The end of Them

We think we understand a thing called divorce. We see it happen to naive newlyweds and those crushed by crises. Sometimes it is a welcome release though mostly it is sad. But there is a kind of divorce few have seen that is the strangest and saddest of all -- divorce after a lifetime spent together. After children, dreams, careers, retirements. Divorce that isn’t so much a separation of two lives as the splitting of one being.

A lifetime of answering unasked questions. He knows to bring home a certain ice cream bar for her when he goes out. She knows to check that he has his wallet and keys before he leaves. Only she understands the system for their ancient file cabinet, and only he can decrypt their tax forms. At times no one else can make sense of his foggy-minded conversation, and when she needs to be brought on board, he’s knows exactly what to say. Now, no one does.

A lifetime of habit. His arm always finds hers when they climb stairs side-by-side. She always reaches out at night to cover him with the blanket that he tends to kick off. He is an excellent driver with a terrible sense of direction, and her arthritic knees do not cooperate with driving, but her mind still navigates well. “Together, you guys are one decent driver. Just don’t go out alone!”, their kids will joke. Now, they both must.

A lifetime of sharing. There is no his and hers. Only ours and theirs -- bedroom, bathroom, bank account, and Scrabble board. Their home, carried from house to house, is decades of flotsam of which neither can remember the source and now neither wish to own. It will end up claimed by their adult children for utility or discrete bittersweet memories, the rest, given to charity. Their family traditions will also be left orphaned and unwanted, tainted by this tragedy, further hollowing out holidays and get-togethers. Now, they start from scratch.

Like two wind-beaten trees, they survived the battering of time by growing into and around each other. To painfully uncoil and pull apart after decades leaves both unbalanced and exposed. And yet, they have. They stand alone, willfully ignoring their raw and weak parts, trying to straighten out into independent stability. Each denying the constant nagging existence of the marital phantom limb. Fighting the habits. Ignoring the unanswered questions. Seeking comfort with control and ownership. Struggling to define and manage themselves as individuals again for the first time since first becoming adults. It is a pain and process unlike any. May your parents never have to experience it.

Come to Terms

How does it work, this coming of terms?

Does it mean that I have become so well acquainted

with the hitherto nameless horror

that it has been subject to the indignity of taxonomy?

And having been accorded a category, title and alias,

It now sits meekly on a shelf, between First Heartbreak and Car Crash.

Does it matter, the terms I choose?

Is honesty important, with labels like:

“The Time I Tried to Kill Myself After A Year of Failures”.

Or should I encrypt my grief and mask it with mockery.

After all, “Miss Tiddlywinks” or “The Jellybean” doesn’t sound so bad.

Making what was an unimaginable, indescribable blow

an amusing misadventure in my madcap life.

Could it be the power is in the act of articulation?

And by capturing and framing the wound in words,

I am able to loose its piercing grip and evict it from my heart?

Or are the ‘terms’ to come to instead a relationship,

That I must concede between the thing and I?

A point of shared reference so close that we become family,

(And the sins of family can be borne no matter the cost).

But then, perhaps I am being too abstract.

And “come to terms” was always intended as an order.

Where “terms” was somewhere to go.

A mystical place where the wounded heal,

And no aching loss or painful memory can follow.

Because I have tried all these approaches but the last

And I am still not there.

The Bag in My Closet

In the bottom of my closet

Sits a dusty old duffel bag.

That smells of triumphs and losses.

Crammed among cleats and balls,

Are my faint but stubborn hopes.

That my body will recover.

Cushioning my kit is that dream

Of an old and wrinkled me

Cackling round the bases.

Harbored and hidden away

Is the life I led for so long

That I have not yet given up on.

Floating Particles

When was it that the idea of heaven and hell first coalesced in my mind? It must have been during those slow summer days in the apartment on Elmdale. The one I was born in, literally, my mother having been traumatized by her sister’s hospital birth stories. By the time I, her third, was ready to enter the world, she was an experienced home-birther and my parents’ bedroom would go on to be the delivery room for my younger brother too.

I remember sitting at the front room window overlooking the street, watching the dust motes in the air, wondering at their providence – divine? Was that fairy dust? No, just the regular kind. They would hang in the afternoon light, waiting for a breeze to determine whether they’d end up dust on the sill or fly away. I’d study the dust motes as only kids can, filling my sight and horizon with their mysterious movements. And I’d think about God and religion.

I heard those words a lot in our home. Our home, where my father was a Muslim and my mother was a Mormon. Our home of uneasy alliances and fragile peace. A peace so fragile I once broke it with a tiny angel figurine. It was a parting gift from Great Aunt Mabel. She let me pick one out from the countless beautiful little people that covered every surface of her pink doilyed sitting room. I chose a beautiful blonde angel, with a long white dress, glittery wings, and golden halo.

