A Tuft of Distal Phalanx

This spring I found a dandelion seed clinging to the edge of a parsley leaf in the garden. The white of its delicate fluff held by the finest threads and a soft breeze moved it gently, not hard enough in the time I watched to lift it away to its next destination. 

Some moments in life feel like that. You know you are about to be lifted into a new plane of existence but you’re in the resting place, grasping just a bit to the things that are known. 

I thought of this image this morning while looking at the discharge papers from the emergency room where my oldest son Leal and I spent several hours last night. The right side of the page lists the diagnosis of the problem that brought us there: open fracture of tuft of distal phalanx of left thumb. I love the way my brain is choosing to read “tuft of distal phalanx” and think of that tuft of dandelion instead of the deep slice in the bloody thumb that made my child bite his right hand and leave a bruise as he tried to brave his way through the pain. 

I feel my children’s pain in ways they are lucky to never know. In the presence of that pain I try to wear a mask of calm and confidence. I scurry through the hallways of my mind looking for distractions to ease their discomfort. “Tell me about the last hike you went on.” “What’s on your Christmas list?” “Want to hear a funny story from work today?” “What do you want for dinner?” Leal is 17 so I am quite sure he could see through my act. Still I tried. It was a difficult performance. 

Six years and 21 days prior, I was in that same ER, in a room right next to the one we inhabited last night, promising my comatose younger child, Oli, three chihuahuas of different colors at the end of his ordeal. I was telling him how exciting it would be to ride in the emergency helicopter they were bringing to the hospital. I was massaging his hands and feet. I was telling him as calmly as I could how brave he was being and how much he was loved and what fun we would have when it was all over. When the doctors made me let go as they restarted his heart I turned to the wall and spoke to the Universe. I pleaded for an end to this bizarre dream. I promised I’d learn from it and be better in whatever way I needed to be if I could just wake up now. Right now. Please. Oli’s heart would restart and I’d return to the bedside and make more promises, more dogs, more candy, more play, more joy. His heart would stop again and I’d make more promises to the Universe. And eventually there was nothing else to be done. Nobody to hear my promises. Nobody at all. 

My boy vanished. 

On some days, in the aftermath, I wished I could too. I wanted to stop standing at the bedside of loss. I wanted to let go of trying to be. I know how to hold my child’s pain. I still do not know how to hold my child’s disappearance. But I myself have never been able to disappear. There are still about 35 days to go, but this may be the first year since Oli’s death when I haven’t had a day where I wanted to.

Last night, Leal was repaired. I prayed to the Universe but it was a different sort of prayer. They all are now. It was not for a reversal of fortunes but for the strength to proceed through whatever might come. I thought of how many terrible things the doctors and nurses caring for us see in the course of a day and night. I thought of how gently they handled my son, how expertly they put him back together. I thought with gratitude of how miraculous it is to live in a space and time where we have the tools to do that. 

Leal will have a scar. Scars are the tattoos we bear that remind us we keep living. He will have a new story to tell from that ER, one that is just his own. I am trying to help him write this new story now, and I am trying to edit myself out of it. What I want most is for him to know that he was brave, that he handled things, that he persevered. I want him to know that he is strong, and capable, and good under pressure. I want him to know that if I weren’t there at all - he would have done just fine. I know that is a story I need too.

For the tuft of his being is blowing in a breeze that is gathering strength. He’s holding onto the life he’s lived with me since his first gasp of air with a dwindling thread. And when the real wind blows - he will be carried into adventures we cannot even imagine. Some will leave scars, but most will help him keep growing. I try so hard to watch my words so that my breath does not hurry his departure. But I will let him go. And I will keep loving him with a quiet fierceness that I must still believe counts for something. 

That love cannot sway the course of time or the things that happen within it. I hate so much that this is true. But I have come to appreciate that love plays a role in letting go as much as it does in holding on. Letting go makes way for transformation, for the person loved, and for the person who loves.