Normal

Last summer while I was so very ill, unbeknownst to me, a dear high school classmate was also deathly ill, 1500 miles away. It was months before we caught up with each other’s stories. The illnesses were different, though both life-threatening. I just got started a little sooner than she did.

We talked about how strange it had been trying to re-enter our worlds, looking for some sense of normalcy. We both affirmed that, when you are gone that long, for whatever reason, the standard of “normal” has been redefined. New roads have been built. Others have closed. People have moved on while you were locked down. From your bed you could see the sun rising and setting each day. In my case, my hospital room was too high to be able to see the cars and lives passing on the streets below, on their way to their new life, while mine stood freeze-framed, locked in place.

People would ask us if “we were back to normal.” Some asked because they were genuinely concerned. Some asked with a tone in their voice that betrayed impatience. Answering their questions, despite their motives, was complicated by two facts.

One is that, when you are hit that hard, every part of you gets taken down. There is no part of your being, physical, emotional, spiritual or psychological that is not sick with you. In my case, when my liver nearly died, my heart, my soul and my mind all suffered. In short, it was easier to recover physically than it was to recover, say, spiritually.

I got out of the hospital just a little over a week ago. Hard to believe it’s been a whole year. I want to say that I’m back to normal, except that normal isn’t what it was the day I went into the hospital. That’s the second thing that complicates answering the “Are you back to normal?” question. What’s normal? I’m still figuring that out, frankly, and hope to be for a while.

There were those who just couldn’t understand why it took so long. That’s only because they’ve never been that sick. Someday they will be and then they’ll be more compassionate, maybe. Until then, the lesson from it all is just for me. “Be kind,” someone once wrote. “Everyone you meet is carrying some heavy burden.”

We don’t have to have a personal understanding of anyone else’s pain in order to be compassionate toward them. Compassion and empathy should be our default positions with everyone we meet. We never know when we may need to ask them to scoot over so we can climb into the same bed with them.