Grief

By Patrick Nevins

The last time I woke up with aphasia, I was alone. It was Cheryl’s day to pick up donuts for the nonprofit she works for, and she’d let me sleep in. Don’t judge me, but I tend to talk to myself when I’m alone, and after my shower that morning, I couldn’t talk myself through getting dressed, which I tend to do when Cheryl’s not there to help me, which, God bless her, is just one of the things she bears about me since I had the stroke. I couldn’t get out the words for choosing a polo shirt or encourage myself as I struggled into my jeans or judge that my sneakers weren’t Velcroed too tight. I’d woken up with Broca’s aphasia before, and it had gone away within minutes, so as I stared at the bathroom mirror working my jaw, trying to force out words, it wasn’t hard to deny that this time it might be different.

I figured the aphasia would wear off by the time my intro to sociology class met later that morning, so on the drive to campus I tuned in NPR and tried not to think about it. But here’s something else, either from the stroke or just getting older: My reaction time’s not what it used to be. There was a pickup in front of me at a four-way stop, and, I don’t know, it seemed like it was moving, so I started to move, but it wasn’t, and I rear-ended it.

This great big guy gets out of the truck, young guy with tattoos, camo cargo shorts, Second Amendment tee shirt, all the signs that he’s a guy you don’t cross. Sees me, middle-aged professor in a Subaru. Starts yelling, “What the hell, man! You fuckin’ blind?” He’s spewing this stuff, and my first instinct is to meet this lunk’s anger with my own. But by the time I work myself out of the car (it’s not easy for me), it’s not him I’m angry with—it’s me. I shouldn’t have been tailing the guy so close. I know better. I know my reaction time has slowed down, like everything else about me, except in this moment, how pissed off I get at myself. Idiot!

Of course, I can’t say any of this. My head-shaking and the exaggerated furrowing of my brow doesn’t convey what I want,  “I’m so sorry, that was totally my fault, I’m such an idiot.” What the driver gets is, “Not my fault, asshole.”

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

I walk closer to him, hoping that at close range he’ll understand that I’m sorry, and he sees my dragging foot and bent arm, and all his rage dissipates like steam.

“Oh, shit. I didn’t realize….”

When I get up to him, I open my mouth, but the aphasia’s still got me in its grip.

“You can’t talk, can you?”

I tap my chest with my finger and nod, like, “Yeah, this is on me.”

I get my wallet out for my insurance card, but he says, “No, man, don’t worry a thing about it. It’s just a scratch. Look, where’re you headed? I ought to follow you, make sure you get there okay.”

It’s not necessary, but I figure I owe it to him to assuage his guilt over raging on an old, disabled guy, right? So I give him my card.

“Okay, Professor Landes, let’s get you to campus.”

The driver allows me to pass him and follows me to campus, and it’s the most painfully self-conscious I’ve been behind the wheel since taking my driver’s test in 1971.

There were fifteen minutes until my class started. My teaching style hasn’t changed much in thirty years: I lecture, get them discussing some articles, there’s a midterm and a final. Upper-level courses have a paper. But whatever the course, whatever day it is, my voice is an indispensable teaching tool. It’s not vanity, it’s the way I was trained. So you can imagine I was pretty panicked that students were already in their seats, killing time on their phones, and my voice was absent.

But I reasoned that the aphasia was temporary and I had only to bargain with my students for one morning. I walked into the classroom, nodded at the twenty-odd undergraduates, and wrote on the whiteboard, WRITE 5 MIDTERM QUESTIONS W/ ANSWERS. QUIZ 3 CLASSMATES. TURN THEM IN WHEN YOU LEAVE.

“Like, questions we think might be on the midterm?”

I nodded.

“You have laryngitis or something?”

I nodded again. This was in an old building with old furniture, those desk/chair combos, and I pulled one from the front row and sat down, as I often did during lectures. I could usually keep a class’s attention, but without my voice, I felt ridiculous up there. They slowly opened their notes and a few students began to write. And I just sat there regretting that I didn’t cancel class. What kind of deal was this, exchanging my lecture for busywork?

“You all right, Professor?”

“He can’t talk. Don’t be stupid.”

I remembered that I was supposed to get a haircut that afternoon, so I stepped out of the classroom and texted Cheryl.

Lost my voice this morning. Would you call ray and cancel my appointment?

When?

1:00

No, when did you lose your voice?

Woke up this way.

Anything else wrong? Should I call dr Armstrong?

Please cancel my haircut.

What are you doing now?

Class.

?

I’ll explain later.

When I got back into the classroom, something had happened. The students had turned their seats toward each other and were asking their questions. I floated around the room, listening in, giving a thumbs up to the better answers, shrugging when someone was off the mark. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the class; I heard the voices of students who’d never spoken up. Maybe I’d been overestimating the value of my voice in the classroom. Did I even need it at all? What about outside the classroom? Did I ever need to speak again? Cheryl and I had just had a perfectly adequate conversation over text. I texted with my sons. Hell, soon enough I’ll be texting with my grandkids! To whom did I need to communicate? The barista in the union? I could point at the size coffee I wanted. My barber, Ray? He knew what to do. I don’t go many places. There aren’t all that many people I talk to. When I earned tenure and stopped striving so much, a calm settled over me, a peace with the clock running out on my relevance. When that happens, there’s a lot less need to talk to people outside of your family. It was settled, then: If the aphasia didn’t wear off, no big deal!

