I wake up in the dark, unsure of why at first. My mouth feels like it has been packed with sand. Running my tongue over my lips, I become more fully aware, I hurt. It is a vague and diffuse thought at first, and it grows in focus and sharpness as my mind lurches towards true wakefulness. My chest aches, the foot long incision down the center of my sternum burns coldly, and the pain brings friends. My shoulders, my hands, and my back all hurt. The long companion incision on my forearm starts to chime in at that point.
“You are in rough shape,” I mutter to myself. I clamp down on the desire to call myself “old man.” Not just yet.
I gingerly roll over on to my side and then swing my legs out of bed, letting their weight help pull my damaged upper body into a seated position. I am five weeks post-op from a triple bypass heart surgery, and as much as this hurts, it’s nothing like the first couple of weeks.
I glance over at my wife sleeping peacefully and try to keep the noise to a minimum. She has worked so hard, caring for me, handling the kids and all the household work. Bearing her own grief and fear with resolve. I look at the graceful lines of her face, relaxed in sleep, but strong, as if she had just closed her eyes briefly before pushing forward once again. I feel grateful, and humbled, and guilty all rolled up together. She has suffered with me through this ordeal. I know I would be lost without her, and that quiet truth has long since settled into my soul.
I put my thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of my nose and pinch, squeezing my eyes shut. When I breathe deeply it feels like the breath is tearing my ribcage apart, so I take a few shallow sips of air, like breathing through a straw.
And then I stand up. At least I’m steady on my feet. Grabbing my empty glass from the bedside table I walk slowly to the kitchen and pour a full measure of water from the fridge. Sipping as I walk back to the bedroom, I pull the bottle of extra-strength Tylenol from a drawer. I struggle with the child proof cap, even the simple act of levering the lid off pulls at my chest and arms. I take another couple of shallow breaths and try again, this time managing to push the lid, with the little raised arrows aligned, off the bottle. I shake out a 500mg tablet and pop it into my mouth, washing it down with the cold water. I push the cap back on the bottle, perversely spinning the little arrows out of alignment. I don’t want to kids to get into it, the tablets look too much like candy. I know I will struggle with it again in four hours. Quietly laughing to myself I whisper, “Too damn bad Jonny, safety first.”
Getting back into bed hurts more than getting out. I find a semi-comfortable position and lay there, breathing hard. Sleep is dodging me like a pro. The clock shows 1:00 am, illuminating the bedside table with cool, blue-white numerals. I know it will take at least ten minutes for the Tylenol to kick in, and I stare up at the ceiling, slowing my breath, counting the exhalations until I’m back to a good steady rhythm. Eight more weeks of recovery to go. The thought is enticing and depressing. One the one hand, eight weeks is nothing, it used to go by so quickly. On the other hand, eight weeks of this particular ritual seems completely beyond my ability to pull off. I feel hot tears leak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks. Letting the tears flow down my face to pool in the hollow of my throat, I wonder how to deal with where I am.
My dad was a stoic man, bluntly pushing past the pain and suffering in his life. He carried the physical pains of his aging body and old war wounds. The emotional suffering of losing a child, my oldest brother, and the mental anguish of a lifetime of PTSD from his tour of duty in the Korean War. The only telltale signs I ever glimpsed of his suffering were the firm set of his jaw and the implacable way he plowed forward through life, keeping his emotions locked away tight. Ultimately, his solution had been practical.
Lock away your emotions and do what needs doing. What else was one to do but push forward? One of his favorite bits of wisdom clicks easily into place as I think about him: “Hope in one hand and spit in the other, and see which gets filled first.” We both knew that spit was a substitute for shit, but he was a gentle man and rarely used more than mild curses. But keeping his emotions in carried a toll of suffering, too. His body seemed like a tightly wound spring, his hands never resting, always clenched and ready for the worst. He kept his demons inside, closely guarded, and put away. He carried them like the heavy chains of Jacob Marley, and I believe the suffering he carried increased as he went along. Mostly he kept his pain to himself, but sometimes I got a glimpse behind the curtain. I remember the very first time I saw my dad wear a pair of sneakers. I was in high school, and it was so odd to see him out of his highly polished Florsheims, the bright white leather of his New Balance shoes stood out like a glaring beacon. Even when we would go boating he would wear cowboy boots, looking utterly ridiculous in his swim trunks, the battered brown boot tops sprouting his white legs like lilies.
I remember telling him later that night, “Dad, those sneakers look great! Why haven’t you ever worn them before?”
I was thinking about how much embarrassment my teenage self could have avoided if he had just thrown on a pair of Keds. A very somber look stole over his face, his eyes squinted nearly shut, remembering an old but abiding pain.
“When I was in Korea,” he explained in a soft and matter-of-fact tone, “and the Chinese entered the war, they wore canvas shoes with rubber soles like these,” he gestured at his new shoes. “The sound of those shoes, rubber over rock and stone, it has haunted me for a long time.” He paused and took a noticeable breath. “I think maybe I can try wearing them now, they are so very comfortable.”
