Category: Autobiography

Things that may never come… (Part 2)

On By Halden KirkwoodIn Autobiography

Enough sermonizing about me and my lifelong identity crisis. Because there is no me alone any longer, for you my Love are forever part of me now. And just so my defunct hormone cascades are not just mine, but yours, ours. My feelings of terror, humiliation, and powerlessness are no longer mine, but ours.

And this drives home that fact that at the heart of life lie joy and sorrow. I have never been more glad to have my deepest fears and fragilities shared and born by the one who has chosen and vowed herself to me. And I have never been more sorry and sad to have foisted my burdens upon the one whom I only ever wanted to lift up, to carry, and hold above the fray of this violent world of crushing and grinding. It was that old self-idea I had all along that fed this of course. As if there is any point above the fray, out of the crushing, away from the grinding. No, my Love I know now that the point is simply that we we are in the fray together. That come the crushing, come the grinding, come the hospital beds and hours of waiting silence, we are together. So many follies have led us to this point, but blessedly, somehow, despite ourselves, we are here now, together. And so we can mourn and hope together. This shared fragility binds us in our unknowing and uncertainty, our sorrow and our joy.

I remember everything. I remember all the things that may never come, thanks to this unknown and unexplained growth in the recesses of my brain. I remember how terrified and uncertain you may never get when somehow our IUD short-circuited and we wound up pregnant by mistake. I remember the tears you may never cry over whether you could possibly be a mother (you could, but that’s another argument we may never have). I remember my ear that may never be pressed up against your belly, listening for heartbeats and little kicks from a life that may never grow inside. I remember that I may never watch you, clinging helplessly to your hand as you deliver a new life into the world from your own body. I remember the first steps our baby may never take, the first date she may never have, the first car accident he may never perpetrate. With all the joys and sorrows of this life, and the life that may be, and the lives that may not be, I remember these. They are ours, as the uncertainties, the fragile (im)possibilities that may or may not be.

Of course my persistent shadow self bucks against all this. It makes me want to claw my scalp off because I cannot secure anything for you or for me. What a great and terrible powerlessness this is! The only thing that could probably put it in perspective would be real powerlessness, which we have very little acquaintance with. But even so, in the midst of our white, first world dilemma we are, it seems, being brought into some true touch with real fragility, and so, I believe, with real love.

I find myself able only to give you myself, with all the unknowing of what self that may become or cease to be. I give you my weakness, for that is what I know I have left. At the center of my brain, in the patched hole in my heart, in the feeble self-constructs of my psyche, I know only that weakness remains, and by grace it remains in love. Its gift is to bring illusions of power to an end. And so I offer you my weakness, and I promise to receive yours. I will remember all that may not be, and all that never really was, and in this weakness I will hope for absolutely all that may be, and that always truly was. I will believe with you, even when I fail to believe, that God really did choose that which is weak in this world to shame the strong, and the things are not, the things that may not ever be to bring to nothing the things that are secure and established.

With all that never really was, and all that may never come for us, I am yours. I am a terrified five year old, a preacher, a backpacker, a runner, a potential brain surgery patient, a testosterone-deprived, exhausted man, an immature 8th grader laughing about butt jokes, a 16 year old who knows that no girl will ever love him. In all this, I am yours. Regardless of what never really was, or what may never be. Together we will receive what was, and what is, and what is to come.

How it never really was… (Part 1)

On By Halden KirkwoodIn Autobiography, Memory2 Comments

Everything would be easier without that irascible background noise of arrogance. Or so I tell myself. Maybe that’s the arrogance talking. I guess it’s not really for me to say. Others can, and if the past is any indication, the will let me know. But let me tease this out anyway and see what comes of it.

When I was 5 years old the doctors sawed open my rib cage and busily set to work patching a hole in my heart. I was born with that hole. On account of this hole, when I was born they told my 27 year old mother that, if I turned blue, to please bring me back to the hospital. Years later I learned that she stood by my bedside until she couldn’t hold back the sleep any longer, and finally went to bed, entreating God that if I turned blue in the night while she slept that God would wake her.

