CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5
By December I was still weak, thin, and covered with bedsores, but my physical therapy gave me enough sitting-up time so I could go home for one day. I chose Christmas day and began to get excited planning for it. The night after they told me I could go home for a day, I was too thrilled to sleep. I lay in the darkness of my room and tried to recall all the memories of my last Christmas before the accident—walking in the snow with Dick, Christmas Eve at the cathedral, making angels in the snow, drinking hot chocolate beside the fireplace, singing carols as I played my guitar. What would it be like this year?
Christmas Day finally came! Jay helped the nurse dress me for the trip home. I wore the pretty, dark suit I had bought on the trip our family had taken out West just weeks before my accident; it hung on me like a sack. Jay also brought me a lovely blond wig to wear over my own hair, which was still not long enough to style.
Dad drove up to the door and waited while Joe and Earl carried me to the car. They instructed my family on how a quadriplegic should ride in a car.
“It never occurred to me that just riding in a car is dangerous,” I said, adding, “unless, of course, we crash.”
“You don’t have to be in a wreck to get hurt,” Joe cautioned. “You see, a quad can’t sit up alone. If the car swerves, stops suddenly, or just turns a corner, you’ll be carried by momentum. You’ll spill—maybe crack your head on the door or smash your face on the dashboard or windshield, if you’re sitting up front.” He explained how to use the car’s shoulder harness to strap me in but also cautioned to be aware of holding on to me, especially on turns, starts, and stops.
Nothing happened on the way home, although the drive seemed exciting and full of interesting little pleasures. It’s winter now, I thought. Two whole seasons have slipped by since I was home.
“Well, we’re almost there now,” observed Jay as the car turned at the familiar triangle intersection. I looked up the street—the high school, the house of my piano teacher, the drugstore—everything as I remembered it. A twinge of homesickness swept over me.
In a few minutes, we had driven up the steep avenue in front of my folks’ home and pulled into the driveway in back. Dad and Jay gingerly lifted me from the car and carried me inside.
The feelings of homesickness were real by now. The house was decorated for the holidays, and a big, fragrant pine tree had been set up in the dining room where I was to stay.
Mom had somehow obtained a hospital bed and set it up in the dining room. I thought of my old room, just above this one, keeper of so many of my secret thoughts, prayers, and hopes. Of course, my family couldn’t carry me up the narrow, twisting staircase to my old room so, for this one day, the dining room would be my room.
Mom had pushed the huge dining room table alongside the wall to make the room more comfortable. Dad must have known when he built the house that we’d entertain a lot, for the room was huge—two or three times the usual dining room size, about eighteen by twenty-five feet—with a large table able to seat fourteen with ease.
A crackling fire in the stone fireplace, beautiful and fragrant Christmas decorations, candles, and lights filled the room with happiness. It was almost too much for my senses. The smells, sights, and sounds were intoxicating. During my hospital stay and confinement at Greenoaks, my spirit had suffered as well as my body, for my spirit had suffered sensory deprivation. Now the room reeled as all of these sweet sensations assaulted my brain in a feast of pleasure.
I was able to sit up only a little while before tiring, so the hospital bed proved useful. I half-sat and half-lay on the bed. Dressed in the suit and blond wig, I looked “almost human,” but I was still self-conscious about my appearance. Especially my legs. It seemed to me they were sticking out awkwardly, disgustingly.
“Please, will you cover me, mom?” I asked.
“Are you cold, dear?”
“No. I just want to be covered. I look awful.”
“Nonsense,” she replied. “You look lovely. Doesn’t she, Jay?”
“Of course,” answered my sister.
“But I still want to be covered. Bring that brown blanket and put it over my legs. I don’t want people coming over to stare. Please!” I was insistent.
“All right, Joni. As you wish,” sighed mom, as she spread the blanket over my legs and tucked it in. The real reason I wanted my legs covered wasn’t because others would be offended by my useless limbs. Rather, it was because they were a constant reminder to me of how different this Christmas was. I couldn’t bear to look at them.
Dick, along with friends and family, came to visit that day, and the time rushed by. At first, I resented this swift passage of time. Then I was grateful, because as my mind recalled former Christmases, I was saddened and depressed at the changes in my life.
