Nothing but Time: A Triumph over Trauma

Copyright © 2000 by Judy Light Ayyildiz.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

revival story in chapter two first published as Gathered At The Throne, 2nd place

winner, Piedmont Literary Review, Summer 1993

excerpt in chapter four from story first published as Sour Cherries, Potato Eyes,

Spring 1991

excerpts in chapters Five, Eight and Ten adapted from poetry in Mud River, Lintel

Press 1988: Two-Minute Triumph, Paper Dolls, and Gracie

excerpt in chapter from Early Morning In Zakopane, Smuggled Seeds, Gusto Press

excerpt in the Afterwards adapted from Last Walk With My Mother, The

Contemplative Way, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1996

ORIGINAL COVER DESIGN, A PAINTING BY VEDII AYYILDIZ PHOTO

BY VEDII AYYILDIZ

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[email protected]

4276

Contents

FOREWORD

THANKS

1 - Neuro-Intensive Care

2 - Jordan’s Stormy Banks

3 - Green Room

4 - Like A Promise

5 -Homebound

6 - Dancing On Pews

7 - Merely A Door

8 - Gypsy and Shiva

9 -Answer Box

10 - The Lazarus Club

AFTERWARDS

Dedication

For my mother, Laura Gladys Perry Light, who had more courage than fear.

Also by JUDY LIGHT AYYILDIZ

co-authored with Rebekah Woodie:

The Writer’s Express, creative writing lessons, Instructional Fair

1999

Easy Ideas For Busy Teachers, critical thinking,

Frank Schaffer Publications 1996

Creative Writing Across the Curriculum,

Frank Schaffer Publications 1995

Skyhooks and Grasshopper Traps, A Notebook of Poetry Lessons,

Skyhooks Pub. 1987

Mud River, poetry, Lintel Press 1988, 2nd ed. 1994

Smuggled Seeds, poetry, Gusto Press Series Winner 1979

First Recital, poetry chapbook, Leisure Publishing Co. 1977

FOREWORD

When the flood washes over both at dusk and dawn, float on the dank waters, let go at the falls where dragonflies dart in the arms of the sun. Open to the gossiping wet tongues of the hills-such tales of brick roads, primroses, and shale, warm rain in the cool limbs of iridescent trees, fans of white butterflies dusting a footbridge, or drunken gnats serenading the wide-rimmed sombrero of a lamp they once knew.

JLA

THANKS

Vedii-who will always stand by my side in the steps I take;

Kent, Kevin Kamal, and Karen who will understand my metaphor:

So deep, no wonder it’s called a stairwell;

the many nurses and therapists (whose names were changed to provide privacy) who helped me-most especially, Margaret; and Doctors: Gene A. Godwin, James Miller, and Donald B. Nolan;

The VCCA, AND Amanda Cockrell, Kamal Ayyildiz, Liz Jones, Rebekah Woodie, Jack Hatfield, Simone Poirier-Bures, Ken Taub, and Katie Letcher Lyle, who read drafts and made supportive suggestions, and last but never least, my daughter, Karen P. Ayyildiz, who did copyediting.

1 - Neuro-Intensive Care

Sunday, 1 AM, July 6, 1986

I am still awake. Half of me can’t move. Trapped in this bed, I stare up at spider-web cracks in the plaster, splintered lines like strings of nerves.

An eerie violence creeps through my body. Like a guerrilla army. It has ambushed, captured my nerve-system.

The doctors mention blood plasma transplant. Then say they’re not sure it helps. Would my blood be removed, altered, and put back? They speak in their calm, professional voice so I’ll feel safe.

Like when Dr. Miller brought up respiratory failure. Heart and lungs have nerves too. He’s ready to put me on a respirator. What if I get to the place where I can’t breathe? Is this paralysis permanent? If it gets worse, will I be able to talk? Could I go into a coma? Die?

Thirty-nine hours ago I walked up the hill to my house. Fourth of July fireworks shattered against the night sky. Less than a day later I’m hooked to machines. The one time it would be handy to have a husband who is a doctor, he’s in Turkey.

The guy in the bed on the right side of me is almost gone. I hear them whisper as they work on his body:

Had a stroke two weeks ago. No change yet.

