How the Past Finds Us

Yesterday, I was out meandering with a friend I haven’t seen in years. She is down from New Hampshire, visiting, and called me out of the blue to get together for a few hours. It's one of those friendships that doesn’t require catching up all at once. You just start talking, and somehow it all finds its way in.

We ended up in a part of the state I never go to. Traffic slowed on the highway, and without much thought, I got off at the next exit and took a detour to avoid the traffic ... or so it seemed.

We drove for a while, talking, not really paying attention to where we were. And then something began to feel familiar. Not in a clear, conscious way. It was more more like a quiet recognition. 'I've been here before," I heard myself say out loud.

And then I knew.

Without meaning to, without planning to, I had found my way onto the road that leads to the hospital where my dad was taken eight years ago to be weaned off the ventilator that saved his life and learn how to deal with his new trach.

I hadn’t been back there since. Not once. There was no reason to go back. No desire to be anywhere near that place. And yet, there I was.

At first, it was just a feeling. A subtle shift. A kind of stillness inside me.
And then it all came back.

I felt the ventilator again. Not as a thought. Not as a memory I was trying to recall.
I felt it in my body. I heard that sound. I saw the numbers on the screen. I remembered the waiting. The not knowing. It came back all at once, as if no time had passed.

March 27 is my brother’s death anniversary. My dad had a cardiac event the next morning. In an instant, as I drove by that driveway, it all flooded back.

And then this morning, Facebook memories reminded me of Covid times, when the mention of the word "ventilator" caused shock waves to go through my body. I didn’t connect it all yesterday. But I did this morning. The body has its own way of keeping score. The past has a way of finding us.

Eight years ago, everything was happening all at once.

My dad was in Florida, fighting to live after a cardiac event. His heart had been repaired, but his kidneys and liver were shutting down, and we didn’t know where he stood neurologically. He was on a ventilator and had several IV bags dripping into his veins to keep him alive. 

I was sitting at his bedside as his medical proxy, holding his living will, leaning on my medical background and consulting with dad's team, doing my best to handle something no one is ever fully prepared for. What does "heroic measures" really mean when navigating an actual clinical situation and considering all the variables? I learned through immersion what my medical training didn't teach me. 

At the same time, my brother Kevin had lost his battle with cancer. He was being laid to rest in Rhode Island. My family gathered for his funeral in Rhode Island while I sat in a hospital room in Florida, holding space between life and death.

I remember feeling something take over the room. 
Not metaphorically. Literally. Energetically.

I knew it was connected to my brother. I could feel my mom’s presence too. Almost as if she was telling me that she was there to help Kevin along the way. She had passed just six months earlier. I had been with her when she made the decision to die. She told me she needed to be there for Kevin … to meet him when he arrived.

That moment still gives me goosebumps.

My dad’s nurse came in to change his IVs and stopped in her tracks. She typically moved fast to keep up with the pace her job demanded. But not this time. 

She dropped the IV bags on the bedside table and sat down next to me, “There’s something strange going on in this room. It's energetic," she said.

I told her what was happening in Rhode Island. She took a deep breath and sunk deeper into the chair. She just sat with me. In silence. As if honoring something neither of us needed to define.

I could feel the energy moving. Around the room. Around the bed. And as quickly as it had shown up, it was gone.

Dad recovered with minimal deficits. He had no memory of all that happened to him while he was intubated in the hospital, or at the vent/trach hospital. It was as if part of his brain had lost something or as if the effects of the drugs he was on made him forget. He had even forgotten that his son had died the day before his own health issues began.

About six months later, during a routine visit to his rehab facility, he asked if we could talk. He was hesitant. He asked me not to speak until he finished telling me the story and told me to answer only when he asked me a specific question. He thought I might think he was crazy.

He started with a question. "Did Kevin die?" he asked. "Yes. He died of a brain tumor," I responded. "I thought so," he answered. 

Then he proceeded with his story. He told me he had been at Kevin’s funeral. He named the restaurant where everyone gathered afterward. He told me about the weather. "It was raining cats and dogs," he said. He told me who was there at the service and who went to the restaurant after the service. He mentioned people who had already passed including my mom, her brother, and her two sisters. He went on to mention the people who were there who were still living. 

Then he asked me why I wasn’t there. I explained that I was at his bedside while he lay there in a coma connected to life saving machines and IV drips.

He took a deep breath, shook his head in disbelief, and continued with his story. He told me that after the funeral, he took a walk with mom. He described the light and the tunnel. And he told me that she told him he needed to go back. That "the kids" had experienced way too much loss in a short period of time and that we needed him to live. 
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The logical part of me could have probably explained it away. Drugs. Trauma. Hallucination. But something in me chose not to.

I called my brother and asked him to tell me about Kevin's funeral. Details. Who was there. Where it was. Where they went after the service. Even what the weather was. "It was raining cats and dogs," he said. My dad had it all right, except for the people who had passed. 

I didn't really need proof, but confirming the details my dad had shared somehow validated something deep within me that I already knew. 

What we see and what we understand about life may only be a small part of what is actually happening.

At the time I first wrote about all of this, the pandemic was unfolding. The word ventilator was everywhere. Messages about living wills and end-of-life decisions were constant.

And I felt teary, triggered, and emotional. I remembered my own experience with my dad while also staying grounded in something deeper that was reminding me to breathe, to be present. to live fully, to take one step at a time and to trust the unfolding.

I remember asking myself: What if all of the loss, the intensity, the experience with my family was somehow preparing me for something I couldn't see? What if it gave me the perspective, the tools, the capacity to move through something like this?

Back then, the answer felt like a quiet yes. Now, eight years later … standing on that road again, without even trying to find it ... it felt a loud yes. 

It's all connected. It's all for a purpose. And we can't always see the whole picture when we're living it. But every once in awhile, we get a glimpse of the tapestry of our lives and how it's all woven together and connected to the present moment. 

And how ironic that while this was all happening inside of me, I was connected to someone I never see, on a road I never travel, with a person who gave me a reference point to connect it to all that has happened in the past eight years and how life has changed.

I am amazed at how the universe masterfully pulls threads from the past into the present to remind us of the growth we've experienced and how much we have to be grateful for, no matter what happens in life. 

The past finds me. Not to keep me there. But to remind me ... 

Of what I’ve lived through.
Of what I’ve held.
Of the growth.
Of what has shaped me in ways I’m still discovering.

There is something sacred in the way memory lives in the body and the way time folds in on itself.

There is something powerful in the way connection, love, energy doesn’t disappear, but instead is woven through the tapestry of our lives.

There is something profoundly powerful in the way that unexpected moments like this can remind us of how far we've come in our journey, how powerful our learning and growing is, how far love can stretch, and how much we have to be grateful for every single day.

PS This morning I am snuggled up with furry friends in a beautiful spot contemplating life, sipping tea, and writing. After I'm finished writing the next chapter of my new book, My Caregiving Essentials: What to Say, Do, and Prepare Before Caregiving Becomes Your Second Full-Time Job, I will do some work tasks to bring in some money. And then I am heading to dad's assisting living facility to hang out and watch the NCAA Women's Final Four March Madness games. He and I have been through a lot and have both come a long way from that day in that hospital room. We are both still breathing, We are both still learning and growing. And we both have so much to be grateful for. 

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