No more could I spontaneously run out in the snow or sing carols for the neighbors; these and other pleasures were gone forever, and everyone seemed to sense it. There were no tears, at least not now, but the air of sadness was awful.
It wasn’t until I was back in my bed at Greenoaks that I allowed myself to cry. Then there was no stopping. B.J., Betty, Denise, and Ann had also gone home for a one-day Christmas visit. But for those who went and for those who had nowhere to go, Christmas was the same: a sad, depressing reminder of better times and happier places when we had been whole.
I tried to evaluate my feelings about what had happened at Christmas. I was happy and thrilled about going home; but, I was sobered by the experience of having to relate to familiar people and old surroundings in strange, new ways.
When the nurse came by the next day, she examined me and said, “Joni, I’m sorry, but that will have to be your last visit home for quite awhile.”
“Why?”
“Because it opened all the sores on your back and hips! Your bone protrusions are rubbing the skin away. They won’t heal at all unless we put you back in the Stryker frame,” she said simply.
“But can’t I sit up at all?” I begged.
“I’m sorry, no. Sitting up is what stretches the skin of the wounds and breaks open the sores. Let’s wait until they heal.”
Dick came by as often as he could, hitchhiking the sixty-mile round trip from the University of Maryland. I could tell that my accident was really taking a toll on him; his emotions were as frayed as mine.
“Dickie,” I told him one day, “we’re holding onto the past. We can’t do that. We can’t go back to high school times.”
He looked at me sadly and nodded. “But things will get better. Soon you’ll be—”
“No!” I cried. “They won’t get better. Don’t you understand? I’m not going to get better! Don’t you see that?”
Once again, I desperately wanted to kill myself. Here I was, trapped in this canvas cocoon. I couldn’t move anything except my head. Physically, I was little more than a corpse. I had no hope of ever walking again. I could never lead a normal life and marry Dick. In fact, he might even be walking out of my life forever, I concluded. I had absolutely no idea of how I could find purpose or meaning in just existing day after day—waking, eating, watching TV, sleeping.
Why on earth should a person be forced to live out such a dreary existence? How I prayed for some accident or miracle to kill me. The mental and spiritual anguish was as unbearable as the physical torture.
But once again, there was no way for me to commit suicide. This frustration was also unbearable. I was despondent, but I was also angry because of my helplessness. How I wished for strength and control enough in my fingers to do something, anything, to end my life. Tears of rage, fear, and frustration only added to my despondency.
There was an added complication to my lack of well-being. The sores, caused by my protruding bones, did not heal. In fact, the doctors insisted surgery was the only way to correct the problem. So, on June 1, 1968, I was driven back to City Hospital for bone operations, further confirmation that my injury was permanent. The doctors would not shave the bony protuberances from my hip and tailbone if there was any hope of my using my legs again.
The surgeon, Dr. Southfield, explained the operation.
“Since you have no feeling, it will not be necessary to anesthetize you. But if you’re squeamish about the sight of blood and tissue—.”
“Never mind,” I said curtly. “I’ve been through it all. I’ve been here almost a year, remember. There isn’t much I haven’t seen. And there’s precious little they haven’t already done to me. Carve away!”
I listened as Dr. Southfield’s hands guided the scalpel through the flesh on my hip. Blood spurted behind the blade as he laid back the skin and muscle tissue. Assistants gave him various surgical tools as he called for them.
In a few minutes, I could hear a strange rasping, scraping sound as he chiseled away on my hip bone, filing down the sharp, jutting joints that caused my bed sores.
In spite of my earlier bluster, I didn’t like the sights and sounds of the surgery. I felt queasy, so I began to sing, taking my mind off the operation. I sang loud and long, going through a terribly depressing assortment of pessimistic songs.
“Can’t you sing something else—something brighter?” asked Dr. Southfield.
“No!” I snapped, and kept up my “concert.”
After awhile, I was turned over, and the surgeon began to operate on my tailbone. He shaved and chiseled more bony protuberances. Finally, he sutured all the incisions. Then I was bandaged, examined, and driven back to Greenoaks for recuperation.
When the sutures and bedsores healed, I was allowed to sit up slowly. Earl carefully placed me in bed and tried to help me sit up.
