The Valedictorian of Being Dead

by Heather B. Armstrong

  “Do you need us to be quiet so that you can take a nap?” she asked.

  I didn’t feel tired, oddly enough. I shook my head. As she ran back to the couch, I turned to my stepfather who had stepped inside behind me. They didn’t need to stay and I didn’t want to take up any more of their day, not another minute of their time. I told them I was good, that they could leave. Then I reached up and embraced my stepfather like I never had before. We’d hugged before, of course. My mother and he have been married for over thirty years; there have been many, many hugs. But something had changed, as recently as that treatment. I love my dad; I don’t think I have to qualify that. He’s never balked at helping my mother financially with us, his children. He’s lived up to his duties to us as someone who chose to bring us into this world. I know he loves us. But now I also know the love of a father who loves me despite the endless differences between us, who dedicated himself to me, showed up and was present and understood and believed and held gently in his palm the silent, ticking moments as my lifeless body rested on that gurney—When will she breathe on her own again? Will she breathe on her own again?—to drive me there and back home, each time, over and over. It was unlike any love any man had ever shown me.

  My stepfather had witnessed what my phone calls had done to my mother emotionally, the toll my treatments were taking on her physically. He didn’t hold any of it against me, and he’d be back again on Monday to do it all over again. I lingered for a moment in the hug and then pulled back to look him directly in his eyes.

  “I love you, Rob. Thank you. Thank you for all that you have given me. You are such an amazing father.”

  EIGHTEEN

  WEEKLY SUNDAY PANIC ATTACK

  I SPENT THE WEEKEND huddled with my children inside our small home. It rained for two days straight, an odd occurrence in a semi-arid state. Showers are usually brief and infrequent or they just turn into snowstorms. I was thrilled that this rain was not turning into snow, although being stuck in a confined space with a bored seven-year-old and a moody thirteen-year-old was the perfect way to test whether or not I still wanted to be dead. Add in a dog who sat at the door and barked if the wind blew—a bark so jarring that it sent a jolt up my spine—and suddenly I was yearning to be on a gurney staring at a vial of propofol.

  During the previous eighteen months of my depression, Sundays had become the worst day of the week by far. My boss had instated a protocol for the whole team that required us to track the projects we were working on in a document. He wanted a detailed, line-by-line reckoning of the work we were doing, and he wanted it first thing Monday morning. Updating that document made performing my duties even more loathsome. At the end of the day, as kids piled into the house and the raucous noise of the afternoon routine began, I’d realize that I hadn’t updated that document. I’d jot down a few notes so that I could write everything up later.

  I’d wake up on Sunday mornings and be seized first with the idea of that document and second with the idea that we were going to have to start the week all over again and address All of the Things Needing to Get Done.

  This Sunday I woke up and was seized once again with the idea of that document, even though I had already given my notice. This feeling confirmed that I’d made the right decision. I had to eradicate this cancer from my life in order to start managing my anxiety. I then thought about the last two treatments, how I was going to have to starve myself two more times. Fortunately, this de facto intermittent fasting had decreased my appetite. Still, I can testify that it’s never fun to go almost twenty hours without eating.

  Leta woke up in a terrible teenage mood yet again, and by early afternoon Marlo’s boredom had reached a fevered pitch. I was holding it together and breathing through the frenzied thoughts I was having, when I realized that I needed to write it down. Something about writing it down would calm me, and one ingredient in that day’s panic was the pending relaunch of my website. I needed to start writing again. In a therapy session a couple of months prior, Mel had helped me realize that I had used my blog for well over a decade to work through my feelings. Writing had proven to be an effective therapy for processing confusion and frustration. Not having that outlet had contributed to this episode of depression. I needed to start writing again, and having an audience had always been a huge motivator.

