That fine line

I am distressed tonight. My work takes me into the teeth of death every day. Sometimes death is achingly slow, the creep of decay to which you know there can be only one resolution. Other deaths are jolting, an eyeblink, the wrench of surprise. We doctors feel it around us, and raise our fists, but know in a visceral way as few others do that all we can effect is delay.

And so I know, without a doubt, and with daily reminder, how temporary is my life, how fragile are my loves. I struggle with it each time I note my own happiness. From the moment Betty was conceived I feared and expected her death. Every day she was still alive inside me seemed incredible, and I never took her for granted. One horrible day I stopped feeling her flips and kicks and was immediately ready for the worst. The moment I registered at Maternity triage she kicked, and I was amazed. "Your heart is still beating," I thought to her in congratulation. "You're still here, still surviving."

In moments of deep newborn sleep I would put my hand on her stomach and wait for the rise with her next breath. In that instant I was suspended between joy and grief, two divergent expectations from my questioning touch. And then she breathed, and it was joy.

I wonder if I am obsessed with death, too preoccupied. But how can I not be? I'm suspended in illness six days a week. Today my pager screeched and I hurried to the bedside of a young woman whose eyes had the glass of death over them as my classmate pumped her pale chest. Her mother cried outside the room and called to her baby, a girl suspended between life and death. Two hours later her berth was empty and ready for the next battered body to be delivered and its fate played out. Today was her last day of life, but for some reason mine went on. For some reason my baby is breathing and smiling and my husband is smiling and I'm so, so happy and know just how lucky I am. I don't know how many days, how many hours we have together, we three, but no matter how we spend them I am counting them up in my heart, so sweet and so lovely.

And if I or they or we were gone this instant, I have been happy, so happy while we lived.

Ashes to Ashes

In the fall of 2003 I was breaking apart. My first truly dark bout with depression was beginning its cruel descent, and I had just moved halfway across the world for a year of study abroad in Munich. I had thought I was physically ill at first, lying in bed for days at a time, counting the few hours I wasn't crying and trying to use them to drag myself out in order to eat.

I cut class nearly every day, spending a ridiculous amount of money on cheap clothes at H&M and on admission to art museums, hoping to find something to break my hopelessness for more than a moment. In the process I bought a ticket to see my favorite band, the Dandy Warhols, at the Olympiahalle stadium. The fact that they were opening for David Bowie was a happy bonus, but I was going for the Warhols. Their album Welcome to the Monkey House was one of the few things keeping me sane. 

On October 27 I dressed with unusual care, pinning my dark hair into a fauxhawk and slipping my bruised wrists into fishnet gloves. I'd lost a lot of weight in the past two months, so my legs were slim in limited-edition black Levi's I'd bought in Berlin. I put my concert ticket in my back pocket and tucked a disposable camera between my breasts - cell phones and cameras were prohibited in concerts, and pat-downs not uncommon, so smuggling was necessary if I wanted any pictures. As an American I was accustomed to flaunting the rules in a way Germans were not, and I was the only person I saw at the concert with a camera of any kind. The other concertgoers were so polite that I walked right to the front without having to push; I assume there was an unspoken rule about time of arrival and rightful place that I wasn't aware of. I was pressed against the stage. I doubt I would ever have gotten so close in another country. I got my camera ready.

That night I loved the Warhols - I even managed to catch Courtney Taylor-Taylor's attention and have a brief shouted conversation about our shared city of origin.

Then Bowie came on. 

From my journal entry of October 28, 2003:

"Warhols are hot.

Bowie is SEXY.

Tight black jeans with an exposed front zipper, brown leather belt with the end tab flopping around in a rather suggestive manner, tight white t-shirt, red neckscarf with a pearl pin, and a red and white pinstriped old-fashioned waistcoat to DIE for.

And he strutted.

And he struck poses.

And he led us on and we loved him for it.

Kept saying “Merry Christmas” and demonstrated a catwalk walk.

Knelt on the stage…held long notes, was so hot.

And he played so many great songs!

Fame, Fashion, Ashes to Ashes, China Girl, Heroes, Hallo Spaceboy, Afraid of Americans, oh man it was so cool. I freaked out and daaaaaanced and screamed. Like a wee Beatlemaniac I was.

Love, love, love."

I left the stadium with my eyes full of tears. A week later I got on a plane, cutting my year abroad short by ten months. I never did finish that year of college, but I managed to scrape through the next few months and later to conquer more than I ever thought I could. In the time since, I've learned to cradle my heart in my hands and care for it when it starts to crumble again.

Thinking of that time, of Bowie and his art, touches on my darkest days and shines a little light.