“Here we go, Joni,” he said. “Take it nice and slow. Don’t want’cha to get dizzy and pass out. Right?”
“Right,” I echoed.
“Easy now.”
“How’m I doing, Earl? I’m sitting up! How about that!”
Earl did not reply. Soon he quietly carried me back to the Stryker frame.
“Hey. Leave me in bed, Earl,” I commanded. “I’ve waited to sit up again. If you’re worried about me passing out—.”
“Sorry, Joni. I gotta put you back. The operation didn’t take. Your backbone just busted the incision open again. You’re bleeding.”
As I lay in the Stryker through the following long weeks, I finally gave up ever hoping to walk. But I began to strain every atom of willpower into getting back the use of my hands. If I had my hands, I wouldn’t be so helpless. I wouldn’t have to depend on Jay or Diana to wash or brush my hair. Or put on makeup. Or just feed myself. If I could only do something—anything at all—I wouldn’t feel so helpless.
“You can use your mouth to do some of the things you’d normally do with hands,” suggested therapist Chris Brown one day after learning of my feelings. She added, “You’ve seen people in O.T. (occupational therapy) learn to write or type by holding a pencil or stick with their teeth. You can learn too.”
“No,” I said. “It’s disgusting. Degrading. I won’t do it!”
Chris did not press me. “Maybe some other day,” she said.
Later, Jay came to see me. Although she smiled and seemed in control, she’d been crying again.
“Hi, sis,” she said.
“You’ve been crying, Jay.”
Jay nodded. She never wanted to worry me with her own problems and often hid her feelings from me, but I had eventually learned of the difficulties she was having with her marriage. Now her divorce had become final.
She said evenly, “It’s over. And it’ll be all right, Joni. Don’t worry.”
“But—”
“Really. Don’t worry.” Jay changed the subject. “Here, I’ve brought you some goodies.” She opened a bag of doughnuts and held one up. “Your favorites, see?”
We spent an hour or so chatting and reading through a Seventeen magazine she spread out beneath the frame.
Then, as she prepared to leave, she looked soberly into my eyes and said, “Joni, I want—I want you to come and live with little Kay and me when you get out of the hospital.”
“Let’s think about it, Jay,” I replied. “We’ll see, okay?”
She kissed me on the cheek and ran the back of her hand across my forehead. Smiling, she left.
The significance of Jay’s visit slowly sank into my consciousness, and I pondered her comments and offer. I promised myself not to make any plans, although the thought of living with Jay was reassuring.
When Dick came by later, he wheeled my Stryker to the game room and sat on the floor under me so we could talk. We were trying out a new relationship—being friends only. While neither of us had really discussed such a change, we each had assumed that we had no immediate future together as husband and wife. First, I’d have to get my hands back. Then I’d have to be rehabilitated, and that would probably take a long time. So neither of us talked about things like love and marriage.
His visits consisted mostly of friendly encouragement—and reading to me, usually from a modern New Testament translation. The message was there, loud and clear: faith, hope, trust. But I dismissed this as being too superficial. Fine for the ordinary person on his feet dealing with life, temptation, and doubt. But what was God saying to me, encased immobile in my Stryker?
Diana read to me from the Old Testament, and I began to identify with many of the prophets. Like Jeremiah, I thought perhaps God’s wrath was being poured out on me in judgment.
I read the poetry of the Book of Lamentations and identified fully with the sorrows about which Jeremiah had written:
“She weeps bitterly at night, the tears flow always on her cheeks;
no one of all her lovers now seeks to bring her comfort.”
Oh, God, how
true. And I can’t
even wipe my own
tears away!
“For the Lord has afflicted her because of the greatness of her transgressions.”
Yes! I broke His moral
commandments.
Now punishment.
“Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is being dealt out to me,
which the Lord has inflicted in the day of His fiery anger.
No one else is being
punished like this. Why
did God do this to me?
“From on high He sent fire into my bones, and it has subdued them.”
Diving accident…
paralysis…
“He has given me over to frustration and faintness all day long.”
rage…
weakness and fear.
“He has made my strength to fail.
The Lord has delivered me into hands which I am unable to withstand.”
In bed for a year,
completely dependent
on orderlies and nurses.
