Chapter 36
Chicago
June 9, 2015
We had half an hour until we had to leave for the airport.
I barged into our home office, urging Dave to pull himself away from his laptop and pack his suitcase. “Yeah, yeah, soon, I’m almost done,” Dave said, eyes remaining fixed on the computer screen as he shooed me out of the office. He was on a deadline to submit several orthopedic research papers, and he wanted to get them done before leaving for vacation.
Finally, Dave clicked SEND on the last email and pushed himself away from his desk. “I’m going to go for a run really quickly, and then I’ll pack,” Dave said. He saw my face drop. I am the type who packs the suitcase days in advance, who shows up to the airport three hours before the flight. Dave likes to play what I consider a dangerous game of brinksmanship with the ticket agent, boarding the flight as the plane doors are shutting after a mad dash through the airport.
“Just kidding!” he said, his face breaking open in a teasing smile. “I just wanted to see you freak out. I’ll pack now and then we’ll go.”
How many times since that moment have I wished that Dave went for that run? That he had moved his blood and stimulated his circulatory system and flexed his muscles after sitting still all day. Might he have prevented the formation of that clot? Might we have been able to thwart the stroke that derailed life as we knew it? Would the trajectory of our entire lives have played out in a completely different direction? If Dave had gone for that run—could it have prevented that emergency landing in Fargo? That horrifying night in the emergency room? The harrowing days and weeks and months and…might everything have been different?
I’m not sure.
I’ll never know.
I’ll always wonder.
“If only”…the saddest words in the English language.
But Dave did not go for a run that day. For whatever reason, whether it had already happened or would happen in the taxi to the airport or on the plane, the clot formed. We got on that plane as one version of Dave and Alli, and we made an emergency landing, several hours later in Fargo, as an entirely different version of Dave and Alli.
Dave had a stroke when he was young and healthy, when we were expecting our first baby and we were so very happy.
It was a massive stroke, and it nearly killed Dave. He did not die, but our lives changed forever. There is no way to undo any of this, no way to alter that reality.
In the airport security line, Dave had news for me. “I found out that I was selected to be on the resident advisory board for The American Journal of Orthopedics.”
I looked at him a moment, pausing a beat, before clapping my hands. “Really?”
He nodded his head, yes. This was particularly satisfying for him because of how much competition there was for this board. Residents did not apply; they were simply selected, which made the appointment feel like that much more of an honor.
This mattered so deeply to Dave because he had spent much of the past three years of residency feeling deeply self-conscious about his abilities as a doctor. No one is harder on Dave Levy than Dave Levy, and he had done a fair amount of self-flagellating throughout residency, and in medical school before that. If he is not perfect, he’s convinced he is terrible. If he’s not the best, he’s convinced he’s the worst. With Dave there is no ability to project a veneer of bravado; there’s no “Fake it till you make it.” It’s the best thing about Dave and the worst. It’s what makes him work so hard and strive for excellence, but let’s just say it isn’t always the most pleasant experience for Dave or, say, his wife, when he is going through these self-critiques or crises of confidence.
But here it was, a big, fat stamp of approval. For an affirmation junkie like Dave (I’m one, too; it’s probably a large part of why we understand each other so well), it was some deeply satisfying validation from his peers and seniors, the long-withheld gold star that he had been craving for years. The confirmation that all of his hard and honest work was paying off—he was doing a good job.
I looked at him now as we made our way through the security line. “Can we finally put to rest this fallacy that you are a bad doctor?”
He smiled knowingly, nodding after a moment. “Yeah, OK.”
After years of self-doubt, Dave was finally beginning to feel satisfaction with all of the work he was putting in. The years of sleepless nights in the hospital, putting himself and his family last after the needs of everyone else, working every weekend and holiday and birthday and anniversary. The years of self-sacrifice and meager pay and school and tests. Dave was finally hitting his stride. Dave was finally getting his groove back. It would all be worth it. We were so close.
We cleared security and found our gate. We ate dinner. We prepared to board our plane, completely unaware that life as we knew it was about to change in the blink of an asymmetrically dilated eye.
When I first told people about this airport security line conversation—one of our last in the final minutes before the stroke—I told it with a sense of the tragedy of it all. Dave was finally feeling good about his career. He was working on a ton of exciting research, and gaining the acknowledgment of his colleagues in doing so. He was finally entering the years of his residency when he would be a senior member of the team; I knew that he would love teaching his juniors, that he would love mastering his surgical skills. And I would love having him around for, say, a few weekends and nights and holidays. We would finally have the time together as a couple that we had longed for. He would be there to delight in our daughter. Dave was finally turning a long-overdue corner; we were finally turning a corner as a family.
