Love Warrior
On freedom and purpose (Life with L.O., #2)
This is the second post in a series about my journey with L.O., my Loved One. If you are new here and want to follow along from the beginning, you can refer to the first post in this series. Alternatively, you can read the TLDR of that post in this footnote.1
Love in a time of crisis
All the times I’ve heard it said that “love makes you do crazy things,” I thought it was a reference to puppy love—that hormonally-driven, questionable decision making one encounters early in a romantic relationship.
Then L.O.’s stroke happened, and I realized it doesn’t have to be romantic love at all to make you do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do—if you love someone enough, you will go to great lengths to ensure their safety and survival.
At night in the ICU, L.O. was excruciatingly uncomfortable, not able to shift their own body in the bed to redistribute their weight. There was a tarp with handles under the sheet, which allowed the nurses to transfer them to the gurneys to be shipped out of the room for further tests.
I would tug on the back of the tarp with all the strength I had. Surprisingly, it worked—it would shift L.O.’s weight in the bed and provide relief so we could get back to sleep.
After I’d done this five or six times, L.O. exclaimed, “I can’t believe you can do that!”
Being able to relieve even a little of their misery became a surprising source of strength.
I had enormous amounts of energy for the first several weeks with L.O.—an adrenaline rush in which the lack of sleep and food didn’t matter. I was drawing on a previously untapped, unnamed source of energy, like the mothers who can lift cars off of their babies.
L.O., in fact, did this—lifting a car that had rolled onto their sister when they were both kids, saving her.
There is superhuman strength in love.
Rehab in the springtime
If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
- Zora Neale Hurston
In mid-May, I rode in the ambulance with L.O. from the hospital to the subacute rehabilitation facility half an hour away. L.O. stared out the back window, identifying the cross streets of a lifetime of memories, having spent nearly their whole life in the same town.
The transition to rehab was uneasy. A series of events led to my having to advocate for L.O.’s medical care in a way that I had not expected would be necessary. I learned to walk the knife edge between ensuring L.O.’s safety and wellbeing, and keeping the peace with caregivers and medical staff.
The unnecessary suffering that L.O. endured at the hands of that facility and its negligence is disturbing. And yet, I know what L.O. would have faced had I not stayed attentive and intervened.
Eventually, as the quality of L.O.’s care gradually improved, I made sure we got outside.
I pushed L.O.’s wheelchair right up to the edges of the pavement and locked the brakes, fetching objects to engage the senses: flower petals, tree buds, maple seeds, oak leaves, beetles. I handed items to L.O.’s left hand, encouraging connections in the right hemisphere of the brain.
The simplest moments in nature seemed to bring a little bit more of L.O. back each time. Our outdoor adventures, however tame, brought an ease and joy to L.O.—and still do.
Before the heat and bugs of summer descend, late spring in Michigan is a time of nearly-always perfect weather, from azure skies to earth-shaking thunderstorms. I marveled at the timing for this stage of L.O.’s recovery. I kept telling them: “Thanks for not having your stroke in February,” and I meant it.
I didn’t know what lay ahead for L.O. at the time. I hadn’t done the research into L.O.’s prognosis based on the seriousness of their stroke. I didn’t want that knowledge to get in the way of the cultivation of hope that I needed to be the most present, optimistic care advocate I could.
Prognosis and love
The stroke gave me the chance to appreciate, in a much deeper way, the preciousness of the love that surrounds me. The stroke created more love than I had ever seen before—even people who don’t like me sent me their good wishes….I saw all these hearts opening all around me…. I felt love coming from from all directions.
- Ram Dass, Still Here
Ram Dass lived 22 years after his stroke. Thich Nhat Hanh lived seven years after his. A famous actress told me that after her father’s stroke, he moved in with her and had full-time caregivers, and he lived another eight years. Their medical cases were not exceptional; rather, they had the resources and community for the best possible care.
I can’t afford to give L.O. the care that these famous men had, but I can attempt to rival the love.
The first physical therapist that came to see L.O. in the hospital was compassionate with L.O.’s limitations in a way that I’ve never seen with a healthcare provider. When she turned to leave, L.O. said, in the most sincere way, “Thank you—you’ve given me hope.”
There it was, ringing in my ears. That word—hope—that hasn’t meant much of anything to many for a while, as it’s become associated with the idea of false hope. But here it was, coming from L.O.’s lips.
I was recently reminded of something I wrote in the Hopecology Explainer via
’s recommendation of Hopecology:And I’m most definitely not going to try to instill false hope that everything will be okay. Because we don’t have evidence that it will. Yet herein lies the rub: we don’t have evidence that it definitely won’t either. One thing that will ensure it won’t? Giving in to our despair.
The physical therapist didn’t tell us that everything was going to be okay; she simply said that the extent of L.O.’s recovery remained to be seen, and that some recovery may be possible.
As the late spring days got progressively longer and warmer, L.O. continued to improve. I spent most of the summer there, busy every day managing L.O.’s medical and other aspects of their life, because they needed me to—no one else was coming to help.
I took on more and more responsibility as L.O.’s life necessitated. Before I knew it, I was indispensable to L.O.’s business of living. As a result, I essentially canceled my own life.
While L.O. was in therapy sessions, I sat in the hallway and put the final polish on a manuscript I was the lead author on—a beast of a collaborative effort for the previous four years. I made the edits and sent it off sans fanfare. It felt as though the world kept turning, without me on it.
In times of frustration (which were frequent), I’d collapse into doubt. What am I doing? I’d ask myself. Am I sacrificing my own life for L.O.’s?
The choice/no choice
For the first six months after L.O.’s stroke, I felt as though I had been driving along in the car of my life, taking my lessons and growth at a reasonably ambitious pace for the most part, then moving on to the next—thinking, naively perhaps, that whatever I had accomplished or grown through was continually shrinking toward the horizon in the rearview mirror.
When L.O.’s stroke happened, I slammed on the brakes, and everything that I thought I was “past” came flying forward—hitting me in the back of the head, tangling in my hair, cracking the windshield. The rest of the backseat rummage sale landed in my lap. It wasn’t even all my own stuff.