Faceless Blog

As I’m writing the book about my twenty-two hour surgery and the resulting stay in the ICU and chemo ward, I thought I’d share some excerpts from the updates that my sister sent out every day to our friends and family.  This one, from very early on, describes the first time I was able to communicate with my family after the surgery.

As he lay there today, trying so hard to communicate with us, I had a revelation. Jeff was attempting to spell something into my hand - the first word of a two word sentence. I got an “I”, but the bed moved (he’s on the rotating Kennywood bed again) and he tilted Becca’s direction, so she offered her hand instead. We got “m” and realized the first word was “I’m”. So far, so good. He managed to start the second word with an “S”; but we were getting stumped on the next letter. The act of simply tracing the letters onto Becca’s hand was tiring him so much that we couldn’t make out the second letter of the word. So, we just starting guessing. Super. Sleepy. Sick. (he rolled his eyes on that one) After quite a few wrong guesses, some of which didn’t even start with S (hey, we were tired too!) I suggested ‘sore’. I was unprepared for his reaction, as he looked at me with big eyes - but then also shook his head no. “No?” I said. “Am I close?” He nodded his head yes.

That’s when it hit me. The second word was Sorry.

When I first said it to him, I was still in my ‘puzzle solver’ mode, like I was at home trying to win a game of Apples to Apples with the family. But when it sunk in, the reality of what he was trying to tell us - I looked back at him, and in that moment, the look on his face, in his eyes; he looked more like my father than he ever has to me before, and it was remarkable. And if you only know Jeff, or if you happened to have known them both, then it should not be a surprise that those words would be the first he felt the need to say after emerging from his long sleep. I have little doubt my dad would have said the same thing. Amidst the chaos, the pain, and the uncertainty, Jeff’s first concern is for everyone other than himself.