The last few days: explaining V.'s condition (clearly serious, but who knows the future?) to a variety of people, interfacing between her husband and the university. An hour and a half sitting with her, by her husband, in the ICU tonight – we talked, and talked to her, etc. Actually it was nice to see her – her color is better; it looks as though she's sleeping (plus her eyes taped and a lot of machines, but all that didn't seem particularly unpleasant). He held her hand most of the time, but before we left I asked if I could hold her hand for a minute, and that was a good thing.
It's actually some years – about a decade maybe? but I have a rather poor memory for dates – since I was last at the bedside of someone seriously ill. After twenty-five years of AIDS, of course, the whole scenario isn't unfamiliar – but as it's been a while, there's a sort of relearning, refamiliarizing process, that feels a bit confusing. This is somewhat different because people with AIDS are part of a social group, a set of expectations, that we're all familiar with, and V. and her husband aren't of course; on the other hand she was frequently in the hospital, so they're used to hospitals, and that part is pretty similar. Plus, frankly, although she's thin as always, V. is prettier than a lot of my friends were with advanced AIDS (she still has lovely skin and her face looks calm, so seeing her isn't disconcerting as it is in some cases).
The tricky thing is the juxtaposition of situations and emotions over time: okay, something awful has happened, and/or will continue to happen, or will become something much worse; and then you wait a long time and relate to a lot of people in connection with that situation, translating it into words, predictions, ideas, different interpretations for different people who may want to hear different things. Of course it's not even faintly as hard for me as it is for her husband, but even for me the contrast between worrying, and thinking about other things, or being upset, and not being upset, and even being overly upset (i.e. rather dramatic), makes everything weirdly complicated.
As I say, it must be much harder for him: his entire life revolves around V., and frankly even she felt he wasn't ready for her to become seriously ill or to die – so he's dealing with: the awful shock of her heart attack itself on Monday (after all he was there, with the vomiting, ambulance, panic, confusion), the possibility of losing her forever, and then waiting, and going home to the house without her but where everything reminds him of her, and then of course he'll have to wait days for news – he has to feed the cat, he doesn't feel like eating but we urge him to, he had to clean up the bathroom where she threw up (he wouldn't let me help, but I commented vaguely as one does on washing the plastic bath mat on a low temperature); over several days, does he go to work, does he not go to work because it's all too serious?
Life keeps intruding; and the interpolation of emotion, and the interpolation of other thoughts and emotions, must be disconcerting. In a culture that tends to hold death at arm's length, we find it difficult to keep bridging that distance – if you fill it with emotion, then you're just dramatizing your own role in the situation (and thereby making yourself The Star – V.'s mother is a bit like this I'm afraid, so it's fortunate that she's off in France and can disturb V.'s husband only by phone and e-mail). And of course with everyone's attention on him – I'm just a friend, I can go do other things, but – he has the stress of not only feeling anxious and confused, but also of having to act anxious in the moments when he's not, because everyone expects it of him....
I'm probably not saying this very clearly, and should just go to bed, as I have things I need to do tomorrow anyway.
Maybe it's just that, however big the situation is, our emotional reactions to it are momentary and unstable – and therefore it's hard to know how to be, in the interstices....
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