Meandering the chilly halls of a hospital can leave one with a smattering of memories, thoughts, and inklings that can somehow simultaneously illuminate lost ideas and dreams and make absolutely no sense whatsoever. What do you suppose that's about? Until last week, I've had extremely limited experience with hospitals, which is a testament to the good health I have been blessed with in my 23 years of life, both personally and among those I hold dear to me. Until Wednesday April 11th, the only lasting hospital memory catalogued in my brain was September 8th, 2011, the birth of my daughter. Now I have a subdural hematoma, a flurry of MRIs, and a wheelchair-bound date with an oxen's dose of morphine under my belt.
The fluorescent lights dotting the halls of St. Vincent's Medical Center sapped me of coherence and filter, sprouting in my head three flawed, yet bold ideas for a play. My brain, at that point in time painted with an overcoat of blood, released weird line after puzzling character description. Of course, remembering said ideas becomes the true testament of a creator's strength as I struggle to recount exactly what the Herculean keeper of the knight's academy's creature realm refuted the headmaster about...
"Raph, you've stopped making sense again..."
It's around this point of 'literary' confusion every day since my release that my head wanders to my battle with the Morphine. It tickled me, truly. I remember feeling hot and cold and itchy and somehow free of the skull crushing pain I had endured the three previous days. Is it odd that the very first thing that happened to me upon admittance was being tossed into a wheelchair and plugged up to an IV of that stuff? I laugh at this craziness and then I float to when I told the doctor that I felt like Ray Charles because somehow, my mind's only connection to morphine was a flawed and most likely mis-remembered account from the movie 'Ray'. I think I asked somebody to change the name on my wristband from R. Krasnow to R. Charles.
Then I giggle myself to the other side of things and think how lucky I was when the resident neurosurgeon told me that I did not need any surgery. My stay in the hospital was relaxed remarkably by the presence of first, a woman and friend I hold closer to my heart than many, and secondly upon his arrival, my ever loving and ever helpful Dad. My understanding of my mortality now is outweighed only by my newfound understanding for the joys of being human and being loved by other humans.
We humans are lucky creatures that can behave poorly, selfishly, recklessly, and inanely and still somehow garner love, affection, tenderness, and help from the select few who do so unconditionally. Why is that? How is the human heart capable of this? After my release from the hospital with a nearly clean bill of health, my first desire was to see my daughter. My little bear that I hadn't seen in over a week was on the tip of my tongue, the top of my brain, and the center of my heart and that inexplicable feeling made me so happy and brought relief to my woozy mind.
I've talked about loving women and loving love and all sorts of things of that ilk, but in so far as those things are within my grasp, they do not humble me and bring me near tears the way that this mystifying concept of unconditional love does. The love that someone or some people feel for me and the love that I feel for someone or some people that goes beyond any rationalizing or poetic substance and just exists is the love that strikes me tonight. This is my roundabout way of expressing it, traveling through close calls, hospitals, and pain killers to get there. What a journey it's been. And a few of you will get this, but after all, it's my journey.
Go hug somebody.
