Beauty in the Broken Places

by Allison Pataki

  As Dave makes his way through the book, I pretend to be interested in my historical novel, but really I’m reading those letters along with Dave. I’m thinking about things, my own mind awhirl. I can hear a bird trilling outside our window—yes, a bird singing, in Chicago, in late winter. That sentence doesn’t even make sense as I type it.

  A text message comes through on my phone; Margaret asks me how the day is going, how Dave and I are doing. I have answered this same question dozens of times over these past months, but today, for the first time, my answer is different. She asks about the weather, tells me they are having a warm day in Virginia and that she can feel the first hints of spring. I reply: “It’s a bright day here, too, in more ways than just the weather.”

  Margaret writes me back that she is grateful to hear it. I am grateful to say it.

  When we were in the worst of it, in the days immediately following the stroke, when we did not know whether Dave would survive, Margaret reached out to many friends to ask for their prayers and words of strength. Each one of those letters is a treasure that overwhelms me, makes me weep tears of gratitude and love; I think of one in particular now. It was from a friend of Margaret’s—a young woman who, though she does not personally subscribe to a specific faith or religion, took the time to think about this request and send in a beautiful prayer. She wrote:

  I am seeing a picture. I am seeing Dave opening his eyes and smiling. Smiling because his family surrounds him. I am seeing hands that reach for each other and hold each other, and guide each other to recovery. I am seeing Dave—and his arms hold baby Levy and Alli. They are all together in the sun surrounded by green grass and blue sky and there is love radiating out from them, and around them, and flowing through them.

  I remember so well the first time I read those words. I had been stunned by their simple yet powerful beauty. I had wanted so badly to aspire to that image, the image of Dave being well enough to hold the baby; the image of us, happy, together as a family on the grass in the sunlight. I had loved that image, but in the back of my mind, the louder thought had been: I wish—oh, how I wish—but I can’t really imagine that Dave will ever be well enough to hold his baby, let alone sit outside on green grass in the sunlight.

  If I ever feel the temptation to complain about Dave’s progress or recovery, to lament that things are not what they once were, all I need to do is think back to that prayer, to the fact that our outlook was once so grim that I doubted whether Dave would ever be well enough to sit with me and the baby in the fresh air and sunlight. Because, now, he is. He’s well enough for that, and for so much more. How far he has come. How far we have come, together.

  May we always remember.

  I can look at that photo again, the one of us with the four-leaf clovers, without wanting to tear it off the wall and hurl it across the room. The smiles of those two young people, people who have just pledged their lives to each other, young people who imagine a future unfurling before them filled with adventure and love and hard work and joy—those smiles make me smile once again. Sure, maybe now I smile with a film of knowing tears in my eyes, but I can smile.

  Spring is returning. After a gray winter, the quality of the sunlight is changing—the bird singing outside our window is a harbinger of more good to come. While once the sky overhead appeared dark and impenetrable, that wall of leaden clouds is now breaking. The air is beginning to feel softer, gentler. One day at a time, I told myself. Day after day, the time passed. Days formed weeks. Weeks formed months. And now winter has to give way to spring. I could not remember how glorious it was—that first sound of a bird on a barren branch outside the window. I forgot. But now I hear it, now I remember.

  Book launch is just days away, and I am excited for it. Not only am I not dreading it, I’m actively looking forward to it. I’m remembering book launches from years past and I know that this time around will be different, but I’ve made my peace with that fact. It will be different, but it will still be good. I’ve never been more appreciative of the work I love. I’ve never felt more support and sustaining strength from the community in which I work and the readers for whom I write. I will never forget the way these people rallied to my side. The way they showed up, not as colleagues or customers, but as friends. As compassionate and kind individuals who cared. And the way my loved ones jumped to be by my side so that I could feel supported in this critical moment. I was scared and I was lonely, but I was not alone. Not for a moment.

  May we always remember.

  I sit beside Dave thinking about the idea of memory, realizing that memory has so much to do with the past, yes, but also with the present. We can and we must remember in the active, present tense of the word. We can remember to always say “I love you” when leaving through the front door, and to say “I love you” when walking back in through that front door.

  Our home is lined with photographs—bright spots of joy that we remember from the past. Moments that seem to us, now, to come from a different life. The life before June 9, our life before the stroke. But there will be new moments, too. We will fill new picture frames with new memories—experiences we will imbue with love and joy and meaning. And we will look at them so gratefully, with an appreciation made that much deeper because we know how hard we had to fight in order to live them. We know how close we came to never having those moments at all.

  May we always remember to begin the day being grateful for life, however difficult that life may appear. To show up for our loved ones. To listen, to allow them to weep when they need to weep. To cook them dinners when they need us. To be God’s angels on this earth just like the angels who showed up for us along our journey through pain.

  May we always remember to lavish our precious baby with kisses. To give thanks that she is here and that she is healthy and she is ours—and to give thanks for the fact that we are here to love her and know her.