“My eyes are exhausted with weeping; my emotions are deeply disturbed;
my grief is poured out on the earth.”
How much more can
I take? I’m at
the end of my rope!
“Surely He has turned away from me;
He has turned His hand against me all the day.”
Why, God…
why?
why?
“He has made my skin and my flesh turn old: He has crushed my bones.”
The bedsores, stitches,
bone surgery…
“He has piled up against me, and surrounded me with bitterness and distress.”
and I’m still
surrounded by canvas,
catheter tubes,
and urine bags.
“He has caused me to dwell in dark places, as the dead of former times.”
I’m trapped in this
gloomy hospital where
we sit like zombies
waiting to die.
“He has built a wall around me, I cannot go forth; He has weighted me down with chains.”
I’m trapped!
Stryker, straps,
and Crutchfield tongs…
“Even when I cry aloud and call for help, He shuts out my prayer.”
and God doesn’t care.
“I have forgotten what enjoyment is.”
He doesn’t even care.
(Lamentations 1:2, 5, 12-14;
2:11; 3:3-8, 17 BERKELEY)
Who, or What, is God? Certainly not a personal Being who cares for individuals, I reasoned. What’s the use of believing when your prayers fall on deaf ears?
My doubts began to be as deep-seated as my resentment. When Diana or Dick read a promise from the Bible concerning hope or trust, I shut them off.
“That’s too pat,” I told them. “Those verses are too glib to have anything but surface meaning. Try to apply those promises to me. You tell me how my being here for over a year ‘works together for good.’ What good? Where? When? I don’t want to hear any more!”
And there were people at Greenoaks who added to my feelings of helplessness and depression. Mrs. Barber, attendant on the midnight shift, was as angry and bitter as I was for reasons of her own. She’d often make obscene or insensitive comments designed to hurt and demean those of us who got in her way. To Mrs. Barber, we were not patients in need of care, but hindrances to her routine of chores that had to be done.
One night, she came into our room and angrily swept my pictures off the window air conditioner near my Stryker. “How the——do you think I can turn on this——air conditioner with all this——on it?” she hissed. The pictures had been there for weeks and in no way interfered with its operation.
She picked out a photo of Dick and said terrible things—including that Dick was involved in all kinds of lewd and vulgar conduct. Her perversity sickened me, and I snapped back at her.
She came over to my Stryker and snarled, “I ought to leave you like this until morning and not flip you. But to show you what a nice person I am, I’ll turn you.” With that, she flipped me violently. She had not taken the usual precaution of checking to see that my arms were tucked in first. One arm was loose, and when she spun me, my hand struck violently against the Stryker.
Although my hand was paralyzed and I could feel no pain, it began to swell and was badly bruised. She left the injured arm dangling and rushed out of the room to other duties.
Shaken, angry, and afraid, I began to sob quietly.
“I saw what she did, Joni,” said B.J. “You ought to report her to the supervisor.”
“Yeah. I heard everything. You oughtta turn her in,” added Denise.
“But I can’t report her. She’ll do something else—worse,” I sobbed.
The next day, however, mom came to visit and asked about my swollen and bruised hand. I tried to dismiss it lightly as an accident, but the girls told her what had happened. Incensed, mom went directly to the supervisor and complained in the most vocal terms.
Late that night, Mrs. Barber came into our darkened room, approached me quietly, and put her face next to mine. With a voice that was both whisper and evil menace, she said, “If you ever say anything against me again, you——, I’ll see that you pay for it dearly! Do you understand, you——?”
It was no idle threat. I was terrified, frightened that something horrible would happen to me if I did complain.
In addition to the few who were like Mrs. Barber, who hated patients and having to care for them, there were others who did care, but only a few had time. Nurses seemed to have time only to fill out medication and defecation charts. Most attendants were overworked and poorly paid, and—as a result—some just didn’t care.
These episodes only added to my depression. Jim Pollard was a bright, young quadriplegic who was asking many of the same questions I was. His muscles wouldn’t quite support his head, so it dropped slightly to the left. But his voice, mind, and spirit were strong.
“If there isn’t a personal God who cares about me, then what’s the use?” I asked him.
