It’s Monday and I’m very tired. Exhausted is more accurate. I’ve come off three days of high intensity.
I watched our son play the role of RP McMurphy in his high school’s fall play, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” And not only watched but participated, rapt, for three performances, in that heartbreaking drama.
He blew his role out of the water. He embodied that crafty, law-breaking, but ultimately loving character. He and the entire cast and crew pulled this difficult story off with aplomb. I rarely make statements like these about my children, but part of the intensity of this weekend was being forced to recognize his natural talent and to accept accolades from audience members when I am by nature modest and humble.
We hosted family members who came to see the play and enjoyed times of connection, eating, walking and just hanging out.
Our college-age daughter came home for the weekend and played the role of proud big sister – what a joy to have her here.
And we learned early Saturday morning that my sister, who has congestive heart failure, was rushed (again) to the hospital in the night’s wee hours, then eventually flown to a larger hospital with specialized expertise in heart disease.
Texts from her spouse smattered the weekend and I experienced sorrow, alarm, and helplessness. I am so glad I went to visit her in her midwest home just two weeks ago, and I am so sorry that living so far away, there is little I can do but pray.
So, this morning, I’m outside walking my usual trails, full of joy, pride, grief, worry. All of it, the whole shebang. My stomach is churning. And I finally settle on a phrase that partially calms me:
My heart is so full. I am human. My heart is so full. I am human.
Then I came home and had a good cry – a cry for my sister, and for her spouse and adult children and grandchildren, for the uncertainty that surrounds her health and future.
And a cry for millions who have been treated poorly, even cruelly, at the hands of mental health professionals. The trauma inflicted on patients in the 1970s (when “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” premiered) may not be happening in our country anymore . But we still stigmatize emotional challenges, mental illness, and quirks in behavior; we prevent humans from accessing acceptance, help, growth. We forget that all people are to begin, human.
And now, I’m slowly caring for myself by following the kind of advice I might chart with a client. I’m taking it slower than I usually do during the day. And returning to old rhythms: folding laundry, writing the grocery lists, going to the library, and then heading for my office where I will sit with other humans whose hearts are also full and who are facing loss, grief, change and are doing so with quiet courage. Even on a Monday. Even when they are exhausted.
Note: I wrote this on November 25. My sister, who is currently more stable, proofread this post and gave her okay for me to write about her.
Brenda Hartman-Souder, December 2019