It’s not every day that I die or that people think I did. Talk about meditation topics; I can’t wait for the Mansion Meditation Class.

I don’t really have it in me to describe Wednesday night, partly because I was not conscious of much of it and partly because I don’t have it in me right now. My mind is still a mess. Maria, who has become a skillful and gifted writer, did a wonderful job in describing it. I have reprinted much of her account; you can read the rest here on her blog. I want to write a different piece about some memories of my hospital stay in a separate piece. The sketch above was done as I was taken by ambulance from Saratoga Hospital to the Albany Medical Center, where brain injuries go,  and waited for a diagnosis. I do little remember it, but I love the sketch. Maria is never not an artist.

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What Happened Friday Night, By Maria Wulf, excerpt from her blog.

“It was a bang, hard and heavy.  I was off the couch and into the kitchen in seconds.  Jon was lying on his back on the kitchen floor. His eyes were open, and his mouth was open.

But Jon wasn’t breathing.

When I think about it, it’s a blur of images and feelings, but I have a hard time stringing them together in any kind of order.

I do know that I thought Jon was dead.  “This is it,” I thought as I held his face in my hands and called his name.  “This is the beginning of what it feels like to be without him.”

I know I didn’t spend much time calling his name and trying to “wake” him up.  Probably only seconds, although it seems much longer.  When he didn’t respond, I went right to the living room,  got Jon’s phone, and dialed 911 as I ran back to the kitchen.

I knew what to say to the dispatcher, although I’d never called 911.  Somewhere in my life,  early on, I think, I was taught the importance of being clear and giving all the relevant information.

As I talked to the person on the other end of the phone, Jon started to breathe in long, rugged gasps.  I held his head in my lap and talked to him as he breathed.  My first thought was a heart attack.  Then, slowly, Jon started to mumble.  He was trying to pronounce words, but they came out as sounds.

That’s when I thought of a stroke.

By the time the ambulance came, Jon was saying full words.  But he couldn’t move his body, and I wondered if he was paralyzed.

The paramedics did what they do.

Jon was in a lot of pain and dizzy, but he could move his feet and hands, even if he couldn’t sit up alone.

By the time they rolled Jon into the ambulance, he was in reporter mode, asking the paramedics about themselves.  That’s when I crossed Stroke off my list of possibilities.

I grabbed my bag,  Jon’s wallet, iPhone, water, and sketchpad and followed the ambulance to Saratoga Hospital.    The second full moon of the month rode along with me.  A solid glowing disk in the sky that comforted me in its dependability.

I can’t remember what I thought as I sat in the Emergency Room waiting room.  I tried to draw to help steady myself, but only words came, so I wrote them, squeezing the long letters between the few images I had put down first.

I started thinking about how helpless I felt as Jon lay unresponsive on the floor.  How I never thought to do mouth-to-mouth on him.  And I wondered if he hadn’t started breathing if I would have remembered to. It made me want to learn CPR again.

When I was allowed to see Jon in the emergency room after they did all the tests, he was in a neck brace and told not to move. I wondered if his back was broken.

I had been going through everything I thought could be wrong with Jon: heart attack, stroke, broken bones….but I never expected the doctor to tell us that Jon had blood in his brain.

My first thought was that this was the reason he had passed out in the kitchen.  That there was something wrong with Jon’s brain.

The doctor explained that they had to get him to  Albany Med, another forty-five minutes away, as soon as possible in case he needed to have brain surgery.   As she spoke,  I felt like throwing up.   I had to put my head between my knees, or I would have fainted.

This was a new kind of fear for me.   I had lost control of my body. I felt like a zebra being chased by a lion.

I took some deep breaths, then sat up.  I am not a stranger to death, but I have never lost anyone that I love as much as I love Jon.  I have never loved anyone as much as I love Jon.  It’s not that I haven’t thought about my life without him.  He is 17 years older than me, and we often talk about death.

My reaction was pure instinct.

Only later, once we were in Albany Med, I understood that the brain bleed came from the fall, not the other way around. And it was still many more hours,  as we waited in the Emergency room in Albany Med,  that we learned that Jon wouldn’t need surgery.  The bleeding was small enough to be reabsorbed.

Jon’s heart was also fine, but they wanted to continue doing tests to make sure, monitor Jon overnight, and take one more scan the next day to make sure the bleeding hadn’t gotten worse.”

You can read the rest of Maria’s account here on her blog if you wish. She did a better job than I could have done; she is businesslike, authentic, and nearly typo-free.