Big, Big Images in Small Mirrors

The path forward, forged in fire, tread warily.

I thought the accident itself was the inciting incident, but I was wrong. The day I braved the mirror began a journey of choices every single glance at the face in the mirror required––choose life, or choose to slowly die in isolation. Below is a record of that day awareness of the fight ahead as told in first person, present tense.

BIG, BIG, IMAGES IN SMALL MIRRORS

The moment has come, and I ask a nameless nurse I’ve never seen before for a mirror. She brought a small cosmetic mirror sized for a purse, opens the clasps, places it in the unbandaged hand, my right, and leaves the room. The aloneness of the private moment is appreciated. Suddenly, the most horrid image appears––what is this creature I see? THIS CAN’T BE ME! I scream inside my head, yet no sounds escape as the image reverberates a frequency of horror. Funny how a tiny purse-sized mirror reflects a big, big, image.

I can’t even cry, the blow is too great. I fought to live for this. Why? What was I thinking? I want to die, then the weight of my ungratefulness falls; I pull the covers over my head and sob until empty and eyelids too heavy to resist. Sleep is welcome.

My pity-sleep is interrupted at 2:00 a.m. by Tim, the pulmonary expert nurse, and when he flips on the bright lights, I squint like in the magazine photos of movie star James Dean from the 1950s. Apparently, I had been wheezing loudly and choking in my sleep. He starts the process of removing fluid build-up in my lungs with a giant, yet simple suction mechanism. It looks like a discarded empty two-liter soda bottle. It’s uncomfortable, yet effective, and I am soon breathing easy.

Tim tells me he heard a rumor that all tubes are coming out in a few days. He notices the mirror on the table beside my bed.

“So,” he asks, “What do you think?”

“I think I’m a freak. A monster.”

“I’ve seen worse. Sweet dreams, and no more wheezing,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves. I thought I heard a smile in his voice and compassion flowing from him despite his apparent nonchalance.

^ ^ ^

I wake to find my four daughters surrounding me. I’m happy to see them but there’s something about having four faces at about 18 inches away that nearly sends me into a claustrophobic panic. I tamp the temptation to freak out deep down inside, yet I think it’s the best and rare day to have them here together. I ask them for a favor.

“What’s that Mama?” they ask in sweet, yet unusual, harmony.

“Sing me a song.”

They talk amongst themselves and decide to sing a song from younger years that they used to sing together in church, “God Will Make a Way.”

Each had a line from a verse when Rhonda, now 17 years old, begins her part about the three Hebrews who refused to bow to the statue of King Nebuchadnezzar as he demanded, with severe punishment for defiance. She mimics her little-girl voice and chimes, “and the king got so mad he said throw ’em in the fire, make the flames as hot as you can.” All stop in tandem like someone has pressed the pause button. We realize to whom and what they are singing. In the few seconds of utter silence, one of them accidentally brushed a nurse’s note from the table across my bed and we hear the faint whoosh of a sheet of paper landing on the floor, breaking the tension of the moment. I begin to laugh at the absurdity of the moment, and our cackles of laughter fill the room. The gales of laughter causes a nurse to peek inside, but she shrugs her shoulders and leaves.

Laughter is good medicine and the mirror forgotten, until Jackie, my first-born, spies it.

“Mama?” she asks. I look at her knowingly.

“At least you have all your hair.” More laughter spills.

“Do you remember,” Rhonda teases, “What we promised to put on your gravestone?”

“No, tell me again,” I answer remembering my line appropriate for the set up.

Stephanie interrupts, “Here lies the bones of our beloved mother still asking, ‘Is my hair messed up?’”

My spirits lift and the image in the mirror is stuffed into the darkened land of the subconscious to be excised another day.

Photo by jessicasvisionsphotography.com