Whispering, as if he could hear. He and the woman on the other side of me don’t ever wake. I don’t sleep. I can’t raise up. My brain is juiced up. Like these florescent lights that stay on all the time. My mind jumps from one image to the next like some high-energy drug propels my thoughts, though they haven’t even given me an aspirin.

The wall clock rules this space. Calls the doctor, regulates the nurses’ methodical brush from beds, to desk, to door, floating white caps checking our radiant vital signs, angels with charts.

A gray-haired nurse has worked evening into night on the old man. Up-dating, mixing, injecting measured units of hope. When he inhales, it’s a wobbling tone, a bass violin being tuned. His exhales whap. String breaks. He drones on and on.

The woman’s jaw flutters when she breathes. Gives me The Willies. From the desk I heard,

. . . and brain tumor.

I eavesdrop on their pity. They can’t operate. Her feathery rasp could be a bat flapping out of a cave. Must always be night wherever she is. If she’s having an out-of-the-body experience, she knows I’m spying.

I must stay conscious. This paralysis moved in on me last night while I slept. My legs seem attached to my torso like dead-weight, rolls of sausage. My toes tent the sheets like a pyramid.

Yesterday, my thirteen year-old Karen stood in the driveway when the attendant wheeled me to the ambulance. Her eyes, wide as a spooked cat. She looked like an abandoned waif the way her jaw was clinched and one arm was holding the other. I was leaning back off the litter as they carted me away telling her not to worry I’d be fine.

I hear the rustling of Linda’s starched uniform before I see her. Black curls trickle from her cap. Cherry lipstick shines. Lips pucker like some Forties’ movie star. She hums, Amazing Grace.

Linda sees me staring and stops mid-song, casually pulling her hands behind her back. I note the yellow blotch on her lapel that was not there thirty minutes ago and guess she had a sandwich with mustard. She smiles, studies the monitor, then looks down at me. Hi, she says.

I mumble back.

Who are you, my friend? she asks.

I take a deep breath. They know who I am. I scrunch my lips like hers then answer, ‘Judy."

Where are you? She is shaking a finger.

I cross my arms, carefully. The pull of the IV throbs. She is waiting.

OK, Judy.

I am judging her restraint. The same round of questioning, every half hour since five o’clock last evening.

We have to chart your physical and mental responses, she repeats.

I give up. I’m in the NICU, University Medical Center, Charlottesville, Virginia.

I like Linda. We’ve talked. We’re both from West Virginia. She adjusts my pillow. Do you know what day it is now?

I lift my hands to let her smooth out the top of my sheet.

Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday, tomorrow is Monday. This drill is irritating. She looks at me like I’m a spoiled second grader. I’m being naughty.

You guys sure provide a hell of a night out on the town, I add.

Linda steps back, folds her arms, and trains that schoolmarm eye on me.

Green-eyed Sally brings me the bedpan. She never stops chattering with the two interns, who rattle off questions to me while they once again probe and tap my arms and legs.

The three of them lift me like a piece of furniture, slide the porcelain pan under my butt, and pull the sheet back up to my neck. My toilet.

Then, as if it is an outhouse with a door and sides, they stand waiting and talking as if I am not even here.

The hefty intern is asking Sally a question. Did you try that new pineapple cheesecake down at the snack bar?

Green-eyes licks her lips. It’s fantastic!

Now the shapely female intern wants to know, Is it real or frozen?

It is like we are at a bus stop. I don’t know where to look. Am I supposed to be a part of the group or invisible? I close my eyes and pretend I am a telephone pole.

I can’t tell if anything is doing until the odor mingles with astringents and talcum.

Opening my eyes, I glance around. They don’t even act as if they have noses. Momentarily, I move my shoulders and say, OK.

The intern keeps talking as Sally pulls back the sheets. She coos like she’s found a chocolate Easter egg.

Oh, see what we have!

Is it a compliment? Should I answer? It could be worse. I could be getting soapy enemas.

The lower half of me seems as if it’s vanished, except for a deep heaviness. My legs are cool concrete. But I could feel that burning cold of the bedpan rim.

