Two glimpses of healing

Friday nights have taken a different meaning. Today is exactly three weeks since Jan and I called 911 and fell unexpectedly into this strange reality. Some of my friends have called it a "dark valley". Sometimes, it feels more like an isolation cell 15 meters underground, a cell with no number, where we are prisoners without a name wondering what was the crime for which we have been dragged here. Some other times, I can see more light, I can bask in the warmth of hope, the tenderness of friendly love and genuine concern for Jan's health. Nevertheless, whatever the feeling I may navigate on particular day, I make a balance at the end of each day of the good and the bad, the love and the pain each day brings. I shared with my dear friends a couple of nights ago that there is a lesson in all this, which I still cannot understand. A lesson about love. Yes, my love for Jan is being tested. Your love for us too. Our love for all of you. How far can it go? How many more weeks can we keep sending healing love to Jan? Will it cease at some point? What form can it take? What words can we use to describe it? What deeds will deliver it? Do you know the edges of your love? Do you know how much you can love Jan? Good questions for a Friday night.

Tonight, Friday night, Jan and I spend a few hours together, looking at each other in silence. At times, I did some talking, at times she slept. At one point, I made a call using the phone in her room. She looked at me with interest. When I finished the call, I asked her if she wanted to use the phone herself. She nodded in approval. I called Omar, our son, and asked him to just talk to Jan, then passed the receiver to her. She took it from my hand and placed it correctly in her left ear. She then smiled when she heard the voice. She nodded. She smiled more. She began moving her lips: eeeoooaaaah, uuuaaaaoooh. No sound came out of her mouth other than a muted aspiration, but her lips were moving, trying to form words. This, my dear friends, lit a flame of hope in my heart and made me aware of how much I love Jan. This went on for about 3 to 4 minutes. The nurse came in and encouraged Jan to keep up these good efforts. She continued smiling and then, without any warning, she felt asleep.

A second form of communication happened when I was about to leave to go home. I told her: "I miss you, get well and come home", she nodded in agreement, put her left hand on her chest and then put it on my chest. Then, with a sad smile she closed her eyes. I went home with a mixed heart. Happy that she is alive and for the healing signs, sad for the realization that she has to literally reinvent the wheel from square one, and that this will take time. Here the second thought for a Friday night: the only way out of this place is by being patient.

"Look, I make all things new" ...starting with our characters...

-Fede