I woke up with a nagging pain in my right arm, which didn’t surprise me since I’d been afflicted with what I figured was a bad case of tendonitis all week. Because I’d rolled onto the offending limb in my sleep, the pain was now acute. Since this syndrome had been messing up my sleep, I’d been bunking in the guest bedroom so as not to disturb my wife’s slumber. Suffice to say, I was running quite the sleep deficit. Rolling out of bed I went into the bathroom, popped three Advil, and then rubbed some lineament into my arm to numb things up.
Sitting in my quiet living room with coffee and the news, I waited patiently for the drugs to work their magic until it was time to wake my daughter up for cheerleading practice. Rosie, my new Boston Terrier, perhaps sensing my distress, plopped down next to me on the couch and started licking my leg. As I listened to the clock tick, I felt my mood begin to darken with each passing second. “If this is how you are at fifty-seven,” I thought to myself, “Then old age is going to be a shipwreck.” When the caffeine finally hit my bloodstream, I went upstairs and nudged Natalie awake.
“Get cracking, kid,” I said. “Practice is in an hour.”
Still in my robe, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast when I spied a bunch of boxes piled in a corner awaiting flattening for disposal. Aggravated my wife hadn’t done this already – probably knowing I’d do it anyway – I scooped one of the floor, drew a kitchen knife out of the cutlery block and started to cut, hitting resistance when the blade encountered a stiff piece of tape. Grunting, I put my elbow into it and the knife burst through the box and sliced the middle finger of my left hand.
“Fuck!” I yelped.
Embarrassed at my stupidity, I went to the sink to wash out my finger, watching as my baby aspirin thinned blood stained the water red. Looking at the cut, I knew it’d need stitches. Wrapping my finger in a paper towel and applying pressure, I used my free hand to call my wife who was out was meeting friends in Manhattan.
“Yeah,” I said, after explaining what happened. “I need to go to urgent care.” After my wife said she’d find someone else to take our daughter to practice I went upstairs and calmly told Natalie I had to go to the doctor. “No biggie,” I said, so as not to alarm her. “But someone else will take you to practice. Mom will call you.”
When I arrived at the urgent care center, the waiting room was empty save for a mother with a little boy lying in her lap. The child looked feverish and, as his mom gently stroked his hair, I could tell she was nervous. Remembering a couple of scary visits to the ER with Natalie, I understood. Then after a few minutes spent texting my wife, the door swung open, and a nurse bade me entrée. “I’m here for this,” I said, holding up my injured digit. “It’s very serious because I use this finger to communicate all time.”
“I hear ya,” she said, laughing.
“Think I can get a handicapped sticker out of this deal?’
“Probably not.”
Finding my vitals sound, the nurse said the doctor would be with me in a few minutes. Then I mentioned the pain in my arm. “Since I’m here,” I said, “I might as well get it checked out.”
“No need for stitches,” the doctor said twenty minutes later. “Just a dressing.”
“Oh good,” I said. “I thought I’d really messed it up.”
“The arm, however, I think you have a bad case of tendonitis. But we’ll take an X-Ray to be sure nothing else is going on. Could be some calcification there.” Great. More rads. I’d just had a CT scan the previous day because of a problem with my lower back, a sciatic issue that had killed my running routine dead. When the radiology tech asked if I wanted a lead apron, I replied in the affirmative.
Back in the exam room awaiting the results, I noticed I was becoming very agitated. Ever since my cancer experience, I get the heebie-jeebies every time I smell Lysol. “Hearing aids, cancer, glasses, my back and now this,” I thought to myself. “I am falling apart.” In addition to the CT scan that week, I also had blood work to see if my cancer was still in remission which, despite having been tested many times, still sets me on edge. But I also knew thoughts of my recently departed friend, a man my age, were rattling around my head. Taking a deep breath, I tried thinking positive thoughts. “Your blood test came back golden,” I thought. “Your heart is good, your weight is down, your vitals were perfect, you have a lovely wife and daughter, a job with purpose, and it’s a beautiful day. What are you complaining about?”
“You’re arm looks fine,” the doctor said, looking at the x-ray. “But I’m going to refer you to an orthopedist. It could be cubital tunnel syndrome.”
“Probably from holding my damn cell phone.”
“Could be,” she said. “I’ll give you a course of steroids for the pain.” Oh goody. That shit beats the hell out of Advil.