As Dave’s parents said, “You were robbed of the golden period. You were robbed of the joy of your pregnancy, of what should have been your happiest time.”
There is a certain amount of tragedy to the timing, it’s true. Just as things were about to get really good, they got really bad. I do feel like Dave got robbed of his final years of residency and we got robbed of a joyous period on the cusp of new parenthood.
But now, many months out from the stroke, I can also see it in a different light.
Here we sit in our apartment. It’s an unseasonably warm day in late winter. Dave woke up early this morning and worked on an orthopedic paper. Next week, he will fly by himself to a conference in Florida to present on three different research projects. Then he will fly, alone, to New York to meet me and Lilly, where we will spend two weeks on the book launch of my novel Sisi. Dave will come with me to launch events and press appointments, and he’ll take care of Lilly while I go through the wonderful madness of a book tour. Even just a few months ago I might have laughed dismissively if someone had told me that all of this would be possible.
We went to brunch today with dear friends. Afterward, we walked along Lake Michigan with Lilly and Penny. It was a nice Sunday; it was all pretty ordinary, much like something we would have done in our former life. Except, in one big way, it was different. In the old days, I would not have paused every few minutes to think: I’m so grateful for this moment; I’m so grateful that we are doing this together.
When we got home from our walk, Dave was humming a Bee Gees melody and so I pulled up that song on my iPhone and we danced to the recorded version. “Hey, Dave!” I said, clapping to the music. Lilly looked on, amused. “Guess what the name of this song is that you were humming.”
“What?” Dave asked, shaking his hips as the music played.
“ ‘Stayin’ Alive!’ Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive! Stayin’ alive!” I pointed at him. “No wonder you have it stuck in your head! You know about staying alive!”
Now, as we sit side by side, our daughter naps in the next room and our dog snores with her head on Dave’s lap. Dave remembers our dog once more—boy, does he remember our dog. I’m back to being the third wheel in many of their cuddles, and I could not be happier about it.
I’m reading a book, and Dave is reading from his letters—his “Dave Fan Club” book. He’s read these letters before; he read them in July when we first got home from RIC, but he does not remember them. Now, as he makes his way through them again, alternating between laughter and low, emotional groans, it is as if he is seeing these words for the first time. Absorbing the love and admiration that so many people feel for him, steeping in the support that so many loved ones rallied to send his way. It’s like he gets a glimpse of his own funeral, a peek at all of the eulogies that loved ones might have written in his honor, only now he gets to weave these words into the fabric of his life moving forward.
As Dave makes his way through the book, I pretend to be interested in my historical novel, but really I’m reading those letters along with Dave. I’m thinking about things, my own mind awhirl. I can hear a bird trilling outside our window—yes, a bird singing, in Chicago, in late winter. That sentence doesn’t even make sense as I type it.
A text message comes through on my phone; Margaret asks me how the day is going, how Dave and I are doing. I have answered this same question dozens of times over these past months, but today, for the first time, my answer is different. She asks about the weather, tells me they are having a warm day in Virginia and that she can feel the first hints of spring. I reply: “It’s a bright day here, too, in more ways than just the weather.”
Margaret writes me back that she is grateful to hear it. I am grateful to say it.
When we were in the worst of it, in the days immediately following the stroke, when we did not know whether Dave would survive, Margaret reached out to many friends to ask for their prayers and words of strength. Each one of those letters is a treasure that overwhelms me, makes me weep tears of gratitude and love; I think of one in particular now. It was from a friend of Margaret’s—a young woman who, though she does not personally subscribe to a specific faith or religion, took the time to think about this request and send in a beautiful prayer. She wrote:
I am seeing a picture. I am seeing Dave opening his eyes and smiling. Smiling because his family surrounds him. I am seeing hands that reach for each other and hold each other, and guide each other to recovery. I am seeing Dave—and his arms hold baby Levy and Alli. They are all together in the sun surrounded by green grass and blue sky and there is love radiating out from them, and around them, and flowing through them.
I remember so well the first time I read those words. I had been stunned by their simple yet powerful beauty. I had wanted so badly to aspire to that image, the image of Dave being well enough to hold the baby; the image of us, happy, together as a family on the grass in the sunlight. I had loved that image, but in the back of my mind, the louder thought had been: I wish—oh, how I wish—but I can’t really imagine that Dave will ever be well enough to hold his baby, let alone sit outside on green grass in the sunlight.
