On Tuesday, my wife texted me, telling me that it felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest and her jaw was aching. Having worked in a cardiology office for about eight years, I knew she needed to go to the ER. (You wouldn’t believe the number of times I spoke to patients on the phone experiencing symptoms of a heart attack and asking me what they should do. The answer was always the same: CALL AN AMBULANCE! or GET TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM!)
Two days later, my wife was still in the hospital, and we still didn’t have any answers. First and foremost—we do know she did NOT have a heart attack. All the testing (bloodwork, EKGs, stress test, echocardiogram) proved that. What the doctors couldn’t figure out is why her heart rate kept falling into the 40s. The first morning, she couldn’t complete her stress test because her heart rate fell to 39 bpm (that’s “beats per minute” for my non-medical disciples).
Of course there have been moments of grace over through this whole ordeal—simple kindnesses like text messages and an occasional piece of chocolate—and I know that there were tons of people praying for my wife.
Marie Howe writes about unexpected grace . . .
What the Angels Left
by: Marie Howe
At first, the kitchen scissors seemed perfectly harmless.
They lay on the kitchen table in the blue light.
Then I began to notice them all over the house,
at night in the pantry, or filling up bowls in the cellar
where there should have been apples. They appeared under rugs,
lumpy places where one would usually settle before the fire,
or suddenly shining in the sink at the bottom of soupy water.
Once, I found a pair in the garden, stuck in turned dirt
among the new bulbs, and one night, under my pillow,
I felt something like a cool long tooth and pulled them out
to lie next to me in the dark. Soon after that I began
to collect them, filling boxes, old shopping bags,
every suitcase I owned. I grew slightly uncomfortable
when company came. What if someone noticed them
when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes? I longed
to throw them out, but how could I get rid of something
that felt oddly like grace? It occurred to me finally
that I was to use them, and I resisted a growing cumpulsion
to cut my hair, although, in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft-belly
—exhausted, in winter, I laid them out on the lawn.
The snow fell quiet as usual, without any apparent hesitation
or discomfort. In spring, as I expected, they were gone.
In their place, a slight metallic smell, and the clear muddy earth.
I think what Howe is getting at in this poem are graces that don’t seem like graces at first: missing a bus and finding out later that the missed bus got hit by a train; getting sick on Christmas thereby avoiding a family get-together that ended in tears and screaming; or not eating dinner and hearing that everyone who DID eat ended up with food poisoning. You get the idea. The scissors seem like a plague, but, in actuality, they are gifts from angels.
My wife did her second stress test on Thursday morning without any problems. By noon, she was discharged from the hospital sporting a 30-day Holter monitor. By 3:30 p.m., our car was packed, and we were on the road for a whirlwind weekend of poetry readings in Ann Arbor, Dexter, and Detroit. (More on that in an upcoming post.)
So, you may be asking, where is the grace in all of that?
Answer: all of our family and friends.
Being in the hospital can be a pretty isolating experience, but we never felt that. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law waited in the ER with us. One of my best friends (who happens to be the head of the cardiology clinic) made sure my wife’s tests were completed as quickly as possible. Another friend who’s a cardiology nurse stopped by to see how we were holding up. It was simply grace upon grace upon grace from everyone (and that includes my friends and family from downstate).
Here’s a poem about grace that Saint Marty wrote . . .
Ode to Cheese and Crackers
by: Martin Achatz
Nothing special. Saltines. Kraft American
cheese slices. I sit on the couch at 11 p.m.,
home from the hospital where I left
my wife in a bed, her heart singing
lullabies on a screen at the nurses’ station.
I place the cheese and crackers on my tongue
like communion wafers, blessed by the salt
crunch, creamy orange blandness, the way
I used to feel blessed when my mother gave
me Campbell’s Chicken Noodle when I was home
sick as a kid and I believed she could cure
leprosy, raise the dead with a can opener
and microwave oven while Bob Barker
dispensed miracles to the sick and lame
on the TV as long as they promised
to spay and neuter their pets.
❤️❤️❤️
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