Brushes with Mortality

I’ve had two brushes with my mortality that were too close for comfort.

Well three actually, but I was too young in the 23 car pile up to clock how the experience would transform me. My biggest takeaways there; just like the movies, time really does move in slow motion, my dad (the scattered sort under normal circumstances) is extremely collected in the most terrible of circumstances, and I don’t remember any of Star Wars Episode I, the movie we were coming home from that day. From what I gather, it was an okay one to miss.

The other two brushes were more recent. Accompanied by self-awareness and a sometimes excessive curiosity about the human experience, these recent events offered sharp realignment.

The first was a wasp sting, that unbeknownst to 16 year old Jenny, was a deathly allergy. Setting my hair in rollers under the sun for the summer musical, a run in with a wasp changed the course of my weekend. In the hospital, unstable for a few hours, I really only thought of one thing. Getting back on stage.

Of course I also thought about time with family and friends. I thought about college and travel I hadn’t gotten to experience. But the real thought that pressed and pressed from beyond the beep of the heart monitor, the thought that shocked me at its urgency, was if I got one last chance to do anything, it would be to get back on stage.

Turns out, it wouldn’t be my last chance. And later that weekend, I got out of that hospital bed and right back on that stage.

If I couldn’t bear the thought of not returning to one singular performance of the summer musical from my 16 year old (overly dramatic) perception of a deathbed, I certainly could no longer entertain the idea of not doing it for the rest of my life. Priorities got real straight, real quick.

The next time I’d brush too closely with my own mortality was a year ago.

As we spiral towards the one-year anniversary of the world going into lockdown, I was wondering exactly how long it had been for me. I found these messages on my workplace slack, timestamped:

March 11, 2020 3:08 pm

I'm feeling a little off today. Was really really exhausted yesterday and it is not abating today. Don't feel sick really - just completely exhausted. If y'all are good with it, I'm going to stay home until the staff meeting and see if I can't get some energy going.

March 13, 2020 9:05 am

Y'all last night was really rough. I am quite sick  :disappointed: I may not be able to get a ton done today :persevere:

March 15, 2020 4:19 pm

Alright ya'll I am fading fast so I am going off the grid for the rest of the day. Thanks so much for everyone's Saturday hours. Ya'll are so appreciated.

It was a year ago. Today.

After a year ago today, I got pretty silent on slack, and in life, for the next few weeks.

We knew so little about the virus on March 11, 2020, when a pounding headache unlike anything I’d ever experienced prevented me from formulating more than a few words at a time. When a fatigue so strong hit that I could not lift my arm.

Those were the early symptoms, from there it got so much worse.

We knew so little about the virus then.

It wasn’t until nine months later that I wept with my therapist, finally acknowledging and releasing the deep fear of death I carried with me each waking (and many sleeping) moments for 18 days in March last year.

A friend working the ER at the time told me, about the Covid patients, “once they enter, they don’t leave.” I knew what she meant, and at that time it was true. Even though my breath got down to 3 seconds I didn’t want to risk going in, terrified the ER was a death sentence… like somehow that act would ensure I wouldn’t come out.

I know the logic was flawed, but covid-brain and fear can do strange things to one’s cognitive functions.

So anyway, one day about a year ago, as I gasped like a fish out of water from the exertion of walking 5 feet to the bathroom, I called down to Brandon, “they told me on the phone if I couldn’t catch my breath I have to go to the hospital.”

I tried to catch my breath for about 30 minutes, still breaths were only possible at 2-3 seconds a pop.

“If I can’t catch my breath in 20 more minutes, you’ll need to take me in.”

Brandon seemed rattled for the first time in the 3 weeks I’d been sick, perhaps he was rattled before and did a great job hiding it for my sake, but this was the first time I could hear an edge in his voice. A fear creeping in.

Whether sheer will power, divine intervention, the natural course of the virus in my body (or the most probable combination of all three), I caught my breath after 19 more minutes.

I am grateful to be one of the lucky ones. One of the severe cases, that made it out on the other end.

My experience has made me extreme in my social distancing measures. I’ve not been to a restaurant in a year. We’ve not had friends over in a year. Every time Brandon or I have had an audition for film or theatre, the first question we ask is “what are the safety protocols?”

But when you’ve seen the dark other side of this virus (not the flu-like headache and a fever side) but the so exhausted you have to force yourself to drink water because moving at all, including ten steps to the bathroom, becomes an almost impossible task side.

The gasping for air laying in bed side.

The body aches and chills and sweats and fever that make it hard to grasp onto reality side.

The kept you bed-ridden for almost a month of your life side, the in bed longer than your honeymoon side, the in bed longer than the length of some entire performance runs here in Atlanta side.

The losing your thoughts mid-sentence for over half a year, with absolutely ZERO ability to recall, because the covid brain fog continued to take thoughts as quickly and randomly as they came, side.

The side that leaves you with asthma and suspected permanent pulmonary damage -- the side that still makes certain things taste bland on certain days, or cough out of the blue for no apparent reason, or wheeze if someone makes you laugh too hard (okay that one is kind of funny).

But when you know this side of it, the appropriate response to this pandemic becomes undeniable.

There were some days, the days surrounding the almost-ER-day I described above, where I wondered if I would have the strength to fight it off. What I mean is, I could see how you could just… slip away. How your body just couldn’t fight the virus any more. I gave everything. And it took it all and still wanted more. I was scared in that way for about three days. 

In the aftermath of this experience, everything began to change.

I’ve had two brushes with death in my life. And as anyone knows who has experienced the same, when confronted with “it all could have ended yesterday” it becomes very clear what one desires most.

The first time set me on my path to be a professional performer. That change was overnight. I imagined never getting on stage again, and it was done. I tore up my college applications to classical language programs and began researching musical theatre programs.

This brush with mortality… this one has been slower to unfold.

In the silence and solitude and stillness and aching boredom and aching loneliness and aching joy and aching beauty and aching longing of a year from within the walls of my own home, in the aftermath of my own brush with mortality, I have been slowly blooming. I’d like to imagine like one of those rare flowers that spends its entire life for one gorgeous moment.

I haven’t bloomed yet, but this year, this year of my life has changed so much.

So today, I start a blog. I have more to uncover, and if you’re curious, I’d love for you to join me.

And tomorrow, one year to the day, I get my first dose of the vaccine.

It has been one year since our country stopped for Covid-19. What has been blooming inside you?