Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example--
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.

---------“On Living”  Nazim Hikmet, 1948

     I was not initially aware that I had experienced a stroke. Who, after all, would think the worst from the beginning? A stroke is something serious, really serious, like a heart attack, or a coma, or something like that. All I had, when I awoke, was some tingling, and a hand that wouldn’t hold on to anything, and a leg that was curiously sluggish when I tried to walk. No speech delays, no cognitive delays, nothing like that. The first few hours were just a curiosity.

     It got worse.

     The next day, the sluggish leg didn’t work at all. The hand was and would remain still for more days. It was all on one side, the classic symptom of stroke. A CT scan at the hospital emergency room gave evidence that it was, n fact a stroke—an MRI the next day confirmed it. Of all things, most unexpectedly, I had a stroke, a cerebral vascular accident (cva), as it is called. My brain was wounded, perhaps by a small blood clot that clogged an artery too small to see with the naked eye, when the blockage cut off vital oxygen to the cells in that area that aid in muscular movement. Neurologically disconnected, the muscles in my left arm, hand, leg, and foot could no longer work or respond to signals to move. They were effectively paralyzed.

Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example…
you can die for people—even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

      That first night, after I knew for sure, I didn’t sleep well. I kept thinking about whether the condition I was in was the best I would ever be again, and if it was, what was I going to do? How could I live life in a wheelchair with only one functional hand? Of course there are people who live this way, and some of them lead remarkable lives. A lifelong friend of my own has been blind from birth, and does not consider himself handicapped in any way. He is an amazing man.

     But this was all new to me, and I was as unprepared as anyone can be. I was very much afraid that some loss would be for me, practically, major loss. I wasn’t sure what I would be able to do, or would do, or could do. I worried about writing, which is my occupation, and how I would do that with only one hand. I worried about standing and walking, which is also a part of my occupation, and how I would do that with a paralyzed leg, and about how people would see me in a wheelchair and discount me and all that I am because I am not physically functionally whole even though I am the same man I was before, in all the ways that matter.

     But even this early, the healing had already begun. It happened and is happening in the most remarkable of ways. My mother came from Georgia to visit me. My older sister came, too, as did my younger sister. My daughters came from out of town, the younger one twice, armed with snacks for me and an egg-crate pillow top for my comfort. Cousins, some old school friends. A girl I had one date with in high school and who I had not seen since then visited with me and has since. Another girl I have been in love with since 8^th grade, who never had much time for me in her life and still doesn’t, took time out of a busy day to come and see me. The oldest and dearest friend of my life came and spent an hour with me, bringing me joy. So did another friend, even though his wife stayed in the car reading while he visited. The first love of my life graced me too. I have never felt so deeply cared for in all of my life. A visit from a friend is worth a million prayers to me—it is immediate, it is visceral, and palpably real to me, an active-tense commitment that speaks of an individual taking time to show me that my experience matters to them. No prayer can afford that.

      But there is more, too. At the first hospital, every single person—every single person—encouraged me, engaged with me, taught me, listened to me, shared with me, hoped with me and helped to make everything much less fearsome without minimizing the truth. And at Cardinal Hill, too, it is the same. My therapists—Marilyn and Molly and Ann Trevor, and sometimes others—are among the very best professionally that it is possible to be. But they have also become friends, helping the frustrations easier to bear, and making me work and work and work so that my body responds. Darwin probes my mind, and my visits with him bring me great pleasure. I think that he and I could talk for many hours, rather than the half-hour to which we are daily limited. These people are incredible, and make me believe, through their own faith in me, that I will be healed.

     And of course, there are nurses and CNAs and they have been incredible as well. Shauna and Sandy and Patty and Kathy and Beth and Chrissy and Julie and Rachel and Bill and any of a hundred other names I could mention have all been an important part of my healing, too. And I could never express enough thanks to them for what they are and have been to me. I am very fortunate indeed.

I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

     Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain researcher who suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke at the age of thirty-seven, discusses in her book[1] the capacity of the human brain to recover from trauma and repair itself. One of the brain’s functions is to monitor the body’s position in space. The brain collects data from sensory input and measures such things as the pressure of one’s feet on the floor, the body’s orientation toward the horizontal and vertical, the relative positions of the body’s parts in relation to other parts, and a thousand other things that tell the brain where the body is and how well it is doing. And all of this occurs automatically and constantly.

     When there is trauma of any kind that impairs the brain’s ability to perform its functions, as in a stroke that kills some cells and neurons responsible for movement or sensation or speech, the brain immediately begins searching for ways to overcome the deficit. It may begin to construct new nerve pathways around the damaged area. It may use bits of protein to construct new arterial pathways to compensate for the damaged ones. And as before, this is an automatic response. It is the brain’s function to maximize health and minimize damage in an effort to help the person survive. This is remarkable.

     From the outset, however, there has been a serious disruption of function. The affected muscles are no longer neurologically connected to the area of the brain that controls them. They don’t work any more as they did before. There may be paralysis, as in my case, or there may be a sluggishness and an inability to control muscular movement. Even now, with some control returned to me, I still find it impossible to hold my arm and hand still, or to make precise movements. Coordination and any but the grossest kind of dexterity are still missing. Moving my leg where I want it to go is still very much a total mystery to me.

     But I also know that my brain is remarkably repairing itself, and that the therapies I am undergoing are retraining my muscles so that they can coordinate with the new neurological pathways, restoring everything to balance and health. That is the way that the wonderful human brain works. The human brain, my brain, always chooses life.

     There is still a very long way to go. It is agonizing, and frustrating, and sometimes still scary. My life has changed dramatically. The simplest things are now among the most difficult. It may be a year or more before I am healed.

     But I will heal. The grace of every day with these people has taught me that. I am very lucky, and deeply blessed.

I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

(Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993))