I’d left the hospital in a hurry that day. Just a few hours before waving good-bye to my nurse, a very sweet and nurturing woman who comforted me through a scary experience, I was receiving a slow drip of some sort of medicine to lower my heart rate and push it back to a static state.
At 40, just months after purchasing my first pair of drugstore reading glasses, I had arrived at the coronary unit via the emergency room to find out why my heart felt like it was beating out of my chest. Apparently, I was experiencing atrial fibrillation, an alarming condition (more alarming to the patient than the doctor, I suspect) that causes the heart to spontaneously lose its beat—temporarily. The concern with AFib is that blood clots can form leading to strokes. Still, the hospital released me, adorned by an event monitor that recorded any irregular heart beats. I was to wear it for a month. It looked and felt like a pager from the nineties (They couldn’t have modeled it after an ipod?).
Though it took longer than originally predicted to get my ticker back to its normal tick-tocking, they were able to release me in time to rush to my oldest daughter’s orchestra concert, which I would otherwise have missed. I was supposed to be avoiding stress. Rushing was not on my list of approved activities. But my daughter playing the violin brings me joy—so I rushed as fast as a person who was nearly too tired to walk could rush. My husband and I arrived and sat way in the back with the kids, who were already there with friends. I was exhausted. My daughter’s orchestra opened the concert. It brought me joy. It calmed me.
But my other kids were restless, as happens when you are seven and four and forced to go to your sister’s orchestra concert after your mother was in the hospital. And they wanted my attention. While the other orchestras played, I followed them in and out of the concert hall. We tried to stay out until each orchestra was finished and the stage was being re-set. We were right next to the door so we weren’t walking in front of the lower seats. I was exhausted, did I mention, and dizzy, but feeling pleased that I got to see the concert and that my daughter got to have her mother there.
A woman approached me and asked me take the kids out. She said, curtly, that it was distracting (understandable) and “unbefitting proper concert behavior.” I’d like to point out that this was a children’s concert, performed by children for their families. What is proper concert behavior in that sort of setting? I could debate that for hours but I am not allowed to feel stress.
All I could think that afternoon was that it was such a blessing to get to be there, to hear my daughter play, for my daughter to have people there for her. I thought how precious that moment was, especially since I had literally been in a hospital bed with an IV drip just one hour beforehand. When the lady approached me, surely she saw my drooping eyes, my lackluster expression, my pale skin. And, if she hadn’t, does it matter? Were we really that distracting to her? So much so that she felt the need to approach us?
How many times have I been curt or downright rude with someone who I found annoying without considering where they had been just minutes before, what story they brought with them to that place? It’s easy to be so in our own heads, so consumed by our own stories that we forget that each and every person with whom we relate is also appearing with their own back story.
When the woman approached me, I wanted to cry. I was so tired. I cannot describe the exhaustion I was experiencing after having my heart beating through my chest for 12 hours. I cannot express the fear that was literally coursing through my veins, the stress weighing upon my heart. What I really needed at the moment was a smile. A smile. Some sort of reassurance that everything was going to be okay. Perhaps even a hand.
I’ve neglected to lend a hand when needed. I’ve watched a harried mom dealing with her restless kids and attempted to telepathically will her to control them somehow (even knowing what I know about anyone’s inability to control a child). I could have smiled and didn’t. I could have lent a hand and didn’t.
I tried to take that next month to allow the bulbous event monitor overtaking my waistband to provide a gentle reminder to listen for the back story each time I relate to another person. My personal little behavioral modification device.
And if you see a person like me, a woman with an unsightly bulge on the left side of her waist and electrodes peeking out of a t-shirt that make her look like she’s trying to get a radio station—or that she’s bionic—or 90, could you maybe smile? It might slow her heart a bit when you do.