The peace I had come to with my aphasia was short lived. Cheryl surprised me after class on the steps of the social sciences building, ruining it. I couldn’t text, nor can I adequately express now, the way I felt in that moment. I was aggravated that she’d shown up unannounced, needlessly worried about me. My anger with myself was back, too, for the misstep of texting her. And guilt, always guilt, for burdening her. Not that I chose to have a stroke, but who else am I going to blame? But—and here’s the thing—all that negative stuff was just one side of what I was feeling—the ugly, stiff, dragging-down side, if you will. The other side was all love and gratitude for this person who has always outclassed me and with whom I can be vulnerable in ways I’ve never been with anyone else. I wanted to tell her that, even though I was certain my words wouldn’t convey the depth and complexity of what I was feeling. I certainly didn’t want to text it.

I met her at the bottom of the steps and, rather than even try expressing what was in my heart, I made a scissors motion with my fingers around my temple. (What the hell is wrong with me?)

“No, I didn’t cancel your haircut.”

She could tell I was pissed then.

“I’ll take you to lunch, then the barbershop.” She put her hand on my chest, softly, looked in my eyes. She was looking at me with affection, but she was also studying my face for any extra droopiness. She’s vigilant. “I’m not worried,” she said, “but I do want to keep an eye on you.”

She drove us across the bridge to downtown where Ray’s is and there’s a barbecue place. Good one-handed dining. Cheryl ordered at the counter while I made a show of finding us a place to sit. Now that I was out of the classroom, where I had the authority to not speak, and out in the world, I didn’t want anyone knowing that I didn’t have a voice. I shoveled barbecue and mac-and-cheese in my mouth while Cheryl talked. I think we got out of there with no one the wiser.

There was no keeping up the façade in Ray’s, though. Ray gives me a big, “Hey, Walt!” and I give him a wave and figure I’ll read National Geographic while he finishes up with his customer. But Cheryl says, “He doesn’t have his voice today.”

Judas! I’d never been so betrayed by that woman in thirty-six years of marriage!

“Oh,” says Ray. “That a side effect of the stroke? I know it’s not the same, but with my diabetes, some days, whew! Can hardly make it through the day.”

Now everyone in the barbershop knew my affliction. And, no, Ray, it isn’t the same. I know that wasn’t very charitable of me, but I was too depressed at that point to love company in my misery.

When it was my time, I slumped in the chair and let Ray put the cape on me and talk about—I have no idea what he was talking about—and snip away. After the stroke and a lot of hashing things out with Cheryl, I faced up to needing to reduce my commitments to the university. There were too many ad hoc working groups of subcommittees of task forces to run to on one good leg, so I retired and became an adjunct. Being close to retirement age made the transition easier to take. But if the aphasia were permanent, I’d probably have to give up my classes, too. I imagined myself shrinking in that barber’s chair, pieces of me falling away like loose hairs. Confined to a wheelchair, eating everything through a straw. Mind gone. That husk, that was once Dr. Walt Landes. Scholar. Husband. Father. You know he was a star point guard in high school? Took the team to state twice.

“You’re all done, Walt.”

I know. I know.

If you’ve been following along, you know this is the part where I come to an acceptance of my aphasia. But mercifully I was spared that—for the time being, anyway. The next morning was one of those rare mornings that I was up before Cheryl. My sleep (and hers) gets interrupted by my changing the side I’m sleeping on, which takes time and a lot of moving of pillows. In the morning, I roll on my back and check in with my body, mapping where new pain has flared up, where the borders of numbness lie. Some mornings, instead of practicing this bodily cartography, I try to forget that I’m a physical being. I close my eyes and let everything soften, try to melt into the bed. Inasmuch as I can disconnect from pain and numbness, it’s peaceful; but then I wonder if that’s what dying is like, and I’m thrust back into my body and all my worries about its failing. But on this morning, I checked in with myself quickly and got out of bed. There was something I needed to do that morning, though I couldn’t remember what it was.

What I needed to do was to see if I could speak. But before I remembered my aphasia, I’d started the coffee and walked out front for the paper. We must’ve had a sub deliver the paper that day, because it was on the driveway; the usual guy knows to put it in the box, because it’s difficult for me to bend over and pick it up.

“Dammit.” That’s when I remembered the aphasia. I laughed. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

When I got back inside, Cheryl was up.

“Can I pour you some coffee?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Your voice is back!”

I shrugged. “I knew it would be.”

Except I didn’t know it would be. And I don’t know that it won’t leave me again. I’m still haunted by the image I’d drawn of myself as I was sitting in the barber’s chair, that vision of me shrinking to nothing. Sure, we all know our ultimate destination is a pile of dust; it’s just that I can imagine getting there better than most, having gotten a head start. Have I made peace with that? I don’t know.

What I have accepted is this: For every loss—and the next one was driving; Cheryl convinced me not to get behind the wheel again after I told her about the accident at the four-way stop—I have to practice grace for my denial, forgiveness for my inevitable anger, reason when I try to bargain my way out, and courage when darkness comes, when I lie awake wondering when I’ll finally lose all sense of body and spirit.