Gilda

The physical stuff is going to be difficult, but that's a separate issue.

There are other things I've been thinking about in relation to the accident that I'm going to need time to process, mostly stuff that makes me angry.

1. For roughly the first day, they wouldn't let Grace make my medical decisions or do the next of kin stuff related to my situation, or visit me in ICU--it was "family only". She had to get a court order based on my living will to even get in to see me, and in the meantime Sissy had to relay her decisions. They tell me that it was like a sitcom. The doctor would talk to Sissy, Grace would tell them what she wanted, and Sissy would tell them, "Do what she says."

If I had died sometime in that first 24 hours after Grace and Sissy got there, and it was uncertain during that time, it would have been without Grace's being there with me. Without my living will and the court order, Grace wouldn't have been there to talk to me those days I was unconscious, to help me find myself again in those next few days when I, literally, wasn't myself.

A husband would have been assumed to have these rights. My wife wasn't; she had to prove that she was the one I wanted caring for my life and my welfare.

2. The hospital called my parents. Grace called them. My brother called them. They didn't care, even that first day when my survival was far less than assured. They didn't call to find out how I was, and didn't take Grace's calls when she tried to update them. Sissy was the only one who didn't make an attempt.

I know I should just . . . let it go, write them out of my life the way they have me and Sissy. I know this. But I can't. I am the product of their love, the joining of their essense. What spirit I posess, much of what makes me the person I am today, for good or bad, comes from them. They gave me life and a home and love and support for all of my formative years, they, more than any other person, helped to mold me into the person I've become.

And it doesn't matter how long it's been, how distant we are in miles and years, I still love them and I still desperately crave their love, and it still kills me to know that if it had been a few minutes earlier or later and the man who saw me hadn't been there to call 911 on his cell phone or if any number of factors had been different and I had died, they wouldn't have been there at my funeral.

Sissy has let it go, she's made peace with it. I wish I could, but I can't, and I don't know why, except that I am who and what I am in large part because of them, and I can't reject them completely without rejecting that part of myself.

3. Sissy withdrew from her classes to come be with me. She could have just taken a week off, until I was out of the woods, and with her brains and work ethic, it would have been work, but she'd have gone back without any serious complications. But she gave up a semester, four months of her life that she'll have to repeat, she gave that up to be here to make me feel better. She withdrew from her classes after I had recovered and it was known I'd survive.

4. Grace's parents were here when I woke up. According to Grace, they, and three of her brothers and sisters, were here from Hawaii 18 hours after Grace called them. My father in law hasn't left Hawaii in a decade, and my mother in law had never been to the mainland. And they were here for me, were at the airport within three hours after Grace's call. Grace told me that her dad was ready to charter a private jet if there hadn't been a flight available.

5. I am recovering as well as I am in large part because I have good insurance, a good job, and a father in law rich enough to say "I don't care what it costs" and actually mean it. I'm alive because a man stopped at a stoplight happened to be watching whe I drove into the ditch and called 911, and then pulled over where I had gone off the road, put on his emergency flashers, and set off a flare then stood there to show the paramedics where I was. The paramedics who took me out of the car momentarily debated amputating my arm to save time getting me out because I was slowly bleeding out.

After doing my level best to do myself in with my stupidity and panic, I'm here and relatively whole only because so many things that could have gone wrong went exactly right.

6. And finally, my arm. I say I'll be able to deal with the physical stuff, and I know that I came close to losing it entirely. But it's still frustrating all the little things I can't do myself. I can't even put on my clothes by myself yet. And I can't do the things I've always done to make myself feel better, cleaning, excercise. I feel helpless and unloved and unwanted, and at the same time like I'm the center of the universe, and I don't really like either place.

And I have Grace here, and Sissy, and sweetpea is here with me in spirit, and somehow, they manage to draw me back from the edge to keep me from that dark place inside that I always carry with me.

It's a confusing time.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert