Changes

A short story

(c) Gun Bach 1998

So many emotions at one time and yet neither of them found their way to her lips or to her eyes.
She wasn't the healthy, focused and together woman she pictured herself to be. That had all been a lie, a trick life had played on her. The days, the years, before this day had encouraged her to believe she was a woman with a future. Now she could only stare at the doctor, sitting calmly at his desk, watching her.
A silent scream wanted to emerge from the depth of her chest. Her lungs caved in and prepared to supply the air needed. But nothing came out. The scream instead seemed to reach her heart where it stayed.
Tears wanted to burst from her dry eyes but instead turned inwards, to her veins, where they blended with her blood, spreading the message to her entire body.
She was ill. She had Multiple Sclerosis.

How she got home from the hospital was a mystery, but she didn't care. In her kitchen, her safe, familiar kitchen, she sat down and did nothing. The tablecloth her mother had sowed three years ago for her birthday, the yellow tulips in a vase, the thin white curtains framing the window. Had they looked the same in the morning before she left?
She rubbed her numb left leg and then it hit her... Her numb left leg. It wasn't a squeezed nerve; it was something in her spine. A lesion. And more could come. Would come. She let her hand follow her leg. She had good looking legs, her husband used to say. And now, one of them felt... dead. It had been like that for weeks and it wasn't the first time, but definitely the worst. So far.
Husband. Oh, dear Lord... how would he react? And their friends. Some of them really moved in the fast lane of life. She would have a hard time follow them now. Wouldn't she?

Key in the front door. Beloved voice calling darling. No matter how she tried her voice did not co-operate. When he came in to the kitchen and saw her face he said nothing but put his arms around her. Worriedly asking her why she had not called after seeing the doctor, he suddenly realised and took a step back, searching her face.
"Multiple Sclerosis."
It was the only words that could come from her lips. The only words that had been on her mind the last six hours. Six hours on a kitchen chair with two words in her head. Life altering words.
All he could do was to hug her, but she felt him shiver and a lonely tear landed on her cheek. Not hers. His.

Weeks and months passed by. They told some friends and some friends they didn't dare to tell. They knew them too well and she could not handle the humiliation of rejection, so she acted first by rejecting them.
Their closest friends were wonderful. They showed her so much love and care and for a while she thought she would be able to cry.
Her mother needed to be protected against the facts. And somewhere she found the strength to minimise the pain and the fatigue that more and more was her daily companions. The husband had a period of silence, a couple of weeks when he needed to dwell on life and how to deal with her pain. To be powerless was not in his vocabulary and also being an old fashioned man, a protector, he felt his manhood challenged. But his love was stronger than that and he felt more confident with time that she would cope.
Actually, his greatest worry turned out to be that she coped to well.

She worked long and hard to stay the same person. Capable and happy. Everybody's supportive friend. But the mask she had provided for herself had more cracks in it than she knew. She would curl up in bed at night and endlessly plan every minute of her day. All the things she had to do before the MS would take her body away. As if she would have to live her life in a matter of a couple of years, just in case.
Husband would reach for her and she would push him away, annoyed. Couldn't he see she was busy? How could he be thinking of making love when her life needed focus, planning?
He stepped back, gave her space but still she felt guilty for rejecting him. It was not in her picture of the perfect wife to be rejecting her husband.

Two years later, lots of things had changed. She now used a wheelchair and sometimes a walker. She couldn't work any longer periods and spent most of her time reading and listening to music. Life was slower, but she didn't mind. The pace suited her, gave her time to think and gave her other options.
Her left side was weaker and number but her soul was calmer, happier than she had ever been.
The big change came when she stopped everything going on in her mind one day. All the things she put in her head to dwell over and all the self-inflicted duties became too much. She just stopped in her tracks one sunny summer afternoon, took a deep breath and thought; no more. Either this kills me or I start from scratch. And once she had   made the decision things started falling into place.
Her skin, so numb in some areas and so sensitive in others was still as eager to be caressed, just in a different way, softer. Their lovemaking had changed; it also was slower, more sensual and taking more time. The first time she realised that, was also the first time she found the long lost tears that had been hiding in her blood. She cried and husband was bewildered, horrified, thinking he had unintentionally hurt her somehow. She managed to explain through the tears but cried all night.
There could go weeks between their moments together, but their closeness was more intimate than before. The stress was reducing.
She set the pace after her needs, not after what she thought others required of her.

It had been a hard journey to set new priorities and she was still on this journey, would probably never reach any sort of end. Life changed and she changed with it, but now on her terms; even more so than when she thought she was this healthy, focused and together woman. She had Multiple Sclerosis and it changed her life. She had to endure numbness, weakness, pain, fatigue, vertigo and other exhausting symptoms that came and went - some stayed. But she was not a victim, she choose to not be.

Husband's loving arms was a blessing, a harbour. Friends and the kindness of strangers; a treasure to embrace.
On her darker days, when that silent scream embedded in her heart wanted out and nobody seemed to understand, could understand, she would use the music. Any music as long as it was loud and clouded her mind.
An escape? Yes. But just one of the odd ways she had found for herself. Coping was not enough. Living life to the fullest in her way was enough.

However, she knew she would have to live with the silent scream in her heart.

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