When we got home, I excitedly showed it to my dad, which resulted in another bewildering parental argument that ended with powdered figurine in the air. Muslims do not believe in haloed and winged angels. Muslims do not keep idols in their homes. I should never have called it an angel when I ran excitedly to show it to my father, who’d stayed back, as always, to work. If I’d only called it a fairy, perhaps I’d still have it to this day. But then maybe I wouldn’t have learned about heaven and hell the way did, when I did.

There were two religions in my world – Muslims and Mormons – and I was a Muslim. And that meant no angel figurines, no trick-or-treating at Halloween, no more shorts and tank-tops in the summer, no tap-dancing lessons, no shimmying in the school winter musical – when everyone else shook their booties, I, in concession to my inherited faith would hold very still then. If not? Then hell. What was hell? A bad place. You didn’t want to go there. There, people were burned for being bad.

But these rules didn’t apply to momma. She was Mormon. She wore dresses, had experienced marshmallows and gummy worms, could eat meat outside our house and shimmy if she wanted to. We believed in one god, and she believed in a god, his son and a spirit. Momma went to church where she got special little bits of bread and water, and we went to masjid where sometimes we’d get donuts. Momma couldn’t have coffee and we couldn’t have pork. Neither of my parents could drink or gamble, and we were all supposed to be kind and honest. Her rules were hers, and ours were ours.

What did that really mean though, beyond the ominous and empty words of God and religion? I don’t recall asking or maybe my dad’s answers were too complex or evasive to understand. I was only five or six when all of these realities, like dust motes and broken figurine particles, were still settling. So there was never a sudden epiphany of what me being Muslim, and momma not, signified. Not like when I realized on the way home from grandma’s house that my grandparents were old and would die, and in fact, we’d all die. Or when a summer trip to visit my dad’s family suddenly illuminated the mystery of his darker skin, preference for strong tea, and somber songs in another language.

What all of it really meant would take years to sink in, but back then, in those sleepy simple days, I was certain only that it was not good. I know this because the first thing I ever prayed for, in a quiet whisper gathered in my tiny child hands, was for God to fix it. Make momma Muslim. It was prayer poured over the dull muffled debates that leaked under my bedroom door at night. Make momma Muslim. It harmonized with the sing-song squawk of the swing-set that babysat me across the street. Make momma Muslim. And it would churn those dust motes in wait for wind or gravity to determine their final destinations. In wait for God. As I still am. Please God, make momma Muslim.

On death and dying

I just read an interesting article about a 23-year-old woman diagnosed with a terminal form of brain cancer who crowd-funded her own cryo-preservation. She raised $80,000 to have her brain preserved so she could have the chance of another life in the future, when science could either repair her brain and install it in a new body, or upload her personality into a digital consciousness.  

While the science behind the process – where a brain’s intricate pathways are mapped out and preserved and the entire organ frozen until the unforeseeable future when science can use those pathways to program the individual’s personality into an artificial life-form or even perhaps a cloned new self – is not particularly appetizing or confidence-inspiring to me, the story itself, of a young woman facing the prospect of dying young, I can relate to.

While thank God I am not dying (well, not any more than any of us are), I have twice had to consider the prospect of Death’s early arrival. The first time was when I was told I had malignant cancer and the second when I was told I had a brain aneurysm. Each time, I went through that indescribable out-of-body experience of considering the question of “Am I gonna die?” You suddenly telescope up and away from all of your petty concerns like how fat you are or whether you’ll get promoted this year, and look down on your life as outsider. The image you see is a photo where someone has toggled all the way to the right on the brightness/contrast option – the grays amplified to blacks or whites and all of the little things blurred out. You see your life in purely broad strokes.  

Here Lies Zee –

Recent wife to one awesome husband, daughter to two contrary parents, sister to three equally-warped siblings, aunt to thirteen amazing midgets, and friend to a few patient souls. She thought she’d live longer so her epitaph isn’t as cool as she’d hoped. No Nobel, Pulitzer, or even World’s Best Mom. But she did manage to rescue some stray cats and birds, never stole except for that one time when she was five, and tried to give more than she got. The end.

That’s about it. Not very impressive and the prospect of just that being my final tally was actually surprisingly unpleasant. When I was a kid, I was one of those emo, ‘why-am-I-alive?-what-is-life?-I-didn’t-ask-to-exist’ types. I grew up to be a young adult often accused of having a death wish, and agreed I probably did. Even now, as an adult, I’ve never been one to ‘cling to the earth in fear of death’ and have thrown myself out of a plane and into harms way on numerous occasions. I thought I was pretty chill with it. But when Death shows up as a potential appointment on your current schedule, no matter how blasé you think you are, you don’t want to meet him.

