La tristesse durera toujours (Fr.'the sadness will last forever')
(1853 - 1890)
A veil of gray, like a death cloud, hovers in the auras of people..
A smell ... no, a stench of decay. A mix of bleach, wastes, blood and that faint, but ominous smell of earth.
I have been running around all over the place these days because of a major challenge I am facing. When a loved one is in the hospital, something inside you "clicks" and your gut gets twisted and churned, you begin and end your days with thoughts about life, living and death. Hospitals do that to me. As a young little girl, I actually thought a medical career is something I would like to grow old into, it is ironic that even the smell of a sterilized room can make me belch.
Since I have been mostly hanging out in the hospital watching over my Mom who is recovering from a hip replacement surgery, for the last week or so, all I see is anxiety, worry, sorrow, despair and sadness.
Every three minutes, you hear the ambulance sirens blare. I watch people move around in haste, with solid purpose. People who vowed to some Greek demi-god that he or she will do his /her utmost best to play God and save a life.
I thought it was best to hang out in the Pediatrics Section. Newborns always signify hope. A promise. The best way I can shake this feeling of melancholia was to watch a new life unfold.
With my luck I end up in the neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where I pretended to be as busy as every medical staff, and there I stood, gawking at all these infants with tubes in all possible points of their small and fragile bodies.
Little human beings, under an infrared light, in small little ovens. As best they could they claw and fight to live.
How do you embrace that scene? How can you explain a sight such as those that I have seen to a mother who has had this little person grow inside her for nine months? How do you tell someone I am going to slowly and quietly steal your dreams away from you?
Among all human emotions, the depths of loneliness and sadness are most difficult to fathom. How much and how great a person can bear pain is relative, not to the strength, but to the courage of the individual to move on, to persist, to win.
Courage is nothing else but fear that preys. Courage is being scared and going forward anyway. A deeper word would be fortitude. You just move on.
I am still sad. Mainly because I don't know enough. I am sad because I realized, I have no idea if I have the courage to face things I am not in control of. I am sad about my mortality. I am sad because unlike other conditions of challenge, information provided reassurance. In matters of life-death situations, even the most well-informed will never be confident enough to know what is next. I am sad mainly because there are just days that tell you, right in your face, everything around you is temporary. And that temporariness does not exclude me.