Walking out with a script, I went to the pharmacy, got my drugs, and then walked over to the diner to get breakfast. I hadn’t eaten since five the previous afternoon and was feeling it. Once the waitress placed a glass of water in front of me, I opened the blister pack and popped me some ‘roids. Hopefully I wouldn’t turn into the Incredible Hulk.
“What’s that for?” the young waitress asked.
“I’m getting old,” I replied.
“You’re not old,” she chided.
“Honey,” I said, “The Fifties have sucked.”
Breakfasted and feeling better, I drove to the practice field to make sure my daughter knew I was okay. My mother-in-law had picked her up and told me she’d take Natalie to grandma’s for the afternoon. Good. I needed a break. Then the urgent care center called me. “We didn’t give you a tetanus shot,” a tech said. “Come back.” When I walked into the waiting room this time, however, the place was packed with people of all ages looking miserable. Luckily, the staff took me in right away.
“I leave and all hell breaks loose,” I said, as the nurse needled my arm.
“Yeah,” she said. “It got really busy.” Walking out, I saw an old man with his head in his hands while his wife gently rubbed his back. That had been me after the docs told me I had cancer. Jesus.
Back at my house, I liberated the dog to let her run in the backyard and pee. Then, just as I was winding up to toss a tennis ball, a large purple dragonfly settled into a hover inches from my face. Instead of being alarmed, however, I was awestruck by its effortless and graceful flight. As if sensing me, the dragonfly bobbed up and down, almost like it was saying hello. Then, settling on a blade of grass the bug was still, allowing me to see the glory of its iridescent diamantine wings, as if it were an angel announcing the wonder of creation. Standing under the bright sun, time seemed to stop and everything in my humble backyard suddenly became luminously beautiful – making every tree, blade of grass, and flower shimmer while the songs of the birds resounded like chorusing Cherubim. Looking down, I saw that Rosie had crept up on the dragonfly and was transfixed by it too, as if sharing in my little moment of rapture. Then the dragonfly flew away and the spell was broken.
Knowing I’d been under pressure lately, I figured I’d had some kind of stress reaction, and my unconscious had weaved some emotionally imbued imagery together to soothe me. I’d seen my dead friend at his wake, so I knew anything was possible. Maybe it was the steroids screwing with me. Despite my theologizing, I can be quite the cynic. Now with the house to myself, I did something I can never do when my wife and kid are home – watch TV. Flipping through the channels, I stumbled across an old favorite, the BBC show Rev. About an Anglican vicar ministering to an inner city parish in London, I’d always thought the title character played by Tom Hollander was a lot like me and, as I watched him deal with the homeless, addicted, mentally ill, and folks just needing a sympathetic ear, I’d told my wife the reverend’s parish mirrored my job perfectly – just without the soutane and incense. But I also knew Hollander’s sensitive portrayal of the vicar mirrored my own struggles with faith as well. Does anything I do matter? Is my belief just death anxiety evading bullshit? Should I just sell cars?
As the show progressed, one of the parish’s schoolteachers is killed in an accident and it falls upon the vicar to break the news to the school’s very young students. Looking ill at ease in his cassock, the vicar tells the kids that they wouldn’t be seeing their teacher anymore. Noting that the teacher didn’t believe in heaven, but that he did, he said, “I don’t know what [Heaven] is, but I do know a story that gives me an idea.”
“It’s a story about a lot of little bugs that lived at the bottom of a river and every now and then one of the bugs would crawl up a plant through the water into the light and he’d never be seen again by his friends. And one day one special little bug felt that he wanted to crawl up the plant too, so he did. He crawled up the plant through the water into the light and he turned into an amazing colorful dragonfly – and he flew around the air, and he was the happiest he’d ever been. But when he tried to fly back down into the water to tell his bug friends how wonderful it was, he found he couldn’t. He couldn’t get down into the water anymore because he wasn’t a bug anymore, he was a dragonfly. And this upset him until he remembered that one day, all his friends would crawl up the plant too and join him in the sun.”
Sitting on my couch with tears running down my cheeks, I knew seeing that dragonfly in my backyard and immediately hearing the vicar’s words afterwards hadn’t been a coincidence. My vision hadn’t been a stress reaction; it had been something else. What? I don’t know but, as Rosie snored contently next to me, I felt my fears and cynicism melt away, knowing without words that a curtain had been parted and, for a moment, I’d been given a glimpse of the glory that suffuses and sustains existence. Perhaps it had been the world’s wonder reminding me of the beauty that awaits us all – that one day we will all be like dragonflies, flying happily together under the warm sun.