  May we always remember that, even though I spend my days writing about women and their love stories, that ours, the fragile, imperfect, precious story we are writing day in, day out, is the most important one, and that we can choose each day to write it with love and joy and gratitude and faith.

  May we always remember, while you treat others and spend your days thinking about the care of the sick, that your life was saved and you are still in this world to help shape it and make it a better place.

  Dear Dave, May we always remember how lucky we are.

  When you first opened your eyes, you were not yourself. You did not remember all that we had lived through; you did not remember how to speak to me the way you had always spoken to me. You did not remember all that we had wanted for our future. That has come back, with time. What we have between us is once again familiar and worn-in, and yet, in some ways, it is also entirely new and different. It was like you and I had to fall in love all over again. And we did. Our marriage looks different today than it did a year ago, but isn’t that the case for any marriage? Isn’t marriage a dynamic thing in which two people are constantly growing and learning and evolving—and isn’t the key to honor and cherish and nurture your love for your partner even as you grow and learn and evolve? Even through the process of regrowing a brain and fixing a hole in one’s heart?

  Dear Dave, May we always remember how lucky we are to have one another.

  We are not lucky because life is easy or smooth, or because it makes sense or because we are in control. Life is hard and scary and entirely out of our control, but we know that now. We understand it. We’ve stared at death—we’ve confronted the reality that life is fragile and fickle and that no one, not even a world-class neurosurgeon, can tell us what tomorrow brings, or even what the next hour brings.

  We’ve had the opportunity to live out the promise we made to each other on the hilltop right before we found the four-leaf clovers. We’ve had the chance to live out the vows we made on the day when I pressed the four-leaf clovers and told you that we were lu
cky.

  We are lucky to be living this life.

  And best of all is that, for now, we get to live it together.

  June 9, 2016

  Dear Dave,

  You had a stroke one year ago today. A massive, scary, improbable stroke that took us completely by surprise and changed the course of our lives forever.

  With your stay in the ICU and your state of amnesia came a series of letters that I decided to write to you, along with the hundreds of letters and emails and prayers that I would collect from so many people who love you.

  This is the last letter I am going to write you that will be a part of this DearDave Word document.

  After today, we move forward, onto a new, blank page.

  I’ve measured time for a year in relation to June 9, 2015. Everything was bracketed in my mind as either “before June 9” or “after June 9.” Every day of this past year I have woken up and looked down at my calendar. First, I would check what it was that we had to do that day. Then, I would scroll back to this day one year prior; I would take a moment of refuge and solace in looking at the simple activities of the same date, before the stroke. I’d recall what we had done, two people in a state of innocence, enjoying the busy excitement of fulfilling work and the early days of a first pregnancy. I’d remember us how we were before that plane ride. Before the fall. Before everything changed.

  One year ago today, June 9, was the worst day of our lives.

  Today, we are going to celebrate. It’s your “Alive Day.” Tonight we will take your parents—the first people I called from the ambulance in Fargo—and your family out to dinner, and we will celebrate the fact that you are alive. Your mom called me yesterday, telling me she had bought a balloon for you that said “Welcome back!” We thought that seemed right.

  This weekend you and I and Lilly will gather with a group of friends and we will raise a glass to your life and to your loved ones and the community that rallied to our sides one year ago today, and every day of this past year.

  When organizing this little get-together, I wrote the following email to our friends, with the subject line “Dave is Alive!”:

  Hi friends!

  June 9 marks a not-so-fun one-year anniversary for us. We can’t think of a better way to commemorate this crappy day than by surrounding ourselves with people we care about.

  Please come on over & join us on our rooftop as we raise a glass to our favorite stroke survivor & rehab rockstar—life is good and it’s been a remarkable year.

  Love,

  Alli, Dave & Lilly

  It is June in Chicago again. It is the best time of year once more, and the sunshine has returned. I will spend the day reflecting and giving thanks. We have so much for which we can be grateful.

  This past week, we published a piece in The New York Times discussing a little bit of what we have been through. The piece elicited very strong reactions from the readers, and we’ve received hundreds of thousands of clicks and countless incredibly thoughtful and moving responses. One email struck me in particular. It came from a young woman who goes to Yale. Her father had a stroke several years ago, and she wrote this to us:

  I’m happy to say that my dad lived through his stroke, and while he is very different from how he was before, he, my siblings, and my mom have only redoubled our commitment to him and our love for each other. Every day his walking and talking improve, and he smiles very often, especially around our family.

  He is very different from how he was before.

  We’ve redoubled our commitment to him and our love for each other.

  Every day he improves.

  He smiles very often.

  That’s it, isn’t it?

  The life we knew, Dave, before the stroke—that’s gone. That version of ourselves and our loved ones and that particular path we might have forged is gone. It’s all been replaced by something new and different, and perhaps it’s a little less innocent and simple. But, as different as the world and the family and the people in it may appear, things can still be good. Life can still be filled with hope and, as this young woman so beautifully put it, with love.