Beyond the pea green tent over my toes, 1:30 AM glares from the black-clawed clock. I shut my eyes and the clock leers from behind my lids. Time feels suspended, but those claws move from digit to digit, number and number, every second a nervous twitch, round and round. If I had a rubber arm I could take care of that clock.

Will I see my kids again? My husband, my mother?

Don’t begin imagining Mother seeing me here.

Closing my eyes again, I force myself to see phosphorescent colors encircling my toes, blue-green energy spiraling my legs, curling up until I’m cocooned in colors and healing lights. I imagine gathering hundreds of sparkles of golds and greens and sucking them to my lungs. The sparkles are healing energy, flashing warriors now charging throughout my system.

It must be time for my husband to board his plane back from Istanbul. And he hasn’t a clue what’s going on with me. I’m glad I wouldn’t let them call him. What could he do but worry the whole flight home?

Two weeks ago, Karen and I were on our way to California. Our mother-daughter adventure. Not that it turned out that well. I expected too much. Yeah, so I didn’t plan it quite right, like the ritzy hotel in San Diego when we should have taken one on the beach where she would have met some teen types.

Maybe we should have gone to Turkey with her father after all. But what if I had awakened paralyzed in some Anatolian village? If the doctors at this university center know so little about my condition, what would doctors know on the Asian plains?

Time holds the answers. Negative draws negative. Focus on positive.

As a child, little did I know that using my imagination as a way to cope with my out-of-control world was practice for being a writer. When you’re in a dark place, look up.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

Now, I’m really in a pit. The NICU. The nurse said that most patients in here rarely care how long the night gets, said my talking is a novelty.

I strain to listen past the doorway. The hallways out there are a tunneled maze. Ever so often, I hear laughter. It seems to flare up like a whirlwind. The maze must be full of cackles and croons and clangs. Stainless steel falling against the tile would toll like a bell. All over this hospital there must be machines gasping and sputtering. Sudden legs racing to keep up with the clock. Blithe spirits in white cotton soft-sole shuffling back and forth on their trained feet. And people standing up and walking off without having to think of telling their legs to move, their legs carrying their bodies like magic.

I can’t believe I’m here. Yesterday afternoon the ambulance rushed up the Interstate from Roanoke to Charlottesville. Then I was on the litter in a corner of the emergency room somewhere downstairs.

The old nurse pattered up to me. She looked burnt-out, probably from years of overwork. She methodically took my pulse and temperature, jotted it on scrap paper and pinned it to my pillow with a safety pin.

What’s your problem?

Don’t know, just can’t move my legs.

She looked at me a few seconds. Did you fall?

No.

She took a step back. Well, did you lift something? Do you have any pain?

When I said, Not really, she decided I wasn’t urgent. I saw the look. How many times I’ve heard a nurse or doctor’s story about hypochondriac patients. I felt baffled and a bit embarrassed about my whole situation.

Stay put and we’ll get to you soon as we can. She nodded, then shunted off down the hall toward some commotion.

I was there for an hour. I suppose my chart got laid aside or overlooked in the circus of stab wounds and overdoses. I just laid there like a dummy, not making a fuss. There seemed to be so many coming in down the hall who were really sick. Years of being a doctor’s wife didn’t do a thing for me.

After their dinner, my life-saving crew came back to pick up their litter. Were they surprised. One of them gave me his big paper cup of Hardee’s orange juice. I told him my heart was beginning to skip a few low-sugar beats. I crunched the ice between my teeth as the driver went for help. I heard him arguing. They found my chart, and suddenly I got lots of attention from those five nervous residents from neurology. They had been waiting. For over an hour! one of them claimed. As if I had been the one playing hooky.

I pride myself on having an inquiring mind. I should have realized from the very onset of the numbness that it was steadily creeping up. Am I neglectful or dense? Some force was taking control of my body bit by bit. Why didn’t I comprehend that? Responsibilities? I can’t be an emergency? Because I am a mother? Ha! Welcome, Ego, to the Time-Out Zone.

My nurses bathe and dress me skillfully as undertakers. When they’re bored, I get massaged. Since I can’t sit, they fluff my linens, feed me broth. I tell jokes, anything to distract, tales about my childhood, my three kids, can’t seem to stop talking, whether aloud or in my mind. Can’t let myself fall into the black hole. I got paralyzed in my sleep.