It turns out that when I found out I could die from my illnesses, I really didn’t want to. I’d betrayed my cold-hearted teenage self and invested in humans and life. I couldn’t leave my poor husband alone in this world. What would my family do without me to play as negotiator and therapist? Who’d feed the cats? I always said I’d write books but hadn’t found the time! I had too much unfinished business. I needed to do what I could to stick around and thankfully, in both cases, I was able to. My cancer-harboring thyroid was evicted from the Zee Body Politic, and my explosive brain was defused with glue. God gave me that reprieve that so many would and have paid fortunes for, not once, but twice.

So I don’t judge Kim Suozzi for launching that Reddit campaign to raise funds to give her consciousness the opportunity to come back. Because if you don’t believe in an afterlife, and this life is it, well, 23 years isn’t very long to give life a go. It’s just long enough for you to gather the tools and beliefs that will lend some purpose to the decades ahead. In your early 20s, you’re still young enough to believe in your vast potential but not yet have had the chance to test it. Such a short life is not long enough for stress and failure to sap your confidence, or the pains and indignities of old age to make you hanker for that final rest. You want more, and if you don’t have that mortal hope of an immortal soul, well, wouldn’t you want to do whatever you could to get a chance? I hope somehow Kim gets it.

The Emergency Room - Where everybody knows my name, doo doo doo, and they're never glad I came, do doo doo...

This is another drive-by update.

I turned 33 this week. I am now JANNAH TASTIC. Cuz apparently 33 is the age of people in heaven, so say some ahadith. Does this make me heavenly? IT SURELY MUST. DO NOT DEBATE THIS.

Seriously though, I feel fairly meh. I’m out of shape and have gained a few pounds. My family insists the weight has filled out my face so I look healthier. I personally prefer the wan and consumptive face I usually have when my body is closer to my preferred weight but all one’s preferring won’t keep cake from jumping into one’s mouth and finding its way to their jowls. I guess my face looks ok otherwise. Some wrinkles but hey, I’ll swap them for the absence of acne any day. About damn time those bastards left me alone.

My pain levels are good though. Not at their lowest, but manageable at a five out of ten. I can walk straight and am not limping or wincing, though my skin still has that constant bruised feeling going on. For me, that’s a pretty good pain status. Unfortunately my energy levels are shot. I seem to always be extra tired these days. I’m considering upping my dose of pep pills, but I’m wary of self-medicating. Can’t put my finger on the cause of this down-tick. I hope it passes. I’m tired of being tired, waking up like the walking dead only to mostly stumble through the day. It’s no fun at all.

So of course, I celebrated my birthday with….. a….. FUN MEDICAL MISADVENTURE!!!! WHEE! It wasn’t anything dramatic though. I had some dental surgery the week before and woke up with a fever and face like a chipmunk. So away the husband and I went, to our favorite date spot – The Emergency Room – where everybody knows my naaaaame *que the Cheers theme song* (at least the receptionists and pharmacists do)!

It seems my dental surgery had resulted in an infection, and they needed to be sure it wasn’t in my sinuses as well, so I had to X-ray my head. One X-ray image in, and the technician stops the process, comes out of the monitoring station looking all concerned and asks me: “are you wearing a nose ring?” Uh, you see my face. It is not nose-ringed. I don’t have such extra holes in my head. She looks at me in consternation, as if squinting at me will make my naughty invisible nose-ring appear, and goes back to the monitor. Then she gets her manager. I hear hushed whispering. The husband is with them and asks “What’s going on? What’s the problem?” More hushed whispering.

Then the lead technician comes over. She too looks at my problematic head, confirms I have no grommets hanging out of my nose, and then says “Ma’am, there is some abnormality.” Not this again. Abnormality is practically my middle name. The husband calls out “they say they’re seeing something weird on the scan on the right side of your head.” What do you mean weird? And are you sure it’s the right side? “Yes ma’am, on the right, near your nose.” I start wondering if any of my many nights of lucid dreams were actually alien abductions with traditional nasal implant souvenir. Or maybe I shoved a crayon up there when I was a kid and forgot about it. OR maybe one of the doctors left something in my sinuses to remember him by. My troublesome head boggled at the possibilities.

“You’re SURE it’s the right side?” I ask again. “Because I DID have brain surgery but it was on the left side.” They all go back to the monitor, staring and discussing. Finally I hear Mali announce “It’s a flipped image! It’s the left side! This must be from your aneurysm surgery!”

