We just finished singing “Precious Lord, Take my Hand” at church – it was our closing hymn. At the time I chose it earlier this week, I was mostly thinking about our senior pastor, Bill Grimbol, whose beloved wife Patti died earlier this week, and the sorrow which he and all of Patti’s many friends and relatives are feeling. But this morning, it seemed to be speaking just as much to my brother Nathan’s ordeal- and the long, hard fight for recovery that has only just begun.
I had not been to Madison since Tuesday, so it was an immense relief to be able to walk back into Nathan’s room in the ICU of Madison’s Meriter Hospital and see for myself the encouraging signs of progress I had heard about. And by that point, both Randi and Steve were in Madison, making it the first time in over a year that the four Berg siblings were in the same room together. (Talk about an awful reason for a reunion.) So I walked into Meriter with a sense of excitement and expectation rather than dread.
And when I first caught sight of Nathan, I could not believe how much his appearance had improved. On Tuesday, he was almost completely unrecognizable, so severe was the swelling. Now, it looked like Nathan. And when I got to his bedside, I realized that his eyes were already open. It was an amazing sight to see!
But as I sat there with him (none of my family was there, nor any nurses) I suddenly realized that I was feeling a kind of sorrow that I had not felt at all on Tuesday, because his appearance had allowed me a degree of emotional disconnection…. and while intellectually and mentally, I knew that was my little brother lying in that hospital bed, emotionally, it was like it was a stranger there. And my grief was as much for dad and Sonja and Randi and Matt (there in the room with me) as it was for Nathan himself, and maybe even more so. (It feels so strange to admit that in so many words.)
But yesterday for that first hour, when it was just me and Nathan, I felt waves of sorrow and pain like I had maybe never felt in my whole life. This was my little brother, who has already shouldered so much difficulty and frustration and pain in his life, facing an ordeal much more severe than any he had yet faced. He was awake – somewhat alert – responsive – alive – but looking so weak and miserable, with a feeding tube up his nose, locked in an uncomfortable neck brace, tubes and wires everywhere, and tied in restraints. (As he began to regain consciousness, he was prone to what the doctor called “wicked agitation” – which necessitated the restraints.) It was like a nightmarish scene from E.R. or Seattle Hope- but all too real.
As someone who loves to talk and tends to blab on incessantly at every opportunity, I should be better at filling silences in situations like this one …. where my brother was lying there, awake and somewhat alert but unable to speak. But I found myself struggling just to form the simplest sentences, uncertain of what Nathan most needed to hear. Words of inspiration? Jokes? Normal information? (It’s drizzling outside. The Badgers are playing Illinois tonight, etc.) I ultimately returned on to that most trusted phrase, “I love you,” time and time again… especially in those moments when I found myself pulling Nathan’s hands gently but firmly from the tubes or wires that he seemed determined to remove or disconnect.
And then at some point, it occurred to me that Nathan had to be even more frustrated by his inability to communicate than I was- so I devised what seemed like a simple and workable system …. blink your eyes once for Yes, twice for No. But after one or two tries, it seemed like that wasn’t going to be easy. Plan B worked better with a squeeze of the hand: once for Yes, twice for No. And then something inspired me to go a step further, and I told Nathan that the nurses had asked me to quiz him in order to help assess his mental acuity. (Which was a complete and total LIE.) But I tried to make it seem/sound very official and clinical- going so far as to concoct fancy-sounding labels for various kinds of questions I would ask him. (“Next, I’m supposed to check your Numerical Calculative Status” – whatever the heck that means!) I guess I didn’t want to do something that Nathan might find irritating, pointless or condescending, and I also wanted him to take it seriously.
(Maybe on some subconscious level I was remembering what Polly did on a couple of occasions with her mom in her last year of her life, when she had fallen pretty deep into dementia. Polly would come up with what amounted to fabricated projects that would be a gentle means to get Jan using her mind. The one I remember most specifically was shortly before Lorelai was born, when Polly asked her mom to “help” her write out a long list of potential baby names. By that point, even as simple a project as that was all but impossible for Jan to do, but you could tell that it meant the world for her to feel useful, and I suspect that making the attempt was helpful in some way.)
Anyway, the first couple of questions were quite simple – and all I asked Nathan to do was to squeeze my hand when I got to the correct response. Question 1: What state do you live in? Is it Kentucky? …. Arkansas? ….. Wisconsin? SQUEEZE! YES!!!!!!! It was as if my brother had just won Final Jeopardy by answering a question about the Crusades. Question 2: What is the official color of the Wisconsin Badgers? Purple? …. Green? …. Red? SQUEEZE! YES!!!!!!!! And off we went, for a solid half an hour, as I queried him about all kinds of things. And we even got fancy when I asked him to tell me how many children Matt and Randi had by squeezing my hand the proper number of times. That was trickier- he would squeeze my hand three times, but then sort of kept squeezing, as though he couldn’t stop. But my sense was that he knew the answer. It felt incredibly good to be truly communicating, even if only one of us was capable of saying words. And only after the fact did I realize that in that whole time that we played the quiz, Nathan never once tried to remove any wires or tubes or tug at his accursed neck brace.
Eventually, Dad and Sonja and Randi and Steve arrived, and it was good to be together – and it was interesting to see how each of us had our own role to play in interacting with Nathan- as well as various roles in seeing to his care, asking certain questions, addressing certain concerns. It was almost the scenario of “it takes a village to raise a child.” I was so glad that all of us could be there for Nathan …. and mindful that the “team” also included loved ones not there at the moment, like Matt and Scott and Willie and other treasured family members and friends – each with an important part to play.
It was a good day – and the main headline was that Nathan had made great progress. But it was also a sobering day, especially at that point in the afternoon when Nathan under- went his first session of physical therapy, which involved sitting up on the edge of the bed for the very first time since he had gone into the hospital. The therapist and nurse got him into a sitting position, but Nathan looked for all the world like an emaciated rag doll, essentially incapable of doing anything to steady himself or to even raise his head. It was at that point that my dad turned to me, ashen-faced, and said under his breath “this really demonstrates just how hard a road this is going to be for Nathan.” It’s true. But in that moment, I deflected the haunting image before me by remembering how firmly Nathan had clasped my hand, and how emphatically he had squeezed my hand with every correct answer he had given me in our little impromptu quiz…. Wisconsin …. Red ….. Sonja …. Kathy …. Target ….. Madison …. Kaj ….. Henry ….. a Pastor …. a Doctor …. Opera (what’s my favorite kind of music) …. on and on, demonstrating beyond question that however much his body has been ravaged by this ordeal, and despite his inability to speak so much as a single word (or even vocalize a simple ahh), Nathan is still Nathan. He remembers who he is, who we are, and – of this I am certain – that he is loved.