Fall

I have a bad fall. A real bad one. On my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night I step on the clear plastic lid of my green sewing kit. It had been on top of the white hamper in the hall earlier in the evening. But after I go to bed the cat and dog, playing, knock it off. I am asleep when this happens.

I step on the lid with my bad leg, the one that has had seven surgeries on the knee, and together we slide down the hall. I lose my balance, my right foot slams into the jamb of the bathroom door, my head knocks against the hall wall, and both knees buckle as I crash into a large space heater. The heater tips over and my legs fall under my body. I land flat on my back.

My head hurts, my right foot feels like it is wrenched around sideways, both knees are excruciating. I can’t breathe. Unfortunately, this is not a dream. This is as real as it gets. I lie there, stunned, my body fighting off the shock of the fall. It must be around 2 a.m. Contrary to the manufacturer’s instructions, the heater did not shut off when it fell over. It is too far away for me to reach, but I feel around and find the cord. After several attempts I am able to yank the plug out of the wall. Now, on top of everything else, I am cold.

It is more than an hour before I can get up. I do not believe anything is broken but I have pulled muscles in my foot and my groin, there are huge bruises on my back and on both knees, and my right knee, the bad knee, sports an egg sized swelling around the black and purple joint. The knee does not move properly and does not hold my weight. I limp to the couch in the living room and lie there for another hour. Then rage bubbles up and I feel angrier than I have ever felt in my life. I am beyond furious, but there is nothing and no one to direct my rage toward. I scream and yell and cry, but there is no one to hear, no one to be angry at . . . other than life itself.

After a time I slowly make my way to the kitchen to find Advil, ice, and ace bandages. I’ve had injuries before. I understand the RICE concept: rest, ice, compression, elevation. I put pillows under my knees, wrap them in the bandages and top them off with ice. I am worried about the right knee in particular. That leg is uninsurable; after seven surgeries no insurance company will touch it. This could be an expensive fall.

My anger returns and I direct it at our health care system, politicians, insurance companies, the medical profession in general. After all, these are the people and elements that killed my son. By not allowing him the option of health insurance, by not accepting him as a patient without it, by not treating his mental illness and resulting addiction, by turning him away time after time after time, this is what caused my child to die. It has taken me almost five months to get here, but finally, I am angry. Truly angry.

The anger feels real, solid, palpable. I want to hoist it up and fling it at all the apathetic people who refused Colby’s pleas, my pleas, for help, I want to use it to flatten those who told me to give up on Colby, who ignored this bright, talented, sensitive, funny child; who didn’t care that he died, even though it was their job to help him. This anger, I think, will be with me for a while. It is too big, too deep, to go away quickly. I have reached a new stage in this process of grief, and only time will tell if it will cycle back around on this vicious merry-go-round, or whether it will drive me forward, toward peace.

Stages

My mother is angry with Colby. For this I am glad because anger is a natural stage of grief. She is angry that he left us. Angry that he has caused us both pain. Angry that I have to spend so much time going through his "stuff." She is angry that because of Colby's passing I have a lack of focus, that I take twice as long to complete work assignments, that I am so sad, that I am irrevocably changed. Hers is a deep, quiet anger, but it is real. It is there. This is the first time she has spoken of anything like this. Until now, she has avoided all but the most direct information regarding Colby's passing: Celebration of Life details, the cremation process, the autopsy. Facts. Until now, that is all she has been able to discuss and I worried about her because whenever I spoke of feelings she changed the subject.

Everyone processes grief differently. Like a broken record, I still alternate between shaky crying and numbness and can go between the two instantaneously. I assume that eventually I will move on to denial, anger, bargaining and all the other emotions I hear about. As his parent, I hear this will probably take longer than everyone expects. I am told these stages can't be rushed, that they will come in their own time and last as long as they are supposed to. It could be a year or more before I reach that stage, or it could be tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I am grateful for my mother's anger for it means she is heading toward a healthy acceptance of Colby's passing. And I know that I will get there, too. Maybe not soon, but someday.

Anger

I know there are stages to grieving. Until now I have wavered between shock and numbness. Today I had my first bout with anger. I received a call from a Nashville hospital about a past due bill of Colby's. I had taken Colby their emergency room about six weeks ago after, he called me asking to go. He couldn't go on. He needed help, he said. He didn't want to live anymore if life was going to be like this. I took him first to another hospital. There would be a three hour wait, we were told. There were more urgent situations that required the doctors' attention. Colby became very agitated. He rocked back and forth, began to cry, paced the room and became very angry. We left and went to another hospital. This emergency room was less hectic. Colby was seen right away. They took his vital signs, an ER doctor talked to him and when Colby said he couldn't go on like this, that he didn't want to live with this mental illness, the schizophrenia, the panic attacks, and depression the anxiety and yes, the addiction, anymore the physician sent us over to their psychiatric hospital. There we waited for over an hour, Colby lying on a metal couch in a cold sterile room, crying. There were no other patients waiting in this part of the hospital. Finally a psychiatric nurse interviewed Colby. He told her the same thing he told the doctor. She left and we waited another hour. When she came back in she had a list of resources for us to call the next day. Resources we had exhausted long, long ago.

I remember walking out of the hospital, getting into the truck and holding Colby as he cried. He had so wanted help he put aside all his anxieties and fears and they turned him away. Six weeks later my son is dead and I get a call from the hospital about the thousand dollar bill the hospital sent Colby. I realize this was not the fault of the person calling, but she bore the brunt of my anger. I am sorry for that. Sorry for her. I should call her back and apologize but I can't. Yet. I am still too angry. I told her the story, shaking, crying, yelling, raging, and then I hung up on her after telling her they weren't getting a dime out of me. Then I put my head in my hands and cried for more than half an hour. If they had helped my son instead of turning him away there is a good chance he would be alive today. Right now he would be here with me. I would still have the possibility of future grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of holidays spent with family members. Now, none of that is possible.

I have a lot to say about our health care system. But I am too angry to articulate it well, so I will leave it for another day. In the meantime, I will try to process this new emotion, this new anger that is so unlike me, and find a path through it to the next level.