By Linda Grupp Boutin
I stared into my backpack. Did I have everything I needed? The
space felt stuffed with the objects for an estimated three to four days. An
opened bag of M&Ms, pain medication, heparin to keep my line open (Did I really need to carry this?) and
an odd assortment of things to sustain me. I pulled the drawstring taut around
the top and strapped our only sleeping bag into place at the base. One last
glance around the closet assured me that inside the pack I carried everything
for my anticipated hiking trip.
My green parka hung loosely on a thin
frame. The hiking boots that had seen no use for over two years completed the
ensemble. I glanced at my husband, Gary, sitting; shoulders slumped, on the
bed. He looked up from his clasped hands when I stepped into the room. Tears
filled my eyes, but there was no other way that I could see through this mess.
Resolutely I turned from the bedroom and out the front door of our apartment.
It had taken months of long consideration to reach this decision and I would
listen to no further arguments on this matter.
My footfalls crossing the parking lot
created the only sounds on this dark, late November night. My endurance lasted
through Thanksgiving, but I could no longer continue the medical regimen required
to preserve my life. For over a year my paralyzed digestive tract tolerated no
food whatsoever. If I dared take a bite, I landed in a hospital bed. Each night,
just to continue living, I connected myself to two machines, one to feed me
intravenously for over 12 hours, one to drain the excess fluids from my stomach
to attempt to keep them from entering my digestive tract.
Quality of life entered the news that
year. A family wanted to discontinue medical treatment for a daughter trapped
inside a coma for too many years. I understood the issue all too well, from the
inside, but not trapped in a coma. I knew the pain of illness, emotional and
physical, intimately. Reflected in Gary’s eyes, my illness closed us into a
world intolerable at best. At UCLA the doctors held out hope for me for an
intestinal pacemaker or maybe a transplant in a decade or two. I shook my head
to clear the images and looked both ways before crossing the road out of habit.
My mind tripped back to happier days when
Gary and I planned our first backpacking trip together. Newly in love,
overflowing with hope for the future, we purchased the packs together along
with one for my dog, Ginger. Now less than 5 years later we all knew this trip
was to be taken alone. My husband could not understand why I could no longer
tolerate the two tubes hanging from my chest, the machines hum all night long,
my desperate desire to eat which the doctors had forbidden.
I left it all behind that night: the
intravenous pump and pole, the bottles and bottles of solutions to feed myself
with, the tubings, sterile dressings, suction machine. Walked away from my
closet full of supplies for life to embrace what would follow, no intention of
continuing the ludicrous routine ruling, supposedly saving, my life. I was
done, exhausted, finished.
It won’t take any time at all, I kept
reassuring myself. Three or four days at most, depending on how cold it was in
the Laguna mountians. Dehydration would set in, after all, the medical
encyclopedia listed this as a terminal condition. I have the right to choose
treatment or reject it, don’t I? After all, I’m an adult. I had chosen to go to
the doctors and accepted their recommendations, but now I’d changed my mind.
After experiencing the life they’d designed for a year, doing all they
expected, I could no longer accept it. This must all come to an end because I
cannot live my life without eating. They are simply asking more than a person
can endure. My plan had been to be a nurse to others, not to spend every day of
my life taking care of a sick me!
Hence my plan to cause Gary as little
grief as possible. Why did he have to keep fighting me on this? He said life is
always worth living, but he has never gone a day not eating hooked up to
machines, much less a year. So take as little as possible, leave Gary the car,
take the bus to Alpine and walk out into the forest. Find a nice, quiet spot
and let the disease take my life. Shouldn’t
take too long, probably just three, maybe four days at most. Dehydration
would take me quickly, I swallowed hard and reassured myself.
What is that I hear? No one should be
calling me, not right now with my mind made up. I kept walking heading for the
bus station. I saw the lights ahead and kept moving forward. Now I recognized
the voice. One I knew all too well after just a few years of marriage. His long
legs quickly overtook my lead. I begged him to go away. He said he would just
walk with me, no more arguments. His pace matched mine. The lights brightened
as we approached the benches arranged at the bus stop in the shopping mall. I
took a seat, praying for a bus, any bus to arrive soon, so I could escape his
company.
After minutes passed like hours, the bus
approached. I didn’t check the destination, it didn’t matter, anywhere away
from him would work just fine. I mounted the steps, jangled my fare into the
box, stomped to the back of the bus, turned and took a seat. Sliding my arms
from the pack I relaxed. I had made it. Now I could be released from this
bondage of life with illness, disability, pain in body, mind and soul. Eating
would mean nothing where I planned on going, food irrelevant.
The bus was just sitting there, not
accelerating from the curb to take me to my destination. I looked up to see
what the bus driver was doing and quickly discerned the problem. Another person
had boarded the bus after me and now I was staring directly in those deep,
brown eyes I knew all too intimately. Gary stood facing me, standing beside the
bus driver. He seemed to be trying to imprint in his memory some final
impression of his wife, now fleeing from his look of overpowering love. “Why
did he have to follow me?” my thoughts screamed inside my head.
Now my eyes dropped to my hands and the
moment of truth had arrived. That look killed so much in that instant. How
could I turn my back on someone who wanted me so badly in their life that he
would chase me down like that? I had to do this right, not be a burden, not
make a mess, but clean one up. And suddenly I knew that quality of life had
nothing to do at all with it. Empty, devoid of meaning, it was not up to me to
pick and choose the time or date. Whether it took just three or four days or
maybe thirty or forty years, it just simply was not my choice. But once
decided, there could be no going back. I could not subject either of us to this
anymore. If I changed course here, reversed myself, I knew it would be the
commitment for life.
Slowly, my fingers clasped the strap of
that blue backpack. Fighting all impulses, my knees pulled me up and back onto
my feet. One step followed the next back to the front of the bus. When I
reached him, he pulled the backpack from my grasp, hefting it onto his broad
shoulder. I did not ask the bus driver to return my fare, just stepped down the
steps and walked forward. Back into life, back into not eating, back into
daily, 12-hour regimens of intravenous feedings for the next 7 years.
Today, 32 years later, I look back at that
moment in time when I was convinced to embrace life by brown, loving eyes that
refused to let me go. And bless the moment he walked into my life.
Originally written for Ladies Home Journal Personal Essay Contest 2012. I had hopes of receiving a prize for this one, but I didn't win. However, my nephew asked for a copy and later told me that it hung on his bulletin board. I understood I had won on a much deeper level a prize that money could not buy. I thought I would share it with my blog readers and followers. This event occurred in 1980 and was a moment of truth that changed my life and has guided every step of my life afterwards. There are no "do-overs" in life and no turning back from the choices we make.
I love the foreshadowing you use... "...and looked both ways before crossing the road out of habit."
ReplyDeleteThis is so very well written Linda. The picture you have painted with these life-affirming words of love is quite vivid. I would like to read another posting, where this love, this commitment, is then challenged by the urgent tyranny of life's demands, where the truth of your experience is further tested. I know you both come out on top. I also know the Lord will be glorified through the telling of your journey.
Thanks for the encouragement Douglas, I can think of numerous examples of what you are asking for so will decide where to go next with this blog.
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