It was 2:30 AM last night, when I woke and tried to get up. As I was raising my head, it felt as if someone had grabbed hold of it and was trying to wrench it off my neck. Twisting it from my body. The way we used to kill chickens, by wringing their necks.
I tried to sit up, but the pain was as bad as any I have felt (and I have had a lot of practice with pain). I collapsed back onto the bed. The pain was so bad, I felt I had to get up and out of there. I rolled off the bed, raised up on all fours, and was met with a wave of pain that nearly made me vomit. I turned over on my back, holding my head with one hand and inched my way out of the bedroom, like an upside-down turtle. The cold wooden floor felt good.
Every time I tried to move or raise my head, another wave of “knock you off your feet” pain rushed through me. Not one to ask for help, especially in the middle of the night. I said to myself, “I should probably go to the ER, but I can’t sit up, let alone drive a car.” I don’t know if when someone breaks their neck they feel this kind of pain. I sure hope not.
My neck had been sore the night before. I had massaged it a little bit, and providentially as it turned out, decided to charge up one of those portable hand vibrating things I had purchased a few years back in a vain attempt to ease the pain of and avoid surgery on a hip joint that no longer had any cartilage.
I inched upside down to where I had plugged it in, unplugged it, put it on my stomach, then crawled into another room, so as to not disturb my wife with my shenanigans. I turned it on, and began running it over my shoulder, back, and back of my head. Painful at first, helpful later.
My wife had suggested I take a couple of aspirin the night before, but I decided not to. I don’t like pills. Now, like a person crawling across the desert (upside down) for a drink of water, I got to my backpack where I keep a few aspirin (in case someone might need some) and swallowed them by saving my saliva.
The massager helped me enough to crawl, turn over, climb up on and sit in a reclining chair (I had to hold my head in my hand to do that) and I decided to wait it out. I figured if it got better I could then drive myself to the ER.
This blog is not about what was going on with my neck, I still don’t know. It is still sore, really sore. It is better as I write this. At least I can hold my head up. And if I don’t move (as in turn it) the pain is only about a 6 on a 10 scale.
What this blog is about is what went through my head. Not the pain, but the “What if this doesn’t get any better?” question. “What if it didn’t get better? What if this was some kind of permanent state?” The answer?
Easy, everything I do, everywhere I go, everyone I do it with, is gone. The travel. The adventures. The plans. The commitments. All gone. People would have to visit me or I would never see them again. Zoom, forget it. What I do in terms of work? Impossible. I can’t even hold my head up, and the pain is so deep and intense, I can’t even think.
Those were the thoughts that went through my head. Sounds catastrophic perhaps, but I know someday, that will be the truth. My research tells me that less than 6% of us go out in a flash. The other 94% of us experience a slow but steady dimming of the lights. I watch others play pickle ball. I used to play racket ball. I watch others run and jump. I try not to fall over when I stand up, and when successful consider that a win. People see me coming and offer a hand or an arm. I used to be the guy who offered the arm.
By the way, I am probably not going to die of a stunningly sore neck, but this morning I was fully aware that my professional career, my friendship career, my parenting and grandparenting career, my intimate partnering career, just might be over. A sore neck? No. But a stroke might. A fall might. An accident might. There will come a time where the “it” will.
There have been other moments like this, quite a few recently, when I am reminded that, “Life as you know it can end very quickly.” I’m realizing as I write this that the answer in those moments, is the same as this morning. Sad and Ok.
So, this is what this blog is about. It’s about how I felt holding all those “losses” in my hurting noggin. Sad, but OK. Really. If my life must end on terms other than of my authorship, I had the experience this morning of being at peace with that. Really a surrender to the inevitable.
I couldn’t have said that in 2010 when I was very close to the lights of my life going out. 20 minutes they said. That was a wake-up call for me. It became very clear that I needed to get ready for when the lights as I know them go out. I have worked very hard to be ready for that moment. As I was dying, I was not comforted by things ending like they were. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t in such physical pain then, but the psychological pain exceeded my neck pain this morning.
People who know me are aware of this quest I have been on, that is to make peace with my mortality. They have asked me if I think all “this mortality stuff” is going to help me during my last moments (however long they may be.) I have answered, “I have no idea, but it has helped me live a better life.” If this morning was any indication of how I will feel, I would say to those who have asked, “Yes, all this mortality stuff has and will continue to help me, even in my last moments.”
I was taught in high school that pain was a message from the body to our conscious self that something was wrong. And, that if the body decided there was no longer any hope of fixing whatever was wrong, there was no pain.
What does all this “mortality stuff” mean in terms of specific behaviors? Two things. I began and continue to have ‘conversations’ with my mortality. He started out looking like the Grim Reaper, today I call him FredMo. An image of Fred Rogers in bib overalls and a ball cap. We’ve had hundreds of pages of conversations over the last decade and a half.
Mark Nepo (I believe) suggests at death we will have to turn from all those who love us and walk the final steps of life without them. The image I have is that I’ll go with FredMo and that irrepressible eight- year-old-always curious-always wondering (me). The three of us hand in hand to the great unknown behind that door.
The second, has been to find and be with a smallish tribe of friends who have decided, for various reasons, to do the same. Make peace with their mortality, seeing it as an ally, and yes, even a friend.
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