Linda is patting my arm. I smile back like she is right.

. . . even though you tell a lot of stories-

Is she hinting that my stories are getting on her nerves? The IV aches like an impacted tooth. I make a fist with the other hand, raise my arm and bend my elbow.

My arms are still working fine, see?

I see, and yes you look good. Anything you need?

I could give Linda a list, but I answer her in a nice southern voice.

Not a thing right at this moment.

Fine and dandy.

Linda turns, takes three steps over to the white desk under the clock, writes on my chart, replaces the chart in its slot and she’s out the door.

OK, I’ll just close my lids, won’t go to sleep, will try to relax, do a deadman’s float on a wide, placid river-going where, it doesn’t matter.

Scenes from the last three days begin to pass in my mind like a movie reel: Friday, almost two days ago, July 4th. I am bouncing around, shopping for furniture, fresh tomatoes, beans and corn from the Farmers’ Market.

After I come home, I am cooking for the street party this evening, then climbing up into the attic over the garage to get the metal table for the picnic. Do I strain my back? No, no pain. I lug the table to the opening at the steps, lean against the railing, ease it over a bit, then step down backwards.

Is there an answer for me in that garage? Concentrate. Did I hurt my back when I carried that table down that ladder in the garage? My limbs are on the thin side. But they’re wiry, strong. I learned back in West Virginia the proper way to lift heavy objects.

When my boys were small I moved a piano out the front door, around the hill and down to the rec. room. I was 120 pounds then, before my baby girl was born. The old man next door stood on the hill and watched me for the hour and half it took me to do it.

Yard by yard, with rugs, ropes, and boards, I lugged that spinet around the house and in through the French doors at the back. I was determined to show my darling husband., Vedi, I’d get that piano moved downstairs in spite of his saying we didn’t need to have a moving company out, that the piano served as a perfectly good piece of furniture in the living room. But it was mine and I wanted it to be where I wanted it to be. Nobody played it but me. He said, Leave it until we can get a couch

I finally got it down the bank by using the big oak tree on the side as leverage. The old man had been standing all that time in his flower garden, watching.

When I finished, he spoke. Little girl, I never saw anything like that in my life. Must be because you are a redhead People always think redheads are gutsy. If it’s not that, it’s the freckles. I tell them it’s really because I’m an independent-minded Scotch-Irish poet. Seeing Vedi’s surprised face that evening was worth the effort. More ways to skin a cat than one.

Rewind. Friday, yes, an active day with no signs of illness, not even throughout Friday evening as I climb the hill with neighbors to watch fireworks explode over Roanoke. All the neighborhood kids had run ahead. We amble around the bend, and up the grade. A breeze dries the sweat from my neck. On the knoll, we sip drinks. Celebrations. Wildflowers bursting above layers of purpled mountains. I sit, bathed in the artificial glow from below and the star shine overhead. It’s cool and serene.

Mom, can I spend the night with Missy?

Sure, Karen, if her mom says so.

You don’t mind staying alone tonight?

No, Honey. Go ahead. I’d best enjoy the quiet. Those two brothers of yours will be home from camping Monday

And Dad comes home Sunday, right?

Yes, Vedi will come with a trunk full of presents, maybe those exotic earrings

And lots of pictures of our Turkish relatives

Karen’s reply had made me miss Vedi’s mother, and I knew she would tuck a treasure for me into his luggage. But he’ll be glad to get back. When he’s in the states, Istanbulian memories take on a romantic luster. When he gets over there, he longs for the Blue Ridge.

The clock says 3:45 AM. He’ll land in eight hours. Life will get back to normal. When he phones home, they’ll tell him where to find me.

5:45 AM

Did I do something to make myself paralyzed? When Kevin and Kent were small, if they got hurt, I felt responsible. There’s no reason I should feel guilty for being ill. Yet something nags at me, saying,

Oh yes, but you’re always doing too much, never content. Now you’ve made yourself sick.

That’s Mother’s voice. I can see Mother standing in some doorway with tears in her blue eyes, looking hurt and scared, having lived her whole life fearing the unknown and what the neighbors think. She stayed with Daddy all those years when he drank. Dad was the