  After convincing Leta to play Minecraft with Marlo—“convincing” here meaning offering money—I sat down at the kitchen counter to text my mother:

  I know you won’t get this until later, but writing this down will help me. Marlo’s boredom and frustration are a huge trigger for me. She experiences massive swings in mood when she “doesn’t have anything to do.” Leta is also exhausted and grouchy. I think I just feel so alone in having to remain calm and maneuver around their feelings while indexing in my head the amount of work that lies in front of me this week. It’s terrifying. This is the crux of my anxiety. Is this just my fate as a single working mom? I think it is and this makes me feel like I have so much work to do on how I cope. Just know that I am trying to explain why I’m so anxious about the upcoming week. I have to starve myself on Monday and Wednesday and I’m supposed to launch my website by Friday while working another full-time job. While navigating irritable, bored children. Hi, this is my weekly Sunday panic attack.

  About ten minutes later she responded:

  Your responsibilities as a single mother are completely overwhelming. Rob and I are driving home from church and should be done with dinner by 6. I can talk any time after that. Also, we are coming to take the girls to Chick-fil-A on Tuesday night after I do your laundry. Do not argue with me. END OF DISCUSSION.

  She signed it with her usual blue heart, blue because that is the school color for BYU.

  I called her at about 6:30 with the sound of rain pounding against the awning on the front porch. I’d just finished adding two single-spaced pages of details on the work I’d been doing for the nonprofit. It was work I was jamming in before and after treatments, and I sent the document off to my boss. The sense of relief bordered on ecstasy. That was done. I’d only ever have to do four more of them. And then I’d be free to find something else to panic about.

  My mother listened as I again listed the reasons why I was so anxious. As I spoke, I realized that all of what I was feeling was rooted in urgency, not sadness. I was overwhelmed, yes, but not hopeless. I’d unloaded the dishwasher earlier in the day without thinking that doing so would make my hands fall off, and even said to my mother, “I can’t believe how utterly devastating it used to feel when I knew I’d have to unload the dishwasher again. It would destroy me. That sounds so stupid, but I felt it. The feeling consumed me. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be free of that, to see a simple chore and not be immediately overcome by despair.”

  She pointed out that I was expressing happiness during my weekly Sunday panic attack, and that maybe this was a good sign. And it was! This renewed feeling of wanting to be alive made me see that I needed to manage my responsibilities to my kids and to my job more effectively. Now that I was out of that hole, I could go about the work of doing so. And there in the middle of my weekly Sunday panic attack, I heard Marlo giggle over something she had built in Minecraft with the best older sister she could have asked for. I felt oddly optimistic, and it was thrilling to experience that emotion.

  NINETEEN

  THE FINAL HOURS OF SUMMER CAMP

  THE NINTH TREATMENT WASN’T noteworthy in any way other than the fact that it was still pouring outside. That month of March would end up being the wettest March on record for the state of Utah. When I heard that, I dramatically imagined it as a metaphor for what we’d all lived through. A cleansing. I’d worked all morning on the redesign of a website encouraging institutions that serve food to source from farms with high standards of animal welfare. I should note here that I’d added a little bit of meat back into my diet a few weeks before I started treatment and immediately felt a difference in satiation and bloating. I decided that never
again would I run another marathon while subsisting on mung beans and kale. I also decided that I’d never run another marathon, period.

  Just like we had eight times before, the three of us climbed into the giant minivan, wound our way up to the clinic, and took our places in the waiting room. I nodded happily at Greg as he handed me the clipboard. When I sat down with it, I just wanted to draw a giant X on both sides of the paper and write, “Despite some ongoing anxiety around work and running my household I feel fantastic!” After a phlebotomist stabbed me several times in the arm, I headed toward my gurney, my mother and stepfather walking behind me. And then the warm blanket, Velcro wire, lidocaine, propofol, and all of the formalities. The bliss of total nothingness. The abyss. When I woke up, I looked around through the blurriness of my sight and finally focused on Chris. Before he could say anything, I blurted, “I’ve been taking showers.” As if he would understand the significance of this instead of thinking, Well, that is the worst come-on I’ve ever heard.

