For my family and friends who don't know, the past week has been a hard one. Last Friday around 8:00 pm, my mother in law Cindy fell off an unfinished deck onto cement. She fractured her skull and was rushed into emergency surgery, where they removed two blood clots and a part of her skull. Two days later they found another clot and took her in again. She is currently in a coma, and has been since the accident. They expect her brain to continue to swell up to eight days after the accident, so we are nearing the most uncertain part. Because every brain injury is different, we do not know anything definite - when she will wake up, if she will wake up, how extensive her damage will be, etc.
While she was in surgery, my sister in law Julie went into labor, and delivered her beautiful baby Connor. It was a stressful labor since she had just learned about her mother, and the baby ended up being delivered via emergency C-section because of her distress. Fortunately, Julie and the baby are doing well. He has been the brightest part of this whole experience - everyone's happy place.
It's been one of the hardest weeks any of us have been through. Not knowing if we should grieve or hope, say our goodbyes or plan for the future is maybe the roughest part. Each time I kneel to pray I feel overwhelmed for the many different people who need prayers, each with individual needs and fears and situations. But through it all, the family has gleaned support from each other. Never before have we come together like this.
My dad sent me this poem by Hayden Carruth a few days before the accident, incidentally. Carruth writes it knowing he is going to die. (The entire poem is worth reading, here is just a portion.) He writes;
So often it has been displayed to us, the hourglass
with its grains of sand drifting down,
not as an object in our world
but as a sign, a symbol, our lives
drifting down grain by grain,
sifting away — I'm sure everyone must
see this emblem somewhere in the mind.
Yet not only our lives drift down. The stuff
of ego with which we began, the mass
in the upper chamber, filters away
as love accumulates below. Now
I am almost entirely love.
That last line has been reverberating inside of me all week. "Now I am almost entirely love." Cindy is entirely love. She loved so deeply, the best way she knew how. I hope so much that by the time I go, I will be able to say that I am mostly love now - my ego, my pride, the worldly desires diminished to nothing, with just love left.
We have faith that she will pull through, even though we know there may be years of therapy and rehab, but we also recognize that she may not make it and the not knowing seems to be the hardest part.
If you feel so inclined, please pray for Cindy and for her family. Thank you to my family and friends who have been so supportive. I love all of you. You'll never know what it means fully, but I will never forget.