April

April showers bring May flowers, and just about everything since meeting my husband. I sought my future husband and found him April 9, 1999. Our wedding was April 7, 2001. We received the keys to the home we purchased on April 15, 2002. We conceived our son on April 3, 2004. It seemed our daughter would have to be named April, although in truth she was to be Rachel. I couldn't use April as her middle name because "Rachel April" sounds ridiculous. The truly ridiculous name we joked about was Gwyneth, not because it isn't a lovely name (it is!) but because Gwyneth Wildermuth is cruelly lisp-producing. More on our April Rachel later. April 1st this year brought something unexpected but not in jest: the hospitalization of my dad four days after his 70th birthday.

My dad couldn't breathe, and at his doctor's appointment an ambulance was summoned. UCD Med Center received him into the ER, and I joined him about two hours after my mom's telephone call. He was transferred, disoriented, into a room around 1 am, and my mom and I drove home deliriously tired and worried. The next day, he was moved to the cardiac ICU, and administered oxygen, antibiotics, and intravenous fluids. The cause of his infection undetermined, he was in a closed room requiring us to wear paper gowns, masks, and gloves to enter. H1N1 takes a few days to grow in a petri dish, as does every other bacteria they were testing. I felt a bit light-headed breathing through the mask, seated in a dark room with pure oxygen flooding the air. His blood pressure and pulse were elevated, but the number we all watched with intent was the blue number showing his oxygen level. It was in the 70's without his oxygen intake, a C+ that is nowhere near passing in terms of oxygenation.

Saturday night we all left, learning on exit that H1N1 was not the cause and we could enter derobed the next day. That was an Easter blessing, to touch my father's cheek and display the hopeful smile that had been masked for two days prior. Easter in my dad's dark hospital room, even without the gown and gloves made me feel despondent, in such contrast to the hope of our faith. I had come intending to share a message of the Easter faith celebrated at church that morning, the only member of my family who had received a message of hope that day. I soon felt discouragement instead, as my dad spoke of his fears, exhaustion, and the numbers required additional oxygen via BPap (a monstrous machine). I drove home angry, lamenting: What am I, what is my value in this life or in my family, if, in this situation I am not holding my dad's hands and speaking of our risen Jesus as life-giving for him as well?

Monday, he was moved to a room in the CICU with a window, to alleviate the monsters in the corners and disorientation of knowing neither day nor night. Oxygenation was adjusted using various contraptions, and he could breathe but not without effort. Sunday night and Monday morning, his words were of dying. His questions were of his funeral, his comments were of appreciation for a worthwhile life and a lifelong marriage. In the afternoon with just my sister and I at his side, he began to ask if he was dying, knowing that people die of pneumonia. I marched out to find his nurse. I said to her, "People die of pneumonia. What is it about my dad that will either allow his body to fight this or succumb to this?" She pulled up the last five white blood cell counts, and showed me they had diminished from 29,000 to 8,000, whereas under 13,000 is considered acceptible for a person not fighting infection. She printed this out, and together we took this to my logical, numerically oriented father and explained that he was improving. That night, he watched the NCAA basketball game, replaying the shot that could have brought Butler the win. Perhaps my role was not to share the words of faith I had prepared, but instead to speak to him in numbers: faith-increasing inspiration via the concrete and rational.

Three days later, I'm, supervising his move from the ICU into a room, helping him through a difficult transition which set him back in his breathing. The next day, his oxygen was removed for a five minute experiment. His oxygenation remained in the 90's- and the doctors determined he no longer needed the support. A physical therapist took him for an unwired walk on Thursday, and his numbered remained steady. A mere one night later, he was seated in his dining room chair, charting his medications and urinations, and sleeping in the bed he's shared with his wife for more years than I've been alive.

Hospitalization removes all cause for modesty, your body is not your own. At times, your mind loses its stability, your days bleed into one continuous nightmare, and you count breaths as though they are your last. You learn the extent of your family's devotion to you through their presence while you are connected to machines. You ponder the value of your life and express teary gratitude to doctors who look into your eyes and heal you with their smarts. My family joined together with single-minded urgency, staying with Dad around the clock and playing nurses to his mind and needs. Love in action, accompanied by heartfelt affirmations, bonded us together in a new way. God didn't take my 70 year old dad to His home, and we are grateful and tired from the effort to extend his journey.

April 2010: an unexpected renewal that began cloaked in grave-clothes.

Renewal

Easter. Palm branches, donkey, crown of thorns. Speckled eggs, straw baskets, chocolate bunnies. Tulips, hatching chicks, garden tools. Which version? Easter baskets and egg coloring, turning soil with a spade, the resurrection. What is Easter? In my women's group on Thursday before a two-week Easter break, ladies shared their Easter plans. Responses included "spring cleaning", vacation down the coast to So. CA and visits to theme parks, Easter egg hunts, even an elaborate clue-driven hunt through landmarks in the foothills. Easter dinners were assumed, amidst gatherings of pastel-frocked boys and girls in bows and plaids, engorged in chocolate treats, clutching furry stuffed bunnies. We'll all attend Easter services, sing hymns with raised voices and wear our Sunday bests. If Easter is ham and baskets, what is it if you have no children or family? If Easter is going to church, what will be found this bright Sunday morning? Easter's centrality, its core, is renewal. Renewal afforded by the exchange of life Christ lived for us, a plan arranged by the Father which the son humbly partook. Freedom granted through grace. Life promised through faith. Fresh, lovely, fragrant is a new life in Spring. The author of Spring is the Rock and Provider, giver of rain and nourishment for soul. Renewal is easy to see in the buds and green leaves, bulbs and grasses stretching toward the sun, the chirping from newborn beaks. Is renewal within me as real, as easily seen? Am I alive in April to pack my son's Easter basket, or to praise the living Lord who gives abundantly, fruitfully, cyclically, enduringly? Easter is renewal, is the life gifted from God. Celebration is natural for flowering trees and birds, is it so for me?

Initializing

Perhaps it is the desire to be known while remaining hidden that leads me to create this blog. I write to release, to describe, to show what cannot be seen. The clouds that cover and shadow also allow the eyes to look upward, with vision unblinded by sunlight. I can be cryptic, lucid, fanciful, ludicrous. Words forming pictures with no need of defined point, no particular audience to appease or address. I am free with my fingers as I have not been for some time. That is all for now.