  Celebrated neurologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said, “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” I think about that quote a lot. Did we want this to happen? No. Do I feel as though we understand everything that has unfolded and will continue to unfold for us as a result of this stroke? Hardly. Do I feel as though we’ve been able to draw meaning in all of this? Yes. Every single day, yes. And I know that we will continue to do so.

  I hear you in the next room, playing with our daughter as I type these words. Your mother recently confessed to me that, on their midnight plane ride out to Fargo, your father had very seriously prepared her and Andy for the fact that you might die, that it was very likely a flight for all of them to see you one final time and say goodbye. And if you didn’t die, we probably could never expect much more for you than a life of complete helplessness and 24-hour care.

  I hear you now, in there, playing with Lilly, making her laugh. I say: thank you, God. Thank you so much for this moment. For the fact that Dave knows Lilly and Lilly knows her father.

  That is no small thing.

  We never made it to Hawaii. We never had a “babymoon” trip. We got rerouted, and the journey we took instead was one we never expected and one we never would’ve chosen, but it happened. This year has been lumpy. There have been glorious peaks and ghastly valleys.

  Brain injury is so especially difficult on a patient and the loved ones because we can’t see the wound in the brain. We can’t set it like a broken bone in a cast, we can’t watch as a scar slowly heals and diminishes and maybe even disappears. To believe that a brain is healing requires faith; it requires one to submit to time and to patience and to trust—to hope without proof that the unseen is occurring. It requires a deep and abiding faith that, though we can’t see it—the mind is doing the miraculous work of regenerating, a million tiny but mighty cells coming alive and coming together, working once more to create miracles large and small, seen and unseen.

  All this year, we’ve heard so much talk about fighting and striving for a full recovery. Everyone hopes and believes you can make a full recovery. I’ve thought so much about this phrase, these words. I’ve wondered just what a “full recovery” would mean or look like.

  Full recovery. To me, I think there’s something in the first word there: “full.” I think we need to focus on that. A full recovery, in my opinion, means that you are able to once again live a full life. What does that mean—a “full life”? That’s a question that each of us can and should answer differently. But this I know for certain: it does not mean a perfect life. Because that’s not possible, and never would have been, stroke or no stroke. Nor does it mean an easy life. A predictable life. We now know that that is not possible, either. A life without long trials and sudden, shocking disruptions does not exist. Not for us, not for anyone.

  There are still so many good moments to be had. Life has been beautiful. When I stop to really think about just how beautiful it has been, it becomes a bit overwhelming. I have studied yoga in the rain forest in Costa Rica and I have studied Shakespeare in the Gothic buildings of Yale. I have looked out over the world from atop the Swiss Alps, and I have looked up at the sky while swimming in the Great Barrier Reef. I have fed the homeless in Chicago and have sat down to dinner with two sitting presidents. I have laughed so hard that I was unable to catch my breath, and I have cried so hard that my head felt like it would split apart. I have cradled my newborn baby in my arms and wept; I have cradled my sick husband in my arms and not wept, because I was far too frightened of what would happen if I allowed the tears to begin.

  Even, with all of that, without a doubt, the greatest adventure of my life is the one we are living, Dave, each and every day. The greates
t story I will ever tell is the one we wake up to and write anew each morning. “Choose to be in your life, to be in your marriage, every single day.” That is what the priest told us at my brother Teddy’s wedding to Emled, years ago, and though I did not fully understand it at the time, I think that I do now. No marriage is easy. No love is easy. Faith is certainly not easy. Tragedy can come at any time and in any shape. Life gets scary and it gets hard. We scream and we cry and we fall to the floor, railing with fists clenched that we just don’t want to do it any longer.

  And that is when we have our greatest chances and our greatest choices.

  We choose, today, to strive toward a full recovery. A full life must inevitably come with its challenges. But it also means a life full of love and loved ones. A life full of gratitude for both the beauty and the brokenness. A deeper faith and a more meaningful appreciation for every single day that we are given. Acknowledgment of our blessings and a genuine compassion for those who are struggling. We choose that.

  The stroke was sudden and it was painful and it forever changed the road on which we walked. But today, and every day, we must remember to look back and see how far we’ve come. We see the many steps behind us, and we nod to them with gratitude and understanding. We see the many steps before us, and we look toward them with gratitude and hope. We see that, on our journey, we still stand beside each other, hands intertwined, and we choose to keep moving forward on the new road that stretches ahead.

  One year after my stroke, gratitude is the first thing on my mind. I am so grateful to be alive and here with my wife and daughter. It was certainly a scary experience to have almost died, but one positive I can unequivocally point to is that it has truly brought me closer to my entire family. My world has shifted, but the result of that shift is that now I see life from an entirely new perspective. That is such a cliché, of course, but it defines my existence. My entire life is a second turn—a second look, a second attempt at trying to lead a happy and meaningful reality.