It wouldn’t occur to me until later that night as I lay in bed, there were 30 years between the war and that pair of shoes for my dad. Thirty. Years.
My mom, like my dad, was a child of the Great Depression. She had developed a very different means of coping with her anguish, and she did it with far more grace than anyone else I knew. She would laugh, when things were in a bad way, when she was in emotional or mental pain. Sometimes she laughed softly, or sometimes with big whooping, tear-inducing belly laughs. I remember that laugh ringing out clearly across the desert one summer day as she and I stood by our broken-down car out in the middle of nowhere. She was holding the Rand McNally road atlas in one hand, and a AAA card in the other, like she could magically conjure a repair truck. This was long before personal mobile phones were common and ubiquitous. She laughed so hard, tears streamed down her face. I thought maybe she was cracking under the strain, but she wiped away the tears and looked at me with those warm brown eyes.
“Laugh or cry sweetheart. Sometimes that’s the only choice you get. I choose to laugh.”
She held me close until a kind man stopped and gave us a ride to the nearest town. Her mirth wasn’t always the cure for her. Tears, pain, and a deep grief abided with her as well. But as I look back on it, her sense of humour and laughter were never too far away. As she lay dying, I held her hand, and I could only whisper, “It’s okay now Mom, you can lay down your burdens and rest.”
It seemed like such a paltry sop to offer in her pain. I wanted to ease her suffering, but the words fell short as words usually do. And honestly, the pain meds, the companionship, the words of comfort… I think they helped us both, but I don’t think they eased her suffering. I don’t think that’s how it works. She squeezed my hand in her own, her long, gaunt fingers curled around mine.
“Not long now,” she said with a very soft and sad little curl to her lips. I think perhaps it was the best smile she could muster at that point. She passed away that night as I lay on the floor next to her bed. Her kindness and infectious laughter remain with me. And when there are moments when my life turns with that sharp and bitter twist, I can almost hear the ghost of her laughter. I see it too. Sometimes, it is the only choice we get.
We roar across the face of the earth, feeling the invincibility of our youth, or the strength of our will, but we are ultimately housed in fragile homes. Our bones snap, our organs fail, our hearts break. I was in high school when I first heard the quote, “Life is suffering.” I grasped it with the eager fingers of youth, wanting to be more knowing, perhaps more hardened, than my sixteen years allowed. Watching the suicide of my brother at the age of eleven had plunged me into the waters of anguish and trauma. I knew the texture, but I had no idea of its length and breadth. I could not conceive how that would materialize in my life over the course of decades. Never consciously seeking out pain and suffering, but always finding it and giving it to others too. At first, when physical, emotional, or mental pain would find me, I would try to chart a path around it, somehow bypass it with a, “no thank you, not today!” kind of attitude.
But, like a loyal dog, it was always there waiting for me to acknowledge it, and let it in. After a lifetime of that failed approach, I now try to be more genuine, acknowledge it, and let it come in and tell me what it needs. More and more I feel my way through it, listening as best as I can, being as patient as I can, while it teaches me its lesson.
The poet Ben Okri said, “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” I’m not sure I fully understand what it means yet, to be greater than our suffering. But, it makes me think of my mother, laughing in that desert. It causes me to remember my dad lacing up that pair of sneakers. They embodied everyday acts of affirmation and small moments of courage in the face of fear and suffering. Aren’t our lives really comprised of small, atomic moments that are all strung together in a bright temporal chain? And in these small moments, when we choose to move forward, when we choose the most positive expression we can find, doesn’t that help us in the big moments? When our hearts and our bodies quail, when the suffering comes home and sits so close we can feel its tortured breath. When it comes, and we just don’t know how or even if we can go on. I have fallen on my face so many times, crushed by pain, loss, and grief, that I cannot count them. When I was ground down by my own failures and betrayals, when I wish I could have been more, could have been better, could have shone more true. I have received many lessons, and I am still learning. Suffering wears many masks and has many faces. It is an unavoidable truth of our existence. Perhaps the riddle lies in how we answer it. Perhaps it is the small acts of everyday courage that teach us to be greater than our suffering.
I am learning to carry my grief and my suffering. Every day, I think about what it means to transform, to love, and to create. I am grateful that I have the chance to figure it out. As I lay back in bed and feel sleep slowly stealing my consciousness, it is that thought that still burns bright for me. I am grateful to be alive. Thankful that I have the chance to puzzle out what it means to suffer and how to be greater because of it. At the end of the day, the answer may elude me, but I am resolved to move forward as positively as I can, with a grateful heart, and a smile borrowed from my mother. Sometimes, it is the only choice we have.
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With over 20 years of leadership experience in the games industry, Jonathan Warner is a storyteller and seasoned studio leader passionate about crafting compelling narratives. His work has reached millions of players worldwide, and he is proud to have been nominated for a BAFTA for Toy Story 3: The Game. Jonathan is continually driven by a love for storytelling and a curiosity for new challenges in the gaming industry. He lives in British Columbia, Canada with his wife, daughters, and dog.