I stood in the doorway and asked him how he was doing. He said, “I think a part of me just died.” How is it that teenagers are so dramatic and so honest at the same time? “Why?” I asked. It could have been anything. Whatever it was that brought him back to the hospital after being at home only a month. Some new diagnosis, prognosis. It was all the heavier from someone usually so bright and joking, all the heavier when followed by his wheezing inhale.
He told me about a painful clot in his arm from the IV, and that the doctor had advised him against playing his guitar. His guitar – a third limb, a little portal he gets sucked through and forgets to come out of for several minutes mid-conversation, mid-sentence, into the only other place to go.
I nodded. “Let’s find you something you can play. Have you ever tried the keyboard?” I saw the spark come back. He told he he wanted to learn more, and I went to go get one from our storage space.
My senior year of high school, my body was at odds with playing music. Between the misdiagnosis, failed treatment, surgery, and physical therapy for torn cartilage in my wrist, I couldn’t play guitar or piano for about 9 months. Attached to the injury was a warning – that my joints and ligaments were loose and prone to tearing, some genetic condition I forget the name of. A question with no answer, no cure. Play until it hurts, and then don’t play anymore. Even after the scar tissue healed, I would have to be careful, always aware of this possibility. Thank god I didn’t want to be a gymnast; they told me that with that amount of stress on the wrists, I would have been finished before I could even begin.
As I was going to get the keyboard, I wondered if and how I should offer this experience to him. Conceal the deep depression that had eventually sunk in, yes, but let him know that the moments that saved me were still in music, in learning how to make it in different ways. (The open mic where I had the whole room singing a song I wrote, writing songs with my best friend at the piano.) That there are infinite ways our bodies can release the music within us. That you don’t have to give up on yourself. Everything I wish I could have told myself then.
I still don’t know how to talk about that year. I have been learning that there are things that do not need to be talked about; that they are present with us in other ways. This morning reminded me that I am living the lessons of that year. Not one part of me gave up hope for him, even as I realized how difficult it was to hear the door closing on your one place of unchanging beauty and certainty and joy. That darkness taught me what to say to him, made me ask him where else he would like to grow. As if to say, “the part of you that died – it isn’t dead. It is sleeping and waiting for the winter to pass. Keep it warm while it waits. Keep moving.”
When I got back, his nurse had told him he can play. I breathed in relief, and out gratitude for the lesson.