I decided that to help myself process my son’s short life, I am going to try to journal a little bit about what H. and I went through. I don’t know if it will help or not, but at the very least, I can open the door for people a bit, and talk about how it feels.
Of course, since you reading this are most likely to be someone I actually know, I don’t have to ask people to refrain from posting disagreeable or proselytizing comments. How awkward, that seems to be what I just did. Look, this is the internet, where it’s hard to sense tone, so it may not be apparent to us that you are being ironic or just kidding. Furthermore, I am nothing if not frank and somewhat vulgar. I may swear. I’ll try not to go full George Carlin, but it was an extreme situation. I will likely use some extreme language.
Issue #234 of the Uncanny X-Men wasn’t that remarkable. What it had going for it that fired my teenage imagination was the side plot about a character who traveled a metaphysical desert, and in that desert, was purified, “forged” into a new being. As a chubby, nerdy, not-exactly socially adept young man, this idea came back to me over and over again. I wanted to find a magical metaphysical desert to burn away my fat and insecurities and bullshit, and emerge as a lean sword. Hells yeah! Oh, and also Wolverine’s healing factor finally repelled the Brood infection, settling a nasty argument and leading to a satisfying series of panels where he “SNIKTS” somebody.
The Killing Joke written by Alan Moore (and colored/inked by an amazing team as well, but they aren’t my point right now) is a dark, angry work. A work that to me was written by a man who knew the shape of pain; he had tested the dimensions of some vast loss the way you probe the gap where a tooth was. But to me it’s a righteous anger, not the cheap anger we throw at each other over the internet about trivialities. Alan Moore has disavowed it, and reportedly hates that it was made into canon. That sucks, because it is amazing.
Without spoiling it if you haven’t read it, it revolves around the Joker, and his attempt to drive Commissioner Gordon insane. The Joker wants to prove that his murderous insanity isn’t his fault, that any man could go mad after one bad day, one terrible thing. To try to prove this point, he does a horrible thing to someone closely related to Gordon, right in front of him. Then the Joker kidnaps him to a super-creepy carnival and … well, let’s say the Joker sings a creepily wonderful song about how comfortable it would be to simply let go, and give in to madness and nihilism, as the Joker has.
Aside from the compelling art and story, the most striking part of this short graphic novel to me is Gordon’s response when Batman arrives to save him. Stripped of his dignity, tortured both physically and mentally, he still holds to his values, telling Batman that he mustn’t kill the Joker. Gordon says emphatically –
“We have to show him that our way works.”
This was one of the things that I thought about over and over again during the time we spent at the hospital, waiting for answers…for a resolution. That H. and I had an obligation to show people that “our way works”, that even in the face of the worst thing ever, you can look to your values and your friends and family and practice what you preach. So we did our best to let go of much of the hot blinding anger; anger we could only direct at what the Joker calls “life, and all its random acts of injustice.” I would just try to be the father, the man my son deserved to have. My wife and I took the shittiest hand anyone can be dealt, and bluffed a way to a fragile sort of victory. We are still trying to turn as many of those cards over as we can. That time in the hospital became a "forge" for me, a place that burned away some impurities, left me with less time to be angry.
So the first thing I want to talk about happened the first night. As soon as H. found out she had gestational diabetes, she cut her sugar intake drastically. Out of limits: a Dr. Pepper, specifically one from Sonic. Sonic has this tiny ice…it’s like hail pellets; or third-rate Slurpee imitator ‘Slush Puppies’, often found in rural quik-e-marts. That’s what she wanted. I promised her all throughout that hot summer when she was pregnant that as soon as possible after she had elliot that she would get her specific doctor Pepper beverage.
So I’m going to skip over the long pitocin-exacerbated labor (24 hours, ish) while H. was in tremendous pain. I’m going to skip the last rush of his birth, where I went so quickly from the happiest moment of my life to abject horror…seeing him so limp and lifeless…so obviously in trouble. I will just say briefly it was like something from one of those old EC Comics…the last panel showing the horrible thing descending on the hapless couple…not so safe after all.
