always

you're driving home. you call your husband to say you're stuck in traffic. you see lights and a helicopter in the distance and know that someone is having the worst day of their life.

hours later you get a call. it's your oldest friend who's having that day. it was her husband in that helicopter. her husband who died. your friend is a widow at 36. with six kids. six.

you hear the words the woman on the phone is telling you, then you can't hear anything because someone is screaming. it takes a minute before you realize it's you. your husband comes running, 'what happened?! what happened?!'. you tell him and watch his face fold and his body collapse onto the bed heaving and shuddering.

you know you have to go see her, but you're hesitating. you tell yourself you're hesitating because of the snow, but really you're just afraid you won't come back.

you enter the hospital you left hours before. you feel like you're staggering and wonder if you really are. you see the waiting room and feel your heart drumming and hear it thudding in your ears. the room is full. full of women your age, heads in hands, hugging, gasping for air. full of men your age, hands stuffed in pockets, pacing, rocking, sniffing. she sees you and crumbles. you feel her weight pull on your shoulders. you feel her wails in the side of your neck. you hold and tell her you'll be here always - both of you knowing full well there's no such thing as always.

you've been in the presence of death so many times. you've held its hand and felt its breath and showed others the way the best you could. now you realize that sudden, unexpected death is a different beast altogether. it's violent and explosive. it's rip your heart out of your chest raw.

you return home. it feels like something has burned a hole in your stomach. your eyes feel swollen, like there's cotton balls shoved up under your lids. you're walking funny. you go in their room and lay a hand on each chest - feel the rise and fall for just a minute. they don't know yet. you envy their peace.

you crawl in bed beside your husband. you'd crawl inside his skin if you could. you wordlessly intertwine and press and sink into each other, but can't seem to get close enough. with puffy eyes and clenched hearts and tangled bodies, you flirt with sleep. you hear a whimper occasionally and you aren't sure if it's him or you.

the day after finds you even though you tried to hide. you hold their hands and tell them what you know and how you feel. you learn a lot about your kids this day...what they're afraid of...what they believe in...what they worry about...how their minds are organized.

'so who will be my soccer coach now?'

'who's going to help max put on all of his hockey gear?'

'how can you be so sure he's not coming back?'

'how long will your heart be heavy?'

you feel, in this moment, that you can't possibly heal...that you'll never stop crying...that pure joy is gone. and that's just us. just a filament of the grief they must feel.

dear one, i'd give anything to wake you up from this nightmare.
whatever always is, you have me for it.

skin

the largest organ...the barrier...it breathes...it protects...it blushes...it gets cut and heals...it sweats...it glows...it toughens under the sun's rays...and wrinkles in water

the skin of my patients shows they've been to hell and back.

there are scars. thanks to biopsies, catheters, needle sticks, vaccines, rashes, iv's, skin grafts, feeding tubes, trachs. vivid, wordless legacies that recall suffering and fear...and healing.

there are colors. if you've never seen them, i'm glad for you. few things rattle me as much as running into a patient after a few months and seeing a sick complexion. their eyes and their smile and their hug tell one story, but their skin tells another. it's a yellowish, grayish, non-humanish hue that can bring tears to my eyes in an instant. a color that makes me want to know if they've been down or if they're going down. that makes me want to ask, 'what the hell have we done to you?"

there are messages. it turns yellow when the liver has been insulted. it gets bumpy and itchy when the immune system doesn't approve of a certain drug. it gets baggy in strange places to show weight loss. it goes numb when a nerve has been injured. it gets rather ornate when the blood is not clotting well. it lets go of heat to inform us of a fever. it's a good communicator.

to hell and back. back being the key. they are back every week. and friday nights they flip throug my mind like a slideshow. a show that i have often tried to cancel or unplug or drown out with red wine. i'm letting it play tonight - it's healthier, i know. not that there's not wine involved - which i hear is healthy also.