'Can't pour from an empty cup'

It has been a while since I have posted here. Here is why:

On Aug. 11, Michelle and I stood in our living room, staring at my phone, waiting for it to ring. We knew a callback was inevitable. What the voice on the other end would say and relay was not.

After several attempts to reach my mom that Friday morning — which turned into at least a dozen more calls in less than an hour, as she general answers, or calls back within a few minutes, and we’d known she should be, or would be, home — Michelle made the excellent, and likely life-saving, recommendation that we contact the local police to see if they’d perform a wellness check1.

So, we did, and the dispatcher said they’d send someone out right away.

My mom’s house is less than four miles from the station — or little less than a 10-minute drive. This was my only frame of reference for what ‘right away’ might mean, not knowing whether an officer would leave the station — how long would it take for them to get to the car? — or someone already driving around would reroute to my mom’s — from where? how far away might they be?

I remember learning about the differences between real time and psychological time in ninth grade. Time flies when you’re having fun. A minute of hell can last an eternity.

In real time, it was less than 15 minutes when the phone would finally ring. (Which I know thanks to my wristwatch — one of the last analogue devices in my life — and a pen and an envelope containing some mail we hadn’t yet torn into. [The timestamps on my iPhone also confirmed this, but jotting down some notes helped keep my mind from wandering while waiting.])

The call came. We answered. And we learned another set of first-responders were already on their way.

Not to bury the lede any further, we’d come to find out later in the day after a battery of tests that my mom had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. She is now on a road to recovery, but how long, and how bumpy, that road might be remains to be seen.

Two weeks before my mom’s stroke, I wrote about being on the road somewhere in the hills of western Maryland six years ago, trying to get to southwest Pennsylvania when the call came in that told us my dad would die2. The case was otherwise with my mom. We got through the drive, and have gotten through living minute-to-minute as we navigate Recovery Road, still oftentimes blanketed in fog.

Even amidst that fog, we recognize how lucky she is — and we are— to be on that road at all. We know that, sadly, that is not the case, or outcome, for many.

I plan to write more about my mom’s experience and recovery, and what we learned along the way, including our experience with the U.S. healthcare system, in the hopes that her story, and ours, may be helpful to others in any way.

I look at that doing that in the spirit of ‘paying-it-forward’, as we are grateful for the help we have received along the way, along with the help that continues pouring in, which has kept us buoyed in a sea of uncertainty and calmed the waters when we’ve grown frustrated. From family and friends who’ve known before I wrote here publicly about it. From employers and colleagues who created space for us to be present to the crisis at hand. From some of the caregivers we encountered along the way — for their skills and their compassion and their gentle guidance.

One particular piece of gentle guidance directed directly at us came from a salt-of-the-earth nurse we came to know in WVU Hospital while my mom was in the Neuro Critical Care Unit. She’d reminded us after a day that’d seemingly grown long into feeling like a week or month: “You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

In an effort to keep cups as full as they may be, I haven’t pour out into this space, and others.

Today, our cups are still far from running over. But after nearly two months, I feel confident enough in the course ahead — albeit still potentially pockmarked with potholes of change — to return here, to writing and sharing, to engaging and reading, to being ‘present’ to more, which, since the change began, includes a new ‘office assistant’, Gus: My mom’s — and now ours for a while, or perhaps forever — puppy, who came after the passing of her beloved companion, Finn3, and has brought smiles and laughs, comfort and love, joy and energy to our pack.

For now, I share our thanks (too small a word) to Remi and Gus, our family and friends, and all the rest who’ve helped ensure our cups never ran dry over the past eight weeks. Thanks, too, to those helping to keep them filled today and onward.

2

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Six years ago on the evening of Friday, July 28, I was southbound on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when I received the first of several phone calls I’ll never forget. I was headed to spend the weekend with my now-fiancée, Miche…

3

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Sunday evening, I unexpectedly found myself on the road, headed to my childhood home in southwest Pennsylvania. My mom had called to relay the news that her lovable, best-bud, and faithful companion, Finnegan, had crossed the rainbow bridge. Finn passed away just as he’d live…