I have 100 people coming to my house in five days. Out of town relatives fly and drive in, starting tomorrow, from four different states. It is my youngest child’s–my only daughter’s–high school graduation.
And I’m horizontal.
I’m in bed trying to “stay ahead” of #pain that at moments has felt as intense as childbirth back labor (I say this credibly as I have first-hand experience). All that said, my pain will go away because kidney stones are not life threatening (for the most part), and I am certainly not the first in the family, or in my community of friends, to experience this particular type of pain.
No joke. I have nothing but respect for all you quiet sufferers.
Here is what Pain has helped me to see.
Humility
For years, and particularly this year, people I love have suffered greatly. My son fractured his back two weeks ago. One of my daughter’s besties is recovering from a severe injury. Others I love have confronted cancer; back, shoulder, and knee surgeries; intestinal obstruction; and relentless nausea. These folks not only have a long-term relationship with pain, but they also had to weather prolonged complicated convalescence along with side effects from pain medications.
They mostly do it in silence. I think people in pain become very aware of the story. They don’t want to burden you. They protect you from having to find something comforting to say. They don’t want to be the center of your attention. The telling of pain is as fatiguing as its medicine.
“I’m fine, how are you? they pivot.
My three weeks is nothing compared to what my loved ones have been through this year. I see them differently now. I see their strength and their humility.
Speaking of humility, as Pain’s student, I’m not the top of the class.
Many of us parents don’t do this well. Even though for years self-help advice has warned, especially women of my generation, you can’t do it all, I still seem to know so many of us who have not heeded that message.
I have shopping and baking to do. Who will clip the rosemary twigs to make the homemade, candle light bug repellent mason jars I learned about on Tik Tok? I wanted to get a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate my sister and brother-in-law’s graduation of the newly minted doctorates they earned last week.
“I think they’d rather have a good red wine,” reminds my husband.
Pain sadistically hammers the humility message home. Pain shows you your limitations.
“Cater the party,” Spouse suggested when the stone started to make its rocky edges known.
I was sure it was too late to line up a caterer.
In our town, graduation garden parties are a Bridgerton-like affair. They have their own season.
Breezy dresses, corn-hole, bar-b-cue, a constellation of friendly huddles scattered about manicured, grassy backyards. Pods of proud parents share summery cocktails with limes, and find solidarity approaching this milestone and anticipating the expensive one to come.
Teens, no longer segregated by gender or sports, seem to become affectionately aware of each other knowing that their lives will soon take different paths. The parties give us parents an eyewitness perch to the metamorphosis of our caterpillars turning into butterflies (Daughter is rolling her eyes right now).
The parties will continue throughout the summer, and with only so many weekends and holidays, there are already multiple happening per day.
Point is, even weeks ago, I was pretty sure it was too late to line up catering.
However, Pain is also an insistent nag, therefore I’ve ordered half of the meal from Costco.
I also accepted help from my neighbors who gratefully will slow-cook the meat for me for twenty-four hours. I made a “to do” list and turned it over to my son and husband and have tried, am still trying to… let it go.
Though I still managed to revise a book chapter and complete two article reviews before my surgical procedure, I know I can’t do this alone and that is hard to admit. I’m giving up the things that don’t have to be done by me. And all will be okay because other people do things well too, even if they don’t do it exactly as I would.
Love
“This is an extremely painful experience, I will schedule your surgery on my lunch break or after work if you need me to,” said my surgeon.
I had only just met him, but I’m pretty sure I love him.
Pain illuminates love.
“What do you need, Mom? We will get it done,” my healthy son assures me.
Sadly, I mostly need yard work and this kiddo suffers from allergies so bad it makes his nose bleed to work among trees and grasses. As I sat on my front porch during a pain-free stretch of spreading mulch (stones can move and you can be without pain for days before they bite you again), I watched a miniature-sized asteroid storm of pollen, carried sideways by the breezes, pass before me.
Pain transparently reveals those who love you. This is Pain’s gift, but I realize it could be easy to miss. I have the benefit of pain killers and my lap top aiding in my reflection.
So many people have shown me their love. Texts, and check ins from friends, neighbors, colleagues and distant family mean more than they will know.
The recovering child who lives on the opposite coast sends me daily Tik Toks—mostly advice about health. He bought me a kidney stone natural remedy that smells like alfalfa and looks like mud. I choked it down out of respect. I kept it down out of some miracle. (Tip: chug as a shot with a chaser rather than try to blend in anything that tastes like human food). Regardless, I’m moved by the sentiment.
My strong, beautiful daughter has entered the week of activities that mark this transition for her. Vespers was tonight. Prom is tomorrow. Saturday morning is the car parade – a relic of the Covid-19 era that refuses to retire. Saturday afternoon is the party. Sunday is the ceremony. This is not an easy week to share your mom with Pain. And yet she has shown me selfless understanding through it all.
Pain is not just swelling my innards, its swollen my heart for my husband.
(Rolling eyes permitted again).
My partner has been under Pain’s authority for years. Some of it accelerated by his own making—we joke he is Monty Python’s Black Night when it comes to Lacrosse. At 59, he is still annually playing in tournaments with his college teammates. He may be well past the expiration date – crossing the line from healthy exercise to no longer good for you. His body is breaking, in part, from the love affair he holds on par with me, and which to be fair, came before me. Lacrosse is his whip.
But he also suffers from chronic pain because of the sacrifices he made to his country and the sacrifices he’s made to his family in a job that is no friend to the human body. I won’t enumerate his ailments because they are his story. But I will say you will hear from others who suffer similarly what you won’t hear from him.
Pain is teaching me a lot about him.
My husband does not complain. While I’ve been an open book, he’s buried his misery. It’s easy for us–his family–to take for granted what he experiences because despite its ever-presence, he continues his job that disrupts normal sleep cycles. He has not stopped crafting our home, or sharing in the shopping and cooking. He’s called my doctor, picked up my medication, and made me milkshakes to wash it down with. He’s made my latte almost every morning for a month now – a ritual we used to take turns doing for each other.
Pain has helped me see all that he does.
I LOVE him.
I love everyone.
Could be the meds talking.
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