If I ever feel the temptation to complain about Dave’s progress or recovery, to lament that things are not what they once were, all I need to do is think back to that prayer, to the fact that our outlook was once so grim that I doubted whether Dave would ever be well enough to sit with me and the baby in the fresh air and sunlight. Because, now, he is. He’s well enough for that, and for so much more. How far he has come. How far we have come, together.
May we always remember.
I can look at that photo again, the one of us with the four-leaf clovers, without wanting to tear it off the wall and hurl it across the room. The smiles of those two young people, people who have just pledged their lives to each other, young people who imagine a future unfurling before them filled with adventure and love and hard work and joy—those smiles make me smile once again. Sure, maybe now I smile with a film of knowing tears in my eyes, but I can smile.
Spring is returning. After a gray winter, the quality of the sunlight is changing—the bird singing outside our window is a harbinger of more good to come. While once the sky overhead appeared dark and impenetrable, that wall of leaden clouds is now breaking. The air is beginning to feel softer, gentler. One day at a time, I told myself. Day after day, the time passed. Days formed weeks. Weeks formed months. And now winter has to give way to spring. I could not remember how glorious it was—that first sound of a bird on a barren branch outside the window. I forgot. But now I hear it, now I remember.
Book launch is just days away, and I am excited for it. Not only am I not dreading it, I’m actively looking forward to it. I’m remembering book launches from years past and I know that this time around will be different, but I’ve made my peace with that fact. It will be different, but it will still be good. I’ve never been more appreciative of the work I love. I’ve never felt more support and sustaining strength from the community in which I work and the readers for whom I write. I will never forget the way these people rallied to my side. The way they showed up, not as colleagues or customers, but as friends. As compassionate and kind individuals who cared. And the way my loved ones jumped to be by my side so that I could feel supported in this critical moment. I was scared and I was lonely, but I was not alone. Not for a moment.
May we always remember.
I sit beside Dave thinking about the idea of memory, realizing that memory has so much to do with the past, yes, but also with the present. We can and we must remember in the active, present tense of the word. We can remember to always say “I love you” when leaving through the front door, and to say “I love you” when walking back in through that front door.
Our home is lined with photographs—bright spots of joy that we remember from the past. Moments that seem to us, now, to come from a different life. The life before June 9, our life before the stroke. But there will be new moments, too. We will fill new picture frames with new memories—experiences we will imbue with love and joy and meaning. And we will look at them so gratefully, with an appreciation made that much deeper because we know how hard we had to fight in order to live them. We know how close we came to never having those moments at all.
May we always remember to begin the day being grateful for life, however difficult that life may appear. To show up for our loved ones. To listen, to allow them to weep when they need to weep. To cook them dinners when they need us. To be God’s angels on this earth just like the angels who showed up for us along our journey through pain.
May we always remember to lavish our precious baby with kisses. To give thanks that she is here and that she is healthy and she is ours—and to give thanks for the fact that we are here to love her and know her.
May we always remember that, even though I spend my days writing about women and their love stories, that ours, the fragile, imperfect, precious story we are writing day in, day out, is the most important one, and that we can choose each day to write it with love and joy and gratitude and faith.
May we always remember, while you treat others and spend your days thinking about the care of the sick, that your life was saved and you are still in this world to help shape it and make it a better place.
Dear Dave, May we always remember how lucky we are.
When you first opened your eyes, you were not yourself. You did not remember all that we had lived through; you did not remember how to speak to me the way you had always spoken to me. You did not remember all that we had wanted for our future. That has come back, with time. What we have between us is once again familiar and worn-in, and yet, in some ways, it is also entirely new and different. It was like you and I had to fall in love all over again. And we did. Our marriage looks different today than it did a year ago, but isn’t that the case for any marriage? Isn’t marriage a dynamic thing in which two people are constantly growing and learning and evolving—and isn’t the key to honor and cherish and nurture your love for your partner even as you grow and learn and evolve? Even through the process of regrowing a brain and fixing a hole in one’s heart?
Dear Dave, May we always remember how lucky we are to have one another.
We are not lucky because life is easy or smooth, or because it makes sense or because we are in control. Life is hard and scary and entirely out of our control, but we know that now. We understand it. We’ve stared at death—we’ve confronted the reality that life is fragile and fickle and that no one, not even a world-class neurosurgeon, can tell us what tomorrow brings, or even what the next hour brings.
We’ve had the opportunity to live out the promise we made to each other on the hilltop right before we found the four-leaf clovers. We’ve had the chance to live out the vows we made on the day when I pressed the four-leaf clovers and told you that we were lucky.
We are lucky to be living this life.
And best of all is that, for now, we get to live it together.