I never turned blue. God was merciful to at least this new mother. But when I grew, I couldn’t really run. Air always came in gasps.  The heart doesn’t do well with holes in it, hence the medically supervised rib cage sawing that took place in my 5th year. I remember a good bit of it. The foam donut-shaped pillow that my head was placed on as I was wheeled down the hallway so that my chest could be cut open. I definitely thought that pillow ridiculous.

They asked me to count to ten as they placed the gas mask over my nose and mouth. My five year old will, ironclad and implacable was determined to make it all the way to ten. I think I made it to 4. I woke up with feeding tubes sticking out of my stomach and a row of weird looking tape going from my sternum to a few inches above my belly button. The tape was itchy, but they told me they usually used staples, so I felt pretty thankful overall. When the time came for the feeding tubes to be removed, the doctor gave the clear instructions to “give me a yell” to which I vigorously compiled each time one of the tubes was yanked from my young stomach.

I was quite certain that my determination to be brave and strong played a big role in my recovery. The fact that I could run without gasping and doubling over anymore after I got home made me more certain of that fact. I was quite sure that now, with my heart all stitched up and repaired, I could do whatever I might desire if I were to continue to apply my determined five year old will, ironclad and implacable.

My teenage years served as a good time of reinforcing this supposition. The cardiologist told me when I was 12 that due to my heart murmur my body might not be as efficient at vigorous physical exercise. My dad sat by my bed that night and told me that maybe my calling wasn’t to physical prowess but something more spiritual or intellectual. As soon as he closed the door I determined, in the dark of my preteen bedroom that such cautions would be no match for my self-determination. Within a few years I’d earn that adolescent black belt in karate, master the splits, and break blood vessels in my eyes from doing too many handstand pushups.

As I went through college and became some sort of adult, I carried this insistence on my own strength and ability and will into everything. I learned a great deal about sacrifice, about dying to self, about self-giving, and self surrender as I went along. It was growth. But under it all that strong, able self that I imagined as myself hung on at the foundations.

I have gone through life clinging to this primal  illusion of control and competence. I was one who always had the ability to handle life. I had certainly learned that it wasn’t so good to be excessively cruel or abrasive, and that love and self-denial is a more truthful and compelling way for me to live my competent and controlled life. But one thing was for sure: I was no terrified five year old being wheeled into a surgery I couldn’t possibly understand or control.

From age 17 to 34 I never went to see a doctor. Well, except for a couple times when I got paranoid that my heart was about to stop pumping and went to the emergency room only to be told that I was fine and to go home. Little outbursts of fragility that only twice broke into my competent certitude that I had control of my body, my life, my self.

That pretty much brings us up to date. That is the arrogance that has formed the background noise of my life. And how clearly a fiction it is now. So false it suddenly appears as I find myself unable to walk up hills without stopping every 15 minutes to gasp for air like some pathetic 5 year old with a hole in his heart. Determination, discipline, self-control, workout and diet plans are all showed up as impotent when confronted with an MRI telling me that my brain can’t work quite right anymore, regardless of how much I will it.

Someday soon I may find my head resting on a donut shaped foam pillow again. But this time, as I am wheeled down under fluorescent lighting, whether for biopsies or brain surgeries, I hope that I will not feel that enduring misguided need to be brave and determined. Perhaps I can just fear the unknown like any five year old. And hope for a tomorrow that will be greater than all these yesterdays like any five year old. Maybe I’ll be able to run again after it’s all said and done again this round at the hospital. And maybe not. But either way, from here on out I’ll take it all as gift. If this is what it takes to disabuse my of the illusions that cling so closely, the fantasies of control, self-determination, and competence that have dogged me this whole time, then blessed be the Name beyond all names. Whether I get to run again, get skinny and strong again, or whatever at least now I know that I’ll go out singing. And that is more than enough.