I’m in the middle of a scare. I have to get a angioplasty next week. I could either have a blockage or some inflammation in my heart from autoimmune disease. I have a lot of the post-COVID symptoms. It is scary. Somehow though, six and a half hours after I got the news, I feel less afraid because at least there’s a reason I feel this way and my cardiologist wants to look inside my heart.
What will he find there?
I’ve been writing down the important stuff in my notebook. It’s there under today’s date, what’s in my heart. That’s what I needed to do because I was scared. You can find it there if something happens to me.
Next week, my cardiologist will look inside my heart and hear that I loved Nick so much that without him, I wondered if I could continue to breathe. All those nights up with him when he had pneumonia, even the fifteenth time through Star Wars Episode VIII with that pallid love affair between Anakin and Padme were worth it because Nick had finally, finally after days of sleeplessness and struggling to breathe, Nick had finally fallen asleep. Nick taught me the meaning of oxygen.
My cardiologist will look inside my heart and find Mike’s love grown into its walls the way a trees roots will clutch a stone or grow over a curb. He’ll see our 28th anniversary and all the way back through to our honeymoon in Maine when we spent our last night on the Alagash waterway zipped into our double sleeping bag in 29 degree weather with our sandy dog Indiana tucked between us despite the fact that she smelled of dead fish she’d rolled in earlier. He will find all my dogs, cats, and even hamsters souls tucked in there where it’s warm. He will find that a lifetime with Mike does not feel like enough in my heart. Yet it has been just a moment.
My cardiologist will feel the curiosity that flows in my blood, the stuff of learning about lichen, electricity in a heartbeat, astrophysics, and the joy of Fibonacci numbers popping up in nature. The mysteries of the Universe lie along the waterways of my blood.
My cardiologist will hear the echoes of laughter of my friends in the big hollow spaces in my heart. He will find room for change in my demand for social justice and ethics in DC. It’s right there in the hollows.
And I really want my cardiologist to find the little note of hope that he can patch some duct tape over a worn spot in my left ventricle and I can go home to be with my breath, my joy, my love, my curiosity, and my laughter for a few more years to come.
Please pray for me. It’s still a little scary.
Thank you for listening, jules