“That’s the whole point,” he explained. “I’ve done a lot of reading and studying. I’ve looked at religion, philosophy, everything. Life has absolutely no meaning. It’s pointless. Absurd.”
“Then why bother?” I countered. “Why not just commit suicide? In fact, why doesn’t the whole human race commit suicide if life has no meaning?”
“Oh, it can have meaning. Some people believe in God, and that gives them meaning. But when the chips are down—like for us here—you see just how shallow religion is,” he said earnestly.
“But do you think life makes sense?”
“Probably not for us. People on their feet can eat, work, and make love—all kinds of things. ‘Pursuit of happiness’ and all that, y’know?”
I nodded.
“But here. Well, that’s a different story. We’ve reduced life to its barest elements. And, for the most part, there’s no reason to live.”
“Then why are you still alive?”
Jim shrugged. “Guess I’m just not gutsy enough to do myself in. Besides, life does have meaning if you find it for yourself.”
“How?”
“Your mind. Intelligence. I get a kick out of developing my mind. To h_ _ _with my body. Maybe I can find something in being intelligent.”
“Maybe,” I offered. “But what about everyone else? Everyone on their feet. They’re born. They live and die with existence as their only goal. Why bother?”
“You’ve got me, Joni,” he answered. “Why not read some of my books and tracts. I’ve got some stuff here by Sartre, Marx, and other great minds.”
I read it all, and it all pointed me further and further from God and hope—the meaning of life was that it had no meaning. Life without an eternal focus, without God, led to despair. I could see this but didn’t know what else to believe. Had not God, if there was a God, turned His back on me?
Jim continued to counsel me in agnosticism. “You see, Joni, nothing will ever make sense. Accept it. Life is capricious as well as temporal. Jobs, success, friends, family—these only have meaning as a means to that end. You’re only here for the moment, so if you want anything out of life, get it now. Don’t get the idea you’re putting something away for an afterlife.”
“But the trouble is, Jim,” I interrupted, “I found out in high school that temporal things don’t satisfy me. There has to be something permanent.”
“What about your accident? That sure isn’t temporary,” he reminded me. “You’ve told me the Bible says even your paralysis works out for good. How? What’s the purpose of your paralysis?”
“I—I don’t know. That’s what’s making me doubt God. If He was real, wouldn’t He show me? Wouldn’t I have some sense of purpose with it all?”
Jim said, “You’re just outgrowing your need for religion and God, Joni. Did you read any of the other books I gave you?”
“Yes. I read Siddhartha and Kafka’s The Trial, Bio-Ethics—uh—Man’s Search for Meaning. All of them. I’ve read every existentialist author you’ve given me,” I told him.
“Well, I’m impressed. Then you ought to know by now that the idea of a personal God is ridiculous.”
“I’m not there yet, Jim. I don’t know. I’ve read everything you’ve given me. These books build a pretty strong case for your point of view. But—”
“But you’re afraid. You think God is sitting up there in heaven waiting to zap you if you have doubts. Well, tell me, Joni. If there is a God, what can He do to you that hasn’t been done already? That’s the way I look at it. I’m crippled. For good. I’ll never be on my feet again. What’s God going to do if I don’t believe? Damn me to hell? I’m already in hell! No—there’s no God, Joni. No God—” His voice trailed off wistfully, as though he had once held out hope that somehow God did exist. Yet now, convinced in his unbelief, Jim was resigned. “There’s no God.”
I prayed desperately: “God I have just two choices: either You exist or You don’t. If You don’t exist, then I don’t see any logical reason for living. If people who believe are only going through motions that mean nothing, I want to know. Why should we go on fooling ourselves? Life is absurd most of the time. And it seems man’s only end is despair. What can I do, Lord? I want to believe, but I have nothing to hang on to. God, You’ve got to prove Your existence to me!”
My mind was a jumble of thoughts and philosophies. Logical, rational, intellectual positions were posed and just as quickly disposed of by opposing concepts, apparently just as valid. What was right? What was wrong? Truth? Oh, what a maze of confusion. Am I losing my mind as well as my body?
Weary from thinking, my eyelids fell shut. Then, from somewhere, a calmness took over. A thought—or memory—“a still, small voice”—reminded my troubled brain, You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You.
And I slept.