Rehab: Part Hospital, Jail, Insane Asylum, 18

 

I recently watched a film called "Blackbird".  The film was about a woman who called her family together on the weekend she planned to die by suicide. We learned much about her family over those two days.  Why was she going to take her own life? Because she had ALS and wanted to go before it goy so bad she no longer would've had.control. They never said what she had, but I guessed early when she struggled to put her shows on,  when she could barely negotiate going down steps,  when she dropped her glass, and it was clinched for me when her husband explained the reason to his nephew. 

She would eventually lose her ability to move at all, to speak; even to swallow. Machines would drain the saliva from her mourn and breath for her. She would be fed through a tube in her side.

She did not want to face such an end. I don't look forward to this either. But I don't plan to off myself. There is too much of the joy of life remaining, besides even when my body deserts me, God won't. I'll still be able to communicate with him through Jesus.

The mystery to me was why was this film titled "Blackbird". The raven is a sign of death A raven is black, but the Blackbird.  I pondered this title and then wondered, "Did it have anything to do with The Beatles song of that name.

    I looked up the lyrics and they it perfectly:

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free"

    I then found an interview of Susan Sarandon, who starred in the film. Absolutely that was where they got the title.  They had even included the song in the soundtrack, but later edited it out.

    ALS is a cruel disease.  I have trouble walking now and must use a walker or a wheelchair. I no longer have legible handwriting. Even keying in these blog entries is difficult, takes a lot of time and usually exhaust me, but this is what I am -- a writer.   This is how ALs was described. "An incurable, untreatable, progressive, ultimately fatal disease ".  Actually, you can define life in the same language, for living in ultimately fatal.  Of course, the decryption says most patients of ALS die within two to three years of their diagnosis. 

     I am still here, 51/2 years later,, and don't plan on going anywhere soon. Now the hospital tossed a stroke into the mix. Yet on the 13th of August I cam home after 7 days in the hospital and 40 days in rehab; forty days in the wilderness.

    I was home, but what I mess awaited me.