It had that level of horror. Pure animal terror, a base biological dread. The coalescing of months of worry and labor and paranoia into the cold certainty that the deck is stacked after all… Wait. I was skipping this. OK. Screw it. One more, then our feature presentation; watching a doctor bring my baby back to life. The image that always comes up is her gloved hands sliding over his tiny chest. That’s the thing that makes the smile slide off my face, sometimes in mid-sentence. I think I’m going to see that forever. But…after that…
I leave the hospital with my good friend, one of our best. We go to get the requisite Sonic beverage. How could I leave, you might ask. Well, I have to tell you. I have always had a dreadful fear of hospitals. Maybe it’s because I have visited the dead or dying there at a 5:1 ratio of living people. Maybe it’s because they smell weird. That, and frankly I needed to have a stiff drink. Sucks to drink such decent Scotch at such a shitty time, but meh. I also smoked one cigarette. I hadn’t smoked in years, but cigarettes and crisis go hand in sweaty hand. Also, you don’t get to judge our actions in the wake of this. No one gets to.
So it’s after nine when I get back, so that means that I have to walk in through the emergency room, and then cross the skybridge to get across to the other side. I’m almost all the way across, wearily carrying this tray of requisite Sonic beverages. I’d slept about 4 hours out of the last forty, so I have to tell you, I felt pretty low.
That was when the doctor approached me. She was waving her hands, and asking a question that I heard as “Sir? Sir? Are you here with Elliot?”
Because I’m so witty and smart and quick thinking, I say: “What? Elliot?” My son, last seen hooked up to a full intensive care set up. Which, in case you were curious, have the world’s most ball-clenching suite of alarm sounds.
So she smiles really wide and says, “Yes. Oh, good. He made a complete recovery!”
Against all my better judgment, I buy in. All the way. It could happen, I think. I start to smile. Start to carefully set the tray of drinks down.
That’s when the slender, meek woman waiting at the end of the skybridge gets the doctors attention with, “Ma’am, I’m with Elias.”
Elias.
Sounds like L-E-S, when she says it.
Elias. Of course. Not Elliot.
I stop smiling slowly as the doctor consults…her phone? A clipboard? Harvey the rabbit? The Great Gazoo? I really couldn’t tell you. I was busy getting the spins and very cautiously completing the ‘set the tray of drinks on one of the little tables’ manuever.
The doctor mumbles something I’m reasonably sure was, “I’m so sorry.” She hustles over to ELIAS’ … mother? Cousin? Who cares. I’m happy for Elias and all, but also…
Really? The long string of things that had to occur, just so that could happen to me? I can’t win the lottery, but fate can conspire to make literally the only two people I see before entering Hyla’s room….those people? At that time? See, it’s that sort of thing right there. It does look like there is a hand on the tiller. Just not a very nice one.
So that’s a five minute slice of what happened. That’s why I would say agnostic, not atheist. I could believe in a god, but the god I have seen the most of is a sort of cosmic Nelson Muntz, saying “Ha-ha!” about a broken leg. Or an eternal Lucy Van Pelt, always saying she would keep the football steady.
In many ways, I think in a terrible fashion living with this has been beneficial, it stripped me of a great deal of shallow cynicism, while curiously renewing my faith in humanity. It was a Forge event, a time when I passed through a fiery desert and was purified in a sense.
One thing. People made this tragedy into a miracle. Science, medicine, technology, compassion, family and friends. Doctors flew here in airplanes, guided by radar and satellites, to save my son’s organs and take them in more planes and cars that run on dinosaur bones that somebody piped out of the ground. People came together, and together we wrung every thing we could from it. We allowed religion to take the role in things that my parents wanted, and it didn’t hurt a thing. It’s sad that it takes something like this happening, but I can really tell you I have striven to learn from it.