And lo and behold, the abnormality showing up in the X-ray wasn’t just FROM my aneurysm surgery. It WAS my aneurysm they were seeing. Apparently, the Onyx HD glue the neurosurgeon used to seal up my 10mm aneurysm shows up on X-rays like a solid object, complete with daughter-aneurysm lumps. So I do INDEED have a rock in my brain.  Checkit out!

Awright, that's it for updates. I shall probably now disappear for another few weeks. Try not to miss me too much. :P

Yo man.... perspective.... and kale.....

I had a couple of instances I wanted to blog about but it’s been really busy at work so I wasn’t able to catch those thoughts and put them down to electronic paper before they faded away. But I'll try and recall them.

July 3 was the first anniversary of my brain surgery to repair my aneurysm before it ruptured. In the past year, all the memories and stresses of that time have gone from stark Technicolor to washed out – which I suppose is one of the good things about having a wonky brain and memory.  I remember the bleed-out at the clinic that did my angiogram the day before the surgery, and the amazing sandwich I got to eat after fasting for a trillion hours (I LOVE YOU JIMMY JOHN’S). And I remember the never ending pre-surgery preps, with the surgeon’s nurse and head OT nurse having some kind of weird territory/power struggle over my gauze becapped head. And of course, I remember jumping into the conversation about some sport that the doctors were having as I was slowly fading out of consciousness, and my fuzzy brained hope that I was being appropriately social and not sounding drunk. And I remember waking up in recovery, and the drama with the damage they did to my throat when they took out my tubing, which turned me into a blood fountain. But that’s mostly it. The rest, my husband has to remind me about.

It’s funny how something that once loomed so blindingly large in your life can fade to such banality. I realize how blessed that makes me – that I was able to have my life-saving surgery within days of my aneurysm’s likely rupture, and that I was able to return to work without any noticeable side effects or changes, to such a degree of success that I now sometimes forget to tell doctors about the aneurysm when sharing medical history. Inshallah (God willing) in a month or two I’ll head back for my second post-surgery follow up angiogram, and hopefully it'll find everything in there as good as they need to be.

OH! And I was able to fast all of Ramadan! Subhanallah (glory be to God). That was such an unexpected gift. Last year, I couldn’t fast at all, as I had my surgery right at the start of the month, and was on such heavy medication throughout that I wasn’t physically able to. I’m still on a cocktail of pills so I wasn’t sure how I’d manage if I was unable to take them at the normal times, and also have access to interventional medication when I was feeling especially ill. Everyone in my family was VERY wary of me fasting and kept trying to dissuade me but man, last year was the first time in my life I didn’t fast a Ramadan and it felt bad. Like I was deprived of something. I need that month of discipline and increased spiritual focus. It helps reset your body and soul. So I made my mind up that I’d fast as much as I could and do whatever necessary to ensure that. For me, that meant I had to take two naps a day, go to bed early, and put up with a near daily mild-migraine. PLUS, I was operating at about 1/3 of my normal productivity levels at work. But hey, so is everyone else who’s fasting, so it went unnoticed. 

This is the year I am supposed to be getting back into shape, after two years of being in a recovery/post-operative state. But unfortunately I haven’t yet gotten there. I’ve thrown out my back and even sprained about five times this year, with increasingly little provocation. Each time it happens, I am barely able to walk or sit and have to be on muscle relaxants and pain meds for weeks. Even right now, I’m still getting over a sprain that had me in the emergency room and on bed rest for nearly five days. Just when I think I’m better, I do a little more activity and suddenly, I feel that gut-wrenching twinge in my back that is the precursor to days of agony and immobility. Sigh. So I’m taking it easy for another week or so before I hop back on to my elliptical and try some weights. I wish I knew a physical trainer out here with the expertise needed to train someone with a connective tissue disorder and spinal degeneration. I think that’d help ensure I don’t harm myself trying to get fit.

AND, I am going to try a new diet. Yep. It’s not a normal Zee year if I’m not trying to starve myself thin. I keep foolishly hoping that somewhere out there is the diet that will work with the confusing conundrum that is body in the best way possible, making me effortlessly thin. This time I’m doing a version of the Fuhrman diet, which promotes eating food with the maxium micronutrients per calorie. This means you eat tons of greens mostly (KALE?! KALE!) and avoid animal fats and protein, processed foods and carbs. My mom has been doing it on and off and has lost about 40lbs and just seems a lot healthier. I love veggies so hopefully this one won’t be too difficult.

And…. I’m turning 33 soon. Whoa. Like. Whoaaaaaa. But Subhanallah, you know, I’ve had an amazing 32 years, and I can only hope and pray the rest will be even better. :D