Young Father, Young Stroke
It’s now been two months since my stroke. One of the biggest challenges in that time has been of wrestling with all kinds of fears, questions and incapacities in caring for our daughter. Our little Junie just turned seven months old, which means that she was a little over five months when I had the stroke. As terrifying as it was, and as much as the stroke pulled a handbrake on every aspect of my life, I could handle all of that. If my life had to slow down, if my work had to adapt, and if my brain slowed down. To some degree, I could handle all that. But what really shook me was the constant sense of grief at being unavailable for Junie.
When I was first admitted, lying on the hospital bed, half-paralysed, the only time that I really lost it was when my wife sat Junie on the bed. I couldn’t hold her, and I could barely smile at her. Thankfully, she was so young that she didn’t really understand, and my teary half-smile was enough to make her smile and giggle. And since then, Junie has stayed an absolute delight, and charmed countless doctors, nurses, speechies, physios, OTs and other medical professionals.
But in that time, the reality has also dawned on me more and more. Every night in the hospital, I was missing. I’d given Junie her bath before bed every night for her whole life up until then, but I couldn’t be there now. I’d cuddled and rocked Junie to sleep more times than I could count, but in the hospital I couldn’t hear her crying, and even if I could, I couldn’t hold her. One night in the hospital I listened to the song Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee on repeat. Every time it got to the line, “I’d skated the surface, I’d left you alone” I started crying again, because for the first time in her life, I’d been forced apart from Junie and in some sense I had left her alone. It hurt, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Although it wasn’t just the distance of being physically apart from her for a few nights; I had to come to terms with being forced apart from her with my body’s new limitations, as well.
At first I couldn’t even lift her, but a few days in I held her for a few minutes. And while every day I could do a little more, I still had to face the reality of what I couldn’t do. There were many times when I was holding her and she was crying, and I could tell that she wanted me to rock her to sleep like I used to, but I just couldn’t. There were times when I couldn’t bath Junie because I was so fatigued, or times when I couldn’t put her nappy on afterwards because my hand wouldn’t grip and pull. