a horseback ride. There was this beautiful place called Spider Rock, where the sandstone climbed high to befriend the aquamarine flavored sky. The 110 degree desert baked cherry-red complexions into our no-longer grinning faces. Suffering from heat stroke, dehydration, and just pure weakness, ten year old me took to sobbing. Perhaps it was the hot sun, or maybe it was because Sundeck, my horse, who might have actually been from the wild, decided to prance gleefully down the 3 foot wide path on the inside of Canyon de Chelly. Our guide, Keef, told us it would be an hour and a half in, an hour and a half out, and that there would be a canopy of shade the whole time. But nothing in life is a canopy of shade.
So the kids all gathered in the TV room and we played video games. The adults sipped wine or beer in the kitchen - except for my mom, who wasn’t allowed to have alcohol that day. They enjoyed life. None of the adults were engaged with anything other than each other. This could be the last celebration or get together our two families would ever have together. The antique grandfather clock on the wall clicked on, one minute per hour.
Up until this point in the summer, I had been strong. I needed to be strong for my mom, for my dad, and for my brother. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason, I felt it was my responsibility to keep the family together if the worst case scenario were to happen. I couldn’t let anyone see me vulnerable or weak. This meant no crying, no nothing. Stoic. Then, one night, in the safety of my own bed and under the protection of my blankets, I lost it. I bawled. I bawled my eyes out. Nothing can happen to her, I would think to myself. I was scared of losing the person I was closest with at the time. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to help take care of my brother and my dad if my mom died. Understanding that she suffered from depression on top of a brain tumor, I was scared she would die and not know how much people truly loved her.
She was in and out of the hospital more times than I can even recall. Collapsed lungs from laying in bed too long, which happened because she had meningitis, a bacteria which had crept its way inside of her brain and nestled itself between fate and science. One often starts to wonder – because everything happens for a reason – why do horrible things happen to good people? Is it just the universe’s way of making the good ones stronger? Is it natural selection? It’s nice to believe that everything happens for a reason. Otherwise, the world would go to shit without rhyme or reason, and we’d have to just accept that as a way of life. There was a reason we had suffered through a seven hour horseback ride through 110 heat with only 30 minutes under a canopy of shade. There was a reason our car broke down in the middle of Navajo nation. There was a reason a brain tumor the size of a golf ball formed in the back of my mom’s head.
I can remember the smell of the hospital perfectly. It smells like death. Like souls rotting away as their bodies are professionally stitched up. Blood transfusion bags the color of a cheap pinot noir you bought at CVS because it’s on sale for $3.95. The smell of bedpans, and intravenous drips slowly resuscitated those who were not currently under their canopies of shade. The walls were painted a disgusting shade of green that should be reserved for the insides of avocados. “Code blue, paging doctor so and so, code blue, paging doctor so and so,” I hear over the PA system. The TV show Scrubs has taught me that code blue means code red. Half of me is scared, because that could have been my mom, who was in the ICU for days because of her meningitis. But the other, stronger half was desensitized to anything and everything.
It all begins with a phone call. I answer the phone.
“Is Sally present?” It’s Dr. Andrews.
“Yeah, one sec.”
“Hello?” I leave the room, but stand nearby. Something feels off. Silence. Silence. Silence. Hang up. Silence. Crying.
“Call dad. Tell him he needs to come home.”
I call dad, tell him he needs to come home.
He asks why.
“Just come home.”
The tangerine Northern California sun shines fiercely through the old fashioned panes of glass which fill our wooden doors, making its way through the forest of trees which make up our front yard. Then the sun returns to its home under the blanket of the stars, and the darkness rises.
My dad calls family and then friends, each time beginning the phone call the exact same. “Are you sitting down?” I can’t imagine that anybody actually seated themselves to hear what was next, though I’m sure they emotionally braced themselves to the tune of, “Oh shit.” My mom cried. I remember perfectly the words she told everyone. “I’m gonna’ feel sorry for myself tonight, but tomorrow, I'm going to be a fighter.” That always pissed me off. I just wanted her to be strong for all of us. But she was openly admitting that she was allowing herself to be weak for that night. It was selfish of me, but a 13-year-old’s logic isn’t the same logic you have at 21.
We were free. With the windows rolled all the way down, the fresh air that blew through our liberated bodies was the same air that Keef’s ancestors inhaled and exhaled hundreds of years ago. We were finally leaving. If I wasn’t ten years old, I probably would have been popping some champagne to celebrate our departure.
It has been said that the average person meets approximately eighteen thousand people within their lifetime. That’s a big number. Cut that number in half, then in half again, because you don’t stay in touch with every single person you meet. That’s still forty-five hundred souls that you meet that would feel something – even the slightest bit of sadness – if you were to perish.
4500 souls who often forget that nothing lasts forever. Not a canopy of shade, and not the hot sun over Chinle.
