I have a large store sign from a retail campaign I worked on years ago. The campaign was called “A Charmed Life,” and the sign features a woman with bouffant hair and a voluminous skirt sitting next to a perfectly coiffed poodle. I loved the vintage vibes; it was a page out of my own stylebook and fit right in with my midcentury aesthetic.
I also loved what the campaign represented: beauty, grace, and comfort, viewed through the hazy lens of nostalgia, mirroring my own desire for an idyllic, if illusory, life. I never really thought of myself as having a charmed life; I wasn’t extraordinarily lucky or successful or prosperous. But I realize now that in all the ways that count — health, safety, security — my life has indeed been charmed. Just waking up every morning with a positive outlook, unburdened by pain or stress, was something I had taken for granted.
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The first crack in the mirror appeared when our neighborhood flooded last summer. Cleaning up the mess in my basement on my own was brutal, backbreaking work. A few months later, a huge tree came down, uprooting the new landscaping, the top branches resting on the roof of my front porch. I tried not to think about how people say bad things happen in threes.
Then, last November, the day after Thanksgiving, I had a stroke. Doctors say I was very fortunate. I had no visible deficits. But inside, I was shattered. After a flurry of nighttime ER visits for atrial fibrillation (AFib) —the likely culprit of the stroke – I felt like a ticking time bomb, waiting for the next errant heartbeat and the other shoe to drop.
After the stroke and the subsequent hospital visits for AFib, my sense of peace and security was destroyed. I became a shadow of myself, unable to eat, unable to concentrate, and plagued with a relentless, roiling anxiety. Whether it was from the stroke, the medications, or the trauma (opinion is divided), I walked around in a dreamlike state, going through the motions but feeling detached from reality. It was — and continues to be — the most disconcerting feeling I have ever experienced. I watch my neighbors go about their lives, walking the dog, doing yard work, carrying in groceries, and I’m filled with envy and grief for the life they have and the one I lost – a life where every single second of every single day wasn’t filled with dread, where every twinge or flutter or pain didn’t send me into a panic.
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It was hard not to see the stroke as a punishment or a penance for what I had done, or what I had failed to do. I became obsessed with the why: Why did God let this happen? I went to Mass and Eucharistic Adoration every week, I said novenas, I had my house blessed. But to be honest, my relationship with God was largely transactional, like making insurance payments so you’ll be covered if disaster strikes: I do these things, God, and you keep me safe. When I recited the Our Father and said, “Thy will be done,” did I really mean it, or was I attaching an asterisk at the end, like the fine print in a disclaimer at the bottom of a coupon, listing my own terms and conditions?
The thing is, God did keep me safe. He just shocked me out of my comfort and complacency. I don’t like to think I was oblivious to other people’s suffering before, but I didn’t understand it the way I do now. How many times did people envy me as I floated by in my carefree bubble, blithely unaware of their internal struggles? How many times did I inwardly roll my eyes at someone who seemed impatient or ill-tempered in the grocery line, when maybe they were hanging on by a thread and it was all they could do to put one foot in front of the other?
It’s been six months since the stroke. I wish I could say that I’m at peace with everything and that I accept the bad days with a beatific smile. I still wish this cup had passed by me. My mental recovery has been one step forward, two steps back. A therapist who works with stroke patients told me that the people who look fine on the outside are often the ones who take the longest to heal. But I am trying to see things in a new light. The flood forced me to clear out 20 years’ worth of clutter that had been taking up too much space in my basement and my mind. The foreboding, towering spruce that overshadowed the house is gone and will be replaced by a tree that bursts into bloom every year.
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As for the stroke and AFib, I still fantasize about a Scrooge-like redemption arc, in which I wake up in the morning, realize it was all a bad dream, jump in jubilation that I have another chance, and vow to live a better life. Or maybe that’s exactly what did happen. Maybe I have been given another chance — not to live a charmed life, but a more meaningful one.
