I have rewritten this post many times. I don’t know how to write it. I don’t know what it is I want to say. I don’t usually use this blog to get things off of my chest because it’s too dangerous, too personal. It’s weird to think this way because I’ve been writing this blog for 4 years and a half now and people who read me probably believe that the nature of this blog is very personal. But when serious things happen, I often stay quiet or I talk about them after the fact, especially if it can affect other people. But I’m compelled to write about this now because it occupies every single space in my mind. And because writing about anything else seems trivial or contrived right now. I’ve decided to write the post in English because English is not « my » language and somehow I hope that it will allow me to get some perspective. Or distance. I’m not sure which one I’m hoping for.
My nephew Renaud is in the hospital. My beautiful, 10 year-old athletic sweetheart who makes the hearts of all the girls in 4th grade swoon when he walks by. He was playing with friends last week and fell on the grass, breaking his arm in the fall. He was taken to the emergency room in an ambulance and the doctors didn’t like what they saw on the x-rays. A pathological fracture, they called it, the kind of pre-diagnosis that scares you with a long, dizzying list of possibilities. Something had weakened his bone, which would explain why a small fall managed to split his humerus in two.
Tests were done which determined that more tests needed to be done. After a night in the hospital, he was sent home without a cast because the specialists he needed were not in until Monday. Today he went in at a big children’s hospital and the doctors decided to hospitalize him so that they can run more tests. An MRI. A biopsy. Scary words, too big for a little boy who can only think right now about all the soccer games he’s going to miss and the vacation his family had to cancel. His little brother is turning 8 on Wednesday and he’s sorry to put a damper on his party. At day camp where the accident happened, the kids and counselors bought him a stuffed toy dog. When I went to pick up his little brother at the camp, the counselors asked me to wait for them to finish the giant card they were making for Renaud. I watched quietly as cute girls wrote sweet notes on heart shaped paper and then glued painted macaroni noodles on the outline of the notes.
He was in a codeine daze when we handed him the giant card but it managed to put a tiny smile on his face. Let me tell you: that smile went straight to my heart and broke it in pieces, like dozens of silly painted macaroni noodles. Fuck. How do people do this? How do they watch children suffer without falling apart?
So we’re all waiting for the tests and then we’ll be waiting for the results. There is nothing to do but wait and waiting is the hardest thing to do. I wish I could pray but I feel like a fake, reverting in times of need to a god I haven’t believed in in years. It feels disrespectful to those who are true believers, to use their god when I need comfort and when I hope I can influence the outcome of a medical test.
Even as a child, what I thought of as faith was more like superstition. I would pray before going to bed because I was afraid that if I skipped a night it would be THE night when god would have happened to listen to my prayer. I didn’t want to take any chance and lose my turn so I prayed every night. I did that for many years and then I gradually stopped. Nothing was changing in my family and I was beginning to think that god didn’t have much to do with it.
What’s left in times of uncertainties if there’s no prayer or no faith attached to it? Sending good vibes? Meditating? Staying positive? Staying cool and rational because chances are good that this will only be a big scare and things will go back to normal?
I guess the only thing left when one doesn’t have faith is the love and support of family and friends and we have that. (I almost wrote « thank god ».) I read about the bombs falling over Lebanon and I know that every day parents around the world worry about their children’s lives, worry that they won’t even make it to the hospital. When my nephew comes out of the hospital, more parents will come in with their children, nervous and exhausted, knowing they’ll be on the receiving end of bad news. Praying obviously doesn’t put an end to that but does it comfort one’s heart? Does it calm a soul or numb it?
Sometimes if feels like faith is a gift, one that I’m sorry I don’t have.
