Letting Go
As We Go: Always Grace: Letting Gl
I’m sitting on our tiny patio, intending to write. My pink-wave petunias trail color over the edges of the wrought iron table where Ron once settled his coffee mug next to mine, where I am staring into the thick foliage of crepe myrtles. In childhood, he liked sitting beneath his mom’s sycamore, shelling butter beans and peas. And after we married, he showed me how to do this as we all sat together in that shady spot whenever we traveled to visit her.
In our Decatur home, he could often be found on our screened-in porch, puffing the sweet aroma of cherry- blend from his pipe as he read the latest book-of-the-month tale. Rocking on our wrap-around porch during our Lake Oconee years, we welcomed mornings, listening to the gentle waves lap against the shore and, at times, the sharp slap of the beaver’s tail. Often, our resident hummingbirds whirred before our faces after battling one another for nectar at the feeders. And finally, here at Croasdaile Village, he watched each year’s new bluebird mom and dad feed the visible gaping mouths before flying away.
A few years after we married, Ron learned that his aortic heart valve was failing due to damage from rheumatic fever when he was twelve. So, in 1974, he underwent open-heart surgery to implant an artificial valve. This surgery returned his heart to normal function. Yet, three months later, a stroke paralyzed his right side and, more devastatingly, resulted in Broca’s aphasia. This type of aphasia impairs a person’s ability to use and understand spoken and written language. This impairment virtually erased Ron’s ability to speak, write, or, at times, understand.
Despite years of therapy, he regained only language fragments. Interpretation was limited to my intuition and guessing, given his facial expressions, gestures, a small
hodge-podge of single words, and a few automatic phrases. A few of his phrases were: ‘thank you,’ ready-to-go,’ ‘forget it,’ and ‘gee whiz.’
His most used single words were: ‘this,’ ‘eat,’ ‘drive,’ ‘no,’ ‘look,’ ‘please,’ and ‘Jane.’ His responses let me know whether he understood. But my repeated inquiries when I failed to guess correctly resulted in dire irritation.
My failure to guess correctly and his ‘No’ delivered a shot of adrenaline to my system as I sought to find a second question. For many months, maybe a year, he could allow many guesses. But with time, our botched communication led to his giving me only one or two chances to get it. And gradually, he’d point at me, eyebrows raised, turn his shaking palm up. A gesture I took to mean, come on, you know.
“I don’t know,”
“Yes! You Do!” Another automatic phrase joined his repertoire.
For each of us, verbal communication was like a minefield, with a mini explosion with each failure, usually four or five per day for years. Writing his thinking was even less available, though he did train his left hand to copy.
I never discovered how he came to imagine I was pretending and only repeatedly asking another question for the fun of it. Or perhaps he misunderstood my anxious laughter with my failures in those early months. My trying to lessen my stress and let us play with this horrendous difficulty may have caused him to lose faith in me. I suppose an explanation might be found in my eagerness to help and my deep need to hear his voice, laughter, and cheerfulness.
In an early speech therapy session, the therapist asked, “Do you want to help him? Watch us. You can practice with him using the picture cards during the week.”
“Sure.”
I wanted to do anything and everything. I sat across the table in our den, showing him the picture and waiting for him to name it. I waited and waited, as she had done. He strained to pronounce the word. It was so difficult. After a month of practicing, less than ten minutes a day, I saw Ron’s shoulders slump and head droop.
“I can’t do this,” I told the therapist. “When I watch the two of you work, he stays engaged.”
Still, there was much Ron and I taught each other. I taught him how to use a computer, and with the help of the Sears disability driving instructor, I taught him how to drive again. He taught me how ‘routine’ supported him. His eating at a specific restaurant each day at precisely noon allowed me to find and join him when my work permitted or I felt inclined: Monday at Pizza Hut, Tuesday at Evans Fine Foods, Wednesday at Po’ Folks, and on. His bright greeting and a winked surprise propelled me to take a seat. But his inviting facial expression brought anyone who looked our way to come for a chat. That forced me to tamp down my longstanding social anxiety and become the conversant one.
With that last comment, you may have guessed I was the introvert to his extrovert. I was pensive, he cordial. I was anxious; he tranquil; I was sullen; he jovial. Thankfully, we shared essential attributes: each full of faith, patience, and persistence.
In 1965, Ron’s warm blue eyes brightened as he looked up to see me walking toward the empty desk beside his. Soon, he welcomed me, the new auditor, the first female hired by this Agency. It would be four more years before a second woman was added to this audit team.
At noon, he stopped by my desk, “How about lunch? John, Art, and I are going to the IHOP across the street. Join us.”
“Umm. O.K.”
Only days later, after work, I discovered the battery in my ugly brown Tempest was dead; he came to my rescue and connected our cars.
I said, “Oh, Wow. A Buick convertible. Blue and white, so spiffy. I love it,” as I walked around snooping and coveting. Noticing a Bible on the back window ledge, I went on, “What church do you go to?”
“Sylvan Hills Baptist, but Jane — it’s not a convertible. It’s an Oldsmobile.”
The gentleness as he corrected me that day and the tender tone of his voice soothed me. Today, I wonder if the pleasure of listening and sensing his kind responses to my misstatements prompted my blundering repetitions of them. Perhaps it was the assurance of his attention, careful listening, and better memory. Even after the stroke, he recalled every turn and lane change whenever he drove us somewhere.
Our cars served as cozy containers when driving for work or pleasure, delivering our girls to soccer games or church programs, and even for Sunday afternoon rides for just the two of us. Alone, we might be seen singing our favorite hymns. Yes, even after losing words, Ron could sing with me.
Though I often failed to decipher his words, his accuracy of thought and wanting me to know remained. After we retired and moved to the lake, he added a final automatic phrase to his phrase collection, granting us each permission to relax our efforts and let it be.
“Forget it,” he said softly, gently one day when I failed to understand the meaning of his words. So simple, could we do this? Just let go of not knowing, not saying. We might have years to practice.
How did we do this, live with the silences, the unknown? Where did the ideas of how to regain skills and live with the losses come from? How did we each possess the depth of faith, patience, and persistence sufficient for our life for forty-eight years after the stroke?
And our girls, their husbands, their children, and spouses, thirteen of us now. What a sense of the miraculous I feel for our lives, their lives.
Three days before he died, when he awoke briefly that afternoon, Ron pointed toward the window beside his bed. “Car?”
Though he had not driven for five years, he often looked for the car, so I parked it within view of our apartment windows whenever possible. I moved to his side and adjusted his finger’s angle to show him where to look. He smiled.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes. Ready to go,” I whispered.
Every day for years, Ron assembled jigsaw puzzles, completing a scene. Now, I am gathering fragments, the irregularly shaped yet interlocking pieces of my heart and our experiences, to form an artistic rendering, to bear witness to the wonder of grace sufficient to the day. Now, I see the strength of what bound us: his wanting me to know what he saw, needed, and thought, my wanting to ‘get it.’ The trouble came in my desire and determination to have so much more.
A soft humming arises, and simultaneously, the lyrics of George Matheson’s hymn, ‘O love that will not let me go; I rest my weary soul in Thee.’
In awe of our life, I move to my desk. Knowing that when I write, I find elbow room for my soul, I lift my pen.
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