Range of Emotion

This is another mini update to my last entry:  still in ICU but getting stronger.

I won’t write much but I want to thank those who left comments and hit the button.  I haven’t been able to respond or to read others’ blogs.

My family member had surgery on the last day of January and has been fighting to live and for strength to breathe.  Even though he couldn’t speak he would give us the thumbs-up sign, even as he was getting weaker and weaker.

Among all the complications, I struggled to keep my emotions in check, and my mind clear.  Not so easy in times of great stress.  I felt stomach flutters, and heart palpitations, and chest pressure, and head aches.  Sometimes at the end of the day, my throat would clog with emotions and my eyes would sting.

What does it mean to be human?  And what about the will to live?  And what about the range of emotions one feels, both positive and negative?

I rediscovered an artist this week, Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), when I picked a book off my shelf titled: Voicing Our Vision: Writings by Women Artists.    Sometimes art visualizes what I am feeling inside, better than words, but I did read her words.  Images of her art were already in my mind from the past.

Her art goes to dark places, places of deep emotion.

But she captured youth also, although still melancholy.  I feel it.

But this is not the end of my story.  In this day of modern medicine, coupled with a strong will to survive, my husband will live.  At the hospital, the nurse gave us a board with the alphabet and my husband pointed out short messages to us, one letter at a time.  His first messages was:

Tomorrow is a new day!