The bird was hanging upside down from the feeder. He was almost frozen. He was not a happy bird. He was having a bad day-- no, not a bad moment-- a bad day. The weather had been miserably cold for a week. I found him there, removed him, and took him inside to warm him up. I set him free outside and he sang hosannas of gratitude.
No. That's not how it happened. I saw him there upside down, his feet frozen to a metal part of the underside of the bird feeder. I wasn't sure if he was dead or alive or in torpor or what. After some hesitation, I wrapped him in a yellow towel and took him inside. He made no noise whatsoever. His legs were messed up and at odd angles. If he was dead, it would have been a mercy.
I warmed him up by the radiator on the off-chance that he could be saved. The kitten came up and inspected him.
I put the bird still wrapped in the yellow towel in a basket in a tree in the sun. He was not there the next morning. I figured that either he had flown away or that a desperate hungry hawk or something ate him. He was back in the thick of nature however it went.
The fiction that I had definitely saved the little bird is preferable to what actually happened. We don't like messy endings in general. We don't like to read about little birds that might be dead or might have been eaten by a bigger bird. We want everything as it was before or even better than before.
But life is not like that. Mother Nature is a real Muther. Nature is cruel and stalking and predatory. Nature does not give one whit about any of our wishes, desires, or dreams. Life happens and death happens. Those who are born do not in any way make up for those who die. Oh perhaps in population statistics but not in any other way.
Even if the bird flew out of the basket, his life was not the same or even better as it had been before. His legs were injured. Even if they healed up, they were not "good as new." Even if he lived, he certainly was hobbled by his experiences.
sapphoq healing tbi says: Some well-meaning people want us to be like we were before whatever happened to each one of us that left us with damaged brains. They gush at us "Oh isn't it wonderful that the brain rewires itself?" We are beyond their gushing. We know that we are beyond magical yoga retreats and fish oil and stupid talk of brains putting themselves back together again "even better" than before.
Think before you open your mouth to impart some fake cure or false hope. Chances are, we don't want to hear those lies. Tell us to keep working at those things that we are re-learning. Tell us that each of us has to be in charge of our own rehab. Tell us that our lives are different. Tell us that life is neither fair nor unfair. Life is sacred and nothing is promised to us.
No, I am not "better off" than I was before the day that my life changed forever. No, brains do not rewire themselves to be exactly the way they used to be. Yes, I certainly do have a life today. This is not the life that I signed up for but it is mine. I keep striving to work around my deficits. I keep challenging my brain. I keep doing the things that I learned that I must do for myself in order to have some kind of a life. It is easy to sit around and mope because I have brain damage now. It is better to force myself to participate in my life. It is even better to work for what I consider to be worth working for. And having a life-- even if it is a different life now-- is certainly worth working for.
Through the years of living with my traumatic brain injury, also known as brain damage-- yes, it is brain damage-- I have met bunches of people who also have had this life-altering event. There is no "t.b.i. personality," period. That's my opinion.
Oh, I know some of the professionals have tried to pigeon-hole us into neat little categories in the manner of professionals who do not want to admit that some of the nastier things in life can happen to them too. I've heard that we t.b.i.-folks don't have a sense of humor, are rigid and demanding, need structure, need routine, are suited to work at menial jobs if any at all, got religion to a fault, are given to fixations and obsessions, can't can't cant.
I had to learn not to allow the professional literature, research, and downright misunderstanding define me. Yes, my brain is altered and skewed. No, my brain will not ever return to pre-injury status. Those are facts. Yes, this is still my life. No, I don't agree to give my power away.
There aren't any chickens in this holding cell called "post-injury brain damage." To be sure some of us are cantankerous. At times we may be fearful-- just like anyone else in the human race. I am delighted to have found a certain culture among t.b.i.-ers. Not as defined as deaf culture perhaps, but it is certainly there.
It takes guts to admit over and over again to a series of professionals what things we are still having trouble with, what happened, how we "got this way." It takes restraint not to knock them off of their smug office furniture flat on their backs. For every great and wonderful and dedicated helping professional, there are at least four more that deserve to be eaten by Baba Yaga. Still, we keep going and we manage to live. Some of us even get to thrive.
So just remember, our brains may resemble scrambled eggs. But we are not chickens. Dinosaurs maybe...
When I die-- because I will-- I will not have any consciousness. My tired damaged brain will be released into nothingness. I will cease to exist. I will simply not be.
When I die, I do not want a fancy funeral with flowers and fakery and make-up and clothing that I never would have worn when I was among the living. None of this will matter to me after I am dead. Still, there is something about The Great Lie that has become the burial industry that repulses me. I don't want people to contribute to it on my behalf after I am dead.
When I die, after the transplant teams are done harvesting whatever organs-- including but not limited to my skin-- that are useful; and the medical students have done practicing how to do an autopsy or learning anatomy from my corpse, I want to be thrown into the general heap of discarded hulls and given a general burning. If any of the crazy ones loved ones in my family insist on anything more, then I want to be cremated and my ashes either scattered in Mother Ocean as fish food or buried in the woods that I love with no markers.
After I am dead, I do not want some priest or minister or rabbi or religious folk whose congregation I have never attended extol my supposed virtues with words better wasted on others. After I am dead, if my body must be dressed before burning then some old clothes will do just fine. Better yet, burn me naked. Take the clothes you would have dressed me in and donate them to someone in need of them. Take the flowers you would have surrounded my remains with and give them to someone you love who is still alive. Take the money you would have spent on The Great Lie and use it for something that matters. Take your memories of what I have stood for in this life and use them to propel yourself into social action of some sort or another.
After I am dead, you will still be living. So live, remember, don't look back.
sapphoq healing t.b.i.