  But it was true. I’d been regularly taking showers and applying mascara. A few times a week I’d even apply a foundation, some eye shadow. I was wearing jeans and shirts one doesn’t wear to a spin class. My kids were coming home from school, seeing my clean hair and my outfit, and wondering what was going on. I sat down to watch Felicity that night with Leta, and before she started the show and leaned into my lap, I asked her if we could talk.

  “Yeah,” she said, surprised. Usually we have our in-depth conversations after the show sparks inevitable conversations about all the complexities of life. “Is everything okay?”

  “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about,” I answered. “Everything is great. Really good, in fact.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything,” she said. “Did . . . did what you’re doing . . . did it work?”

  “Yes. Yes, it did,” I said. “I feel so much better. I can breathe so much more easily now.”

  “Like . . .” It felt like she was trying to be as gentle as possible. “Like, last week. Last week especially. It was like . . . I don’t know . . . things were less intense, you know?”

  “I do. I know.”

  “Like, Grandmommy wants me and Marlo to be quiet when you’re sleeping, but you didn’t sleep as much. And you seem, like . . . like, a lot more relaxed.”

  “Do I?” I wanted to laugh at this particular observation, but I didn’t. I know that everyone around me could feel my anxious state, and no one could feel it more intensely than she did. That was nothing to laugh about.

  “Yeah, like you’ve been completely different. Smiling and laughing and . . . like, things seem different.”

  “You know I wanted to get better. I’ve wanted to get better for a long time.” She nodded and then suddenly shot out her arms and embraced me, resting her head on my right shoulder. I stroked her hair and took in her scent. “I’m so sorry it’s taken so long. I’m really sorry. I know it’s been hard. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said into my shirt. “I know you have so much to do. Like, you’re doing all of this alone.”

  “I do a lot of it alone,” I agreed. “But Grandmommy and Grandpa Rob have helped so much. I couldn’t have done this without them. And you help out so much. You know that, right?”

  “I do? How? You have to drive me to school and dance and piano, and sometimes I get into those moods. I’m sorry—”

  “No, you are not to blame here. You are not the culprit.”

  “But—”

  “No, Leta. It’s my brain. I needed to jump-start my brain somehow.” I tried to figure out a way to describe it to her. “It’s like my brain got caught in the middle of the ocean with no raft and it could only tread water before it got too tired and too weak to keep moving its arms and legs. And then at some point it couldn’t move them at all. We had to send in a rescue boat as it started to sink. And I guess you could say that it almost drowned before we got there. And I’m so happy we got there. You are included in that ‘we,’ because you work so hard and are the best sister to Marlo. You are so good to her, and that helps me so much.”

  “It does?” she asked.

  “You have no idea,” I answered. “You play with her and read with her, and you help me remind her of the things she’s supposed to be doing as an active citizen of this world. Has she forgotten her lunch once this year?”

  “Has she?”

  “Not once! You help me remind her as we’re walking out the door in the morning, and even that one little thing has relieved my burden.”

  “I’m so glad it worked, Mom. I was worried.”

  “I know you were, and I am so sorry. But you don’t have to worry anymore. I’m so glad it worked, too.”

  * * *

  Two days later, on the afternoon of March 29, 2017, my parents showed up to take me to my last treatment. The solemnity of those hours was lost on none of us. To break the heaviness of the silence after they walked in my door, I clapped my hands together and said, “I certainly could use one more trip to the land of the dead!”

  “You’re awful,” my mother said.

  I have talked to them about this since, so I can say with confidence that the three of us were experiencing a shared melancholy. We were like friends who’ve attended a summer camp together and have to say goodbye. Not that I was saying goodbye to them, but we had endured something together so profoundly binding that the idea of it ending almost physically hurt. This would be our last drive up the winding streets; the last time we’d sit together in that waiting room seeing the faces of others whose features had been disfigured by hopelessness; the last time I would have to feel the jolt of a needle shoot up my arm and into the bottom of my jaw. It would be the last time I’d look over to see the relief on my stepfather’s face when he realized my mother had found an audience in me for her constant chatter.

