Bag

I'm on a roll with the posts today, huh? I think it's that I finally have some time and can actually think about some things I want to document. I'm almost pathological in my need to remember what each day has felt like since the stroke. Especially since I went to the bookstore tonight to try to find some books about stroke recovery--I found very little, and what I did find was written for seniors. Somewhere out there, someday, another young wife will find herself in my shoes, and I'd like for our blog to be a resource for her.

Anyway, I walked out of the bathroom a few minutes ago and was confronted by the bag that's sitting at the foot of our bed. I can list the contents of this blue cloth tote bag, a giveaway at some training I attended, without looking: a pair of J.J.'s shoes, a pair of black socks, some undies, a pair of sweats, a t-shirt, a toothbrush (new, still in the package, courtesy of my dentist's office), a travel-sized tube of toothpaste, a stick of deodorant and a book.

I know because this is the bag I packed on February 15 after the ambulance left with J.J. while I was waiting for my mom to arrive. I packed these things thinking of what J.J. would want if they ended up keeping him overnight for observation. And I figured I could finish off the book while I waited for him to be released from the ER, since I really assumed he'd be home with me before sunrise.

The bag has made it in from the trunk of the car. It's made it upstairs and into our room. But I can't seem to unpack it. Somehow I think I've come to identify it as the last thing I did during our life "before", and putting these things away is almost analogous to packing away the naive person I used to be. For someone whose waking hours are now consumed with stroke-related thoughts, I'm pretty sure I hadn't spent more than an hour (cumulative time) in my life thinking about strokes before that night. I never expected to be a stroke wife. I never expected to be asked whether I wanted to administer a drug to my husband that 5 times out of 100 killed the patients who received it. I never expected to visit my 33 year old husband in the ICU. And it's hard to admit that I am forever different than who I was when I packed that bag.

One of my goals for this weekend is to at least move the bag into the closet. If I can't stand to unpack it yet, well, that's okay. I can give myself permission to be that weak.