Tracy Morgan's Aunt Flossie

Where do you turn to for answers, advice, solace, laughter, when you've been coping with a serious illness in the family?

Each other, of course, is in many ways the true answer. But there are many moments when you're alone at night, and the person you might normally turn to is the one who is in the hospital. So at those times I turned to my childhood best companion, a good book.

I've mentioned before that Jill Bolte Taylor's first-person account, "My Stroke of Insight," is a wonderful way of understanding stroke and stroke recovery. Her description of what it was like to re-learn brain function, and the crucial role her mother played in her recovery, was an eye opener. All through her 8-year healing process, she emphasizes how important it was that the people around her believed and expected her to regain the functions she was working so hard to achieve. There was no room for doubters, or negative treatment, or as she called them, "energy vampires." She needed all her strength, and the strength of others, to heal. 

Faith, whether your place it in the patient, the doctors, the universe, God, the beauty of the human body's ability to heal, is a beautiful energy. It can do only good, and I believe it does a great deal.

Another source of insightful information, in a totally different vein, is Tracy Morgan's comedy special, "Stayin' Alive," his comeback to standup comedy after his terrible highway accident left him with a shattered femur and traumatic brain injury. His journey back from illness also involved regaining physical, speech, occupational abilities through therapy. And of course, charting his way to what he really wants out of life, post-injury. This latter part isn't a given, because a major illness does shake your perspective--if you're given a second chance, a pause and reset button on the choices in your life, what would you choose to do with it? In Tracy Morgan's case, it becomes clear he loves his little daughter and his wife, and he loves doing comedy. And it's a joy to hear him back in full force.

Now I've found there are really three categories of how people respond during a medical crisis. The first category are people who offer kindness, sympathy, rides, meals, hugs, prayers, and also gifts of privacy, all without strings, without demands, without questions or expectations. God bless them all. The second category don't really know how to respond, or are too distraught or too shy to say much of anything, and that's okay too. It's tough to know what to say. It's awkward to think of what to do, and that's very, very human. God bless them all.

And then, there's Tracy Morgan's Aunt Flossie. 

"Some people just can't stay away from anything that's happening in the family," jokes Morgan, "and in my family that's my Aunt Flossie." So there's Aunt Flossie, all the time telling folks her opinion, making a general scene, showing up because she wants to show up, creating a one-person stress event in the middle of a stress event. Every family crisis has at least one Aunt Flossie. Bless their hearts. Our crisis had several.

Now some folks have a good way with the Aunt Flossies, can cajole and calm them, gently steer them to less nuisance-y roles. Jon has that ability, and patience, in abundance. But since he was unconscious or semi-cogent for most of this event, it fell to me to deal with the Aunt Flossies. 

I firmly believe that shielding the patient from negative energy is as important as generating positive energy. So, well let's just say Aunt Flossie has probably permanently removed me from the Christmas card list. I'm good with that.

Major events like a medical crisis often make people reevaluate their lives. What to keep, what to let fall to the wayside. Negative relationships were one of the first things to go from my list.

For me, it's been highly clarifying, like tuning a staticky radio and suddenly hearing music coming in clearly and beautifully. I'm sitting patiently by that radio, listening with my heart open, receptive to the direction of the divine. I know it exists. Small thinking, negative relationships, ego concerns, get in the way, and are the first things to go. 

One of Jon's therapists asked him what he would like to be doing now, that he isn't already doing. Jon paused and said, "I think I need to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life." And that's true for both of us. Life is more than the hamster wheel you're placed on. There are soup cans and hollow logs and piles of shavings to burrow into, and even—gasp!—life outside the cage.

Time is a gift, and it is limited in quantity. Share it with the people who deserve the gift of your time, your talent, your light, and your love.