Reflexive Draft #2 1

Reflexive Draft #2

Nathan L. Tamborello

The University of Houston

Spring 2018 – CUIN 6304

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When your life is forcibly and drastically altered, there are a few ways to cope with it:

you can reject this sudden change, refusing to accept this new future that you inhabit; you can be

consumed by it, wallowing in grief and self-pity and live in a state of depression; you can slowly

overcome this new set of rules to your life, learning how to follow them and how to live

normally again; or you can decide to be difficult and do a combination of all of these outcomes.

In August of 2011, I was presented with a change like I just discussed, and I chose the hardest

path possible to dealing with it: the deadly combination of depression, guilt, sadness, despair,

hope, confusion, laughter, tears, and slowly an eventual ease of these emotions. My mother

suffered a stroke, and that experience has forever changed who I am, how I handle the world, and

my overall outlook on life.

I remember getting that call like a fresh wound in my mind. I answered call from my

brother, thinking he was calling to tell me a joke or something funny that had just happened.

“Nathan.”

“Yeah Keith, what’s up?”

“You need to come home. Mama had a stroke. I don’t know what happening, but they’re

life-flighting her to the hospital. Can you meet us there?” I could now hear a soft sob in his

resting voice through the phone receiver.

The words hadn’t even had time to settle in my brain. Was there a ringing in my ears?

Whose life was I living? Certainly not mine. This stuff didn’t happen to me.

I mumbled out a hurried “Uh okay…where do I go?” and scribbled down an address. My

hand could barely even write straight because I was shaking so heavily. My face felt like it was

being hit by thousands of pin-pricks, that awful feeling that accompanies your stomach

bottoming out to the floor as you enter a state of shock and confusion.
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My friend drove me to the hospital, which will be remembered as the longest hour drive

of my life. My head was spinning, my hands were shaking, and my heart was pumping blood so

fast and so forcibly through my body I thought that I was about to explode into a cloud of

crimson. My nerves rattled through my bones and sinew, knocking every inch of my body into a

state of hyper-being.

She’s going to die. She’s already dead. I missed it. I never said goodbye. What was the

last thing I said to her? Fuck, did I even give her a hug the last time I saw her?

Every imaginable thought coursed through my head, and when we pulled up to the

emergency room I toppled headlong out of the car in a frenzied attempt to both exit the vehicle

and run as fast as I could. I picked myself up and hurtled towards the hospital, where I was met

outside by my brother-in-law. He didn’t say anything, but grabbed me in a tight hug and

whispered in my ear with a stuttering sob, “Nathan…they don’t think she’s going to make it.”

As my legs fell out from under me and again, I crumpled to the ground in a pathetic,

wasted heap. I couldn’t give up. I had to see her. As tears streaked hot and wet out of my eyes, I

ran inside the doors to the hospital, and there I saw her. The woman who had given me life, who

taught me not to cry when I was hurt, who told me that I could be anything I wanted to be, and

who used to pick me up when I fell down, was lying on a stretcher. Her shirt was cut jaggedly

down her middle, wires coming out of her chest like she was some sort of super computer, her

tongue lolling out of her mouth while a plastic tube inserted in her forced air into her lungs. Was

this my mother? The strongest woman I knew? She was flopped on that stretcher like a fish who

had abandoned water, her skin pale and clammy.

I hope you, dear reader, never have to see your loved ones like I had to see my mother.

Those moments change you as a person in unfathomable ways, and those images haunt you for
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the rest of your life. My legs lost all feeling as I ran up and told my unconscious mother that I

loved her, to be strong, and lied that she was going to be fine. My tears blocked my vision and I

couldn’t even see her face. I need to see her face. Use your hand, Nathan, and wipe your tears

away so you can see her face! I wiped the tears and squinted through the quickly forming ones

that followed in order to see that pallid, gaunt face cocked to the side, trying to remember how

her smile cracked the edges of her cheeks, how her eyes squinted when she laughed, and how

much life there used to be underneath all of skin.

I held her hand. Was this the last time? How have I never noticed that her hand looks just

like mine? Two nurses surrounded her gurney and began to wheel her away. Our hands fell away

from each other as they pushed her too far from my grasp. I watched her body until I could no

longer see it behind the doors of the surgical unit.

But this story doesn’t have an awful ending. Her surgery lasted for 12 hours, her

medically induced coma lasted for 2 weeks, and her rehabilitation lasted for a year. The hurt in

my heart, however, never truly went away. Through all that time of waiting and hoping, I went

through long stretches of time where all I did was cry. I stopped going to class, stopped seeing

my friends, and wallowed in all of my guilt, fear, anger, confusion, and depression. Beyond

hope, I wish I could tell you, dear reader, that I didn’t try to kill myself. That I didn’t think about

her face and sob uncontrollably, and that I didn’t call home every day to hear her voice on the

answering machine. I wish a lot of things. Life does, however get better. Through counselling,

through years of recovery, and through the strength and willpower of my family, we have all

found a place in our hearts for those moments to settle away. My mother can walk with a cane

now, talks with a slur, and can’t remember a lot of our lives together, but we are there to remind
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her. I’m there to make new memories with her; we are there to love her as much as we can

before she departs this earth as air, as if a feather upon the breeze.

Sometimes in this world, it’s said that life gives you lemons. Frankly, I think life gave my

family a bundle of rotten cabbage and asked us to make lemonade with it, but we did the best we

could. We endured to fight another day, and to love our mother with every fibre of our being. So

while life may seem hopeless, just give yourself time to process and heal. Always remember –

there’s hope out there if you can find out.