  And then as I lay on the gurney, the wire affixed to my forehead, the warm blanket tucked over my body and between my arms, I looked at each and every face around the room. The research assistant, my stepfather, my mother, two nurses, a woman anesthesiologist named Dr. Whittingham, and Dr. Mickey. Before Dr. Whittingham began to show me the vials of liquid, I had to say something.

  “Dr. Mickey!” I shouted.

  He’d been staring down at a notepad and looked over at me. When he saw the intense look on my face, he walked toward me. As he stood directly at my side, I gave him a huge smile.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for giving me my life back.”

  “I’m just happy that you feel better,” he said with a smile, and then he began to blush. Taking compliments always seemed a little awkward for him. “That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

  I looked around the room again. “Thank you, all of you. My girls got their mother back. You gave me back to them. Thank you.” When Dr. Bushnell told me a week later that everyone working on me was donating their time, I was stunned. I will not ever get over that. I will not ever be able to repay that generosity. I can only speak it out loud and write it in words and remember them each time I sing Marlo a song as she goes to sleep. Because of them I am still alive and able to sing to my child at night.

  Dr. Whittingham asked if I was ready, and I nodded. Ready for my last ride into the vast darkness, all-consuming and calm. An unmoving pool of blackness free from worries and thoughts and the agonizing struggle to keep up with the relentless pace of life up above. Blissful nothingness. The healing abyss.

  I relished the last few moments as Dr. Whittingham held up the vial of propofol. I memorized the shape and color of the room. As she told me she was beginning the anesthesia, I looked over at my mother’s face and nodded. She nodded back, both of us knowing what she was feeling and what I was feeling. And then . . . nothing.

  The final dive to zero.

  Then suddenly I was awake. I was alive and breathing on my own. No longer would my mother have to wonder if my chest would move with my first breath on that gurney. Ten treatments done, experiment
completed. In my final drunken state I remained silent, somehow still gripped by the sacred aspect of having received this gift.

  When the nurse asked me what year it was, I quietly answered, “It’s 1979.” And I had no idea why my mother started laughing.

  TWENTY

  MY CALLING

  A COUPLE OF WEEKS later I was sitting across from Mel. The orange tassels of the blanket were draped across my legs. I was resuming our weekly sessions at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesdays now that the treatment was over. She had a smirk on her face and was waiting for me to say something. I just sat there smiling and rubbing my right temple because where do I even begin?

  “Well?” she asked.

  “It’s like that Adele song except it’s not a downer at all. It’s like Adele broke up with an abusive and narcissistic asshole, and she’s like, ‘Hello from the other side—bye!”

  “You’re cracking me up,” Mel said.

  “And she is not sorry, not one little bit. And the hell if she picked up the phone to dial his ass ever again.”

  I tried to sum it all up without gushing about all the tiny details that would mean nothing to anyone else. Things like Greg’s sneakers and Lauren’s hair color and how it felt to hold the clipboard in my hand as I asked myself just how much I wanted to be dead and the moment I looked at that questionnaire and realized a switch had been flipped. Looking up and seeing my stepfather in the front seat of the enormous van, sacrificing his day because he loved me so much. My mother running around the clinic to make sure everyone followed protocol: no fentanyl, no Zofran, warm blanket, tape her eyes shut, apple juice stat! Swapping labor stories with Molly and the feel of the giant needle entering my arm and confirming repeatedly that my sex life had not yet resumed. How Dr. Mickey was a man of few words even though he was the one who had pulled this treatment together and convinced all those wonderful people to volunteer their time. Arguing endlessly with Chris about whether or not it was 1979.