Unknown

Here I am, standing on the edge. I am not sure what I am on the edge of, but I can tell that the only direction I can go is forward. I look behind and can see faces, places and things that I know, but there is no way to go back to them. Like some kind of video game with no reverse button, you can only go ahead, not knowing what zombies or creepers are around the corner. There is no choice but to look ahead, even though all there is is blackness - no shapes, no figures, no light.

So what is one to do? There really is no choice but to go forward. So I try, but it's hard. I cry because I miss what is behind me that I no longer can reach. I imagine what it would feel like to go ahead into the darkness and slowly I do, eyes closed to concentrate as hard as I can fighting to make my way.

And somehow I do it, I move forward. Likely because of sheer grit and wanting to prove my strength and stubbornness even if it is just to myself. [No I do NOT need that chest tube back in my body, my O2 "sats" are 100% thank you very much.]

I open my eyes to that blackness.  Knowing that they are quite capable of playing tricks on me [hello crazy hospital drugs] I don't really believe what I am seeing. My guess is that they are fireflies. You know how you see them at night in early summer across the field? You think you see one, and then it's gone? Then you see another, and it disappears too? But then, when you let your eyes relax and stop looking so hard you see that the field and the sky is actually full of them?

That is what I see now, the darkness with a few sprinklings of light. Then there are more, and more. I don't will there to be more, but they just keep coming. Somehow they are there and they make that darkness less scary, less unknown and more manageable.

I now know their source. The lights come from everyone surrounding me, both physically and virtually. And I don't even know all their names. It's crazy, because the lights just keep lighting. They are the cards, e-mails, texts, tweets, the fb messages, posts and reposts. They are the 4J campaign, the hugs, the food, the coffee, the time you spend with my kids and the kind words you say to my husband. They are the words that say "Share the Road" everywhere. They are the turtle. They are my family.

These lights all make me cry. Not from sadness and loss, although sometime that does creep in, I cry from the sheer overpowering emotion of being loved. And in this powerful emotion it makes the unknown go away.


Update: After a lot of to-and-fro from the medical staff at Victoria it was decided that I was to leave the trauma unit. A bed at Parkwood will not come available until Monday morning. So I was given the option to be repatriated (their words) to my "home hospital". So I said yes, as it would have given me the chance to see my kids before they head to camp for the week. So off I went in the Voyager with a couple of Huron County boys behind the wheel and at my side to bring me home to Wingham. Thanks boys.