At the age of 53, on this morning, my career had come to a virtual standstill. The fateful call came at 7:30am. I was already at work in our downtown Chicago office. Tasked with leading a red-hot project, with VP level executives watching and tracking weekly performance gains, I was working seventy hour weeks.
“Hello, this is Dr. Bahrish. Your mother has been admitted to the hospital and is in the ICU. She has taken a turn for the worse. We do not expect her to last much longer. How soon can you be here?”
In shock, perplexed as to how a case of pneumonia could turn so quickly, I scribbled details on a notepad and made a hasty exodus, an emergency five hour drive to hopefully get there in time. The drive was a blur as my thoughts honed in on mom’s health and her future chances. They didn’t think she would last through the night.
I arrived at the hospital in time. Due to the extraordinary efforts of her healthcare team and her RN—an angel warrior—I was able to see my mom, alive. The next three days were spent attending to her affairs, ensuring her comfort and dealing with the growing list of health issues and medical decisions to be made, as she was now under palliative care.
The issue appeared to be a body filled with infections. A UTI, an infected heart valve and some underlying bacterial infection in her lungs, pneumonia. It was all too much for my mother’s frail body to fight. I had been given a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. The cure, valve replacement surgery, was more than the patient could handle in her present state. Unless a miracle occurred this was the beginning of the end of her life.
I had been in this rodeo once before. Eleven years earlier my father took ill. Emphysema they said. Then, no–chronic leukemia. But it progressed quickly and was finally identified as acute leukemia. The difference was an order of magnitude on the life expectancy chart, not in his favor. His projected two years was now reduced to two months. Since obtaining an accurate diagnosis had stolen most of his precious time, he had three weeks left.
My brother was fortunate to get the first week. Dad was alert, not yet in much pain, eating and chatty. I got the last two weeks. A progressive slide into oxygen deprivation and organ failure. Still, I considered it a privilege to be the one invited to walk him through one of life’s most important journeys.
Finding myself orphaned at mid-life, I began to wonder if the path of my own journey would lead me to satisfaction, a life well lived. Each moment had become uniquely special. That phone conversation with my husband or child, I now thought in terms of it being my last. Every call ended with an “I love you”. Meaningful and monumental in my sincerity, as now I understood the passage of time is not in our control. Nor is the guarantee of a tomorrow.
I never returned to what I called “the rat race”. I had the good fortune to have married a loving partner more fixated on my happiness than my paycheck. I was also good at subsisting on very little cash. I found as much joy in a picnic in the park as a dinner on the town. This allowed me the freedom to slow down and contemplate my next chapter.
My secret desire has always been to write. My college course of studies took me as far away from a writing career as you could go. Practicality made the decisions for me on my course of studies and jobs taken. Although writing was never in the job description, it followed me where ever I went. Meeting notes, director level correspondence, job descriptions—the business world caught on and kept my pencil sharp. But now, my world was under redesign. A novel, or memoir perhaps? I’ve spent the past two years writing the story of someone else’s incredible life. It has been at my behest.
Co-authoring a memoir, well let’s just say it’s not the easiest entry into a writing career. As a matter of fact, I found the goal to be so large and difficult, I began to pursue a self-scripted MFA to better improve the quality of my writing and understand the process of storytelling.
The hook, a character arc, beats…these have become part of my insatiable quest for writing knowledge. Editing seemed the most difficult. It has a learned progression. It was now time to produce, market and sell this beast of a manuscript. I found myself stymied, lost and floundering. Doubt crept in the cracks that had formed in my mind and on the page.
Beyond my own doubts were those of the literary world. Agents, some a quick no, some a nothing, some an excellent, but I cannot find a market for this. I could accept my own lack of talent. I couldn’t accept you’ve got talent but no readership. How do you improve that? Was it our new pandemic normal? A lack of readers? A lack of time to read?
My personal reading had taken off into the stratosphere. I was absorbing books like a starved child in a candy store. I couldn’t get enough. My favorites were memoirs of course. Celebrities, ex-addicts, cancer victims, I read them all. How did they focus on a life event, what did they have as themes, how did they keep the suspense in a truthful tale??
We ran out of bookshelf space in the den, bedroom, living room and elsewhere. Once read, when it came time to part with a book, even a not so liked one, I couldn’t. Slowly I came to the realization that each book was a life, a friend, a real story. I could not devalue that story. My only recourse was to find someone to share the story with, give the book to. I’m not a hoarder, but with books, well I’m kind of starting to wonder.
As to the writing, my quick project management mentality…short term, quick turn, get-em-done style is going through a painful process of change. Becoming slower, more strategic, I’m beginning to feel strangled by the system and at the mercy of a publishing industry, in its own mid-life crisis. As I watch in horror to see it changing and morphing into quicker, faster, shorter reads–blogs, Instagram posts, memes. Can you really get the essence of a story with just a paragraph or two or three?
I calm myself into accepting this change. Be it good, bad or neutral, change is the only constant in our life. And then it’s over. Given the alternative, give me change.