Walking up the block away from the East River, it’s hard to see through the soup…fog drifting in and out, clinging to things invisible with wispy wet tendrils. It reminds me of my husband’s brain tumor, and also the endless days of gray near the shore at certain times of the year. You just start to think the sun will burn through and the next thing you know, it’s pea soup again!
We have to get through the soup first before we’ll know where we’re going. My father, a private pilot, was right in life as in flying. We have to get through that creepy uncertainty of not knowing what might be just ahead, if anything. If anything…yes, let’s hope there’s something there and we’re not lost in nothingness. Fog can make you feel so absent, even when you know where you were when it first rolled in.
Straining to catch the change in atmosphere, every little gradation, imagined or otherwise, that might indicate a marker to hold onto, I can just make out a painted sign high over my head identifying what seems to be a restaurant, from the look of a bar and tables inside the amber glow from its window. ‘The Recovery Room’; bright red letters on the sign identify with strong intent. How clever! A few blocks from some of the best hospitals in the city, the irony of this suggested oasis of comfort cannot be missed. Did its proprietors intend all the nuances coming to mind? The bar dispensing pain medication, momentarily dulling the senses, while patron strangers ask if you’re all right—if they can get you anything to make you more comfortable.
They seem caring so you reach out and smile at them, knowing full well the connection won’t last long. Diners inside the restaurant who’ve left the bar for their tables shake off the stupor, initially welcomed, of their drinks’ anesthetizing properties. Are you ready now? A waitress in uniform tries to assess your level of preparedness to move to the next stage of recovery. But sitting alone at a table it becomes obvious that one doesn’t recover in one of those rooms. It is perhaps a beginning of consciousness, but by no means a recovery. I slip back to a semi-conscious state, maybe a dream of the last few months.
Writing through my husband’s crisis hasn’t been as hard for me as expected. I’ve become more trusting of the writing voice, more comfortable with talking to it. I also know it seems to help others, so I can fulfill my writing goal and also help myself; a win-win situation if there ever was one. Keep talking. They expect that in a recovery room. Keep Talking…my husband couldn’t find the strength so he played with my hair like a kitten batting at a piece of yarn swinging above it, but could find no words. Not a good sign when you can’t find words.
I’ve had enough, so I leave ‘The Recovery Room’, slipping back into the fog. What’s ahead of me? What’s behind, or around me? I’m afraid to take a step, fear I’ll run into something or fall. It’s worse if you’re afraid, my Swiss friend once told me. They used to make us go every day to ski in the fog, he said. It teaches you to feel and trust your natural instincts, your inner voice. That sounded claustrophobic to me, so I never tried it myself.
But now when I write, I can go every day to explore in the fog. It’s a way to hone in on my own natural instincts. A way to keep talking, and learn how to trust. I don’t want to go out in the mist but I can’t just stay here. I want to leave the recovery room . I have no instinct for it yet, feel anxious almost all the time and admit to only the flight part of that habitual syndrome. But knowing that to stay here is a semi-conscious, numb beginning only, I must go. If only the pain medication worked better. If only it hadn’t worn off so soon. If only I didn’t need it at all. If only…
This is eerily descriptive and beautifully written, Sidney. I am so very sorry for the recent loss of your husband.
I really have no words to make any better sense than the ones you’ve already written so I will simply offer them back to you. It’s pea-soup thick fog out there. True. And even though it seems as if it will never happen, one day . . . some day . . . the sun will burn through again.
I promise you. It will.
Thanks, Linda. I just looked at your blog and I see you’ve been helping people out of the fog, or at least to find their way, for a long time. I hear you about the sun, and in fact, I already see glimmers of it. I’ve learned how important it is to strike out through that pea soup in order to find better visibility. I appreciate you coming to the blog and I’ll return to yours often as well!
Is the catharsis of writing progress through the fog or does the fog return in equal measure in which you get lost again? Grieving is so complicated; there is never a “way to do it”; it is so individual, but the image of the fog as an enclosing and possibly fearful medium raises questions in me about the process of managing the grief. You have beautifully given a picture of this allegory in your writing.
I intended the title of the post to give clues to its parameters. The Recovery Room is the first inadequate, tentative step. Leaving that place actually starts it all rolling, but that’s not what’s being addressed here. It’s very much that leap of faith made skiing on a mountain engulfed in fog. You can’t stay there forever. You have to move, but what happens next is a different challenge than the initial move out into it.
Thanks for commenting. The issues are so huge and there are so many they couldn’t possibly be covered in one short essay. C.S. Lewis did such a gorgeous job of it in his book, ‘A Grief Observed’. I couldn’t possibly go beyond it.
Yesterday was our 49th wedding anniversary so it was particularly important to have a sense of the future- difficult to do and impossible to guarantee as I don’t need to tell you.
Thank you for reading! Shakespeare’s warning about not articulating our feelings should be taken seriously!!
What emerges from your sensitivity is how in many ways our lives are an attempt to find direction in fog. You depict a terrible moment, one many of us have never felt directly yet can relate to because who hasn’t felt utter despair, the loss of control like zig-zagging through fog, and the meaninglessness when our sense of direction is uprooted.
Indeed you comfort this reader because you make more vivid and I dare say more meaningful emotions we have felt but could not, dared not describe, but which go the heart of making us human.
Thanks for keeping up your work up as a writer to help us feel closer to the feelings we ourselves cannot articulate.
The fog is lovely if you are in a warm cheery place, but if you are out in it and loose your way, especially on the water, it is terrifying. It is disorienting, and that is the trauma. While I’ve waited for the words to come to write to you, I have felt like reaching my arms out through the fog to grasp yours. Reaching for you through the years, through the sorrow you feel right now, feel also the enduring of our long lasting friendship can bring you and the love of so many of us for you. We are all shining lights for you, to dispel the disorientation, even while the fog lingers….and you through this magnificent writing are shining strongly!
It makes such a difference to have someone write back as beautifully as you have. I can feel the connection, and believe me that’s a rare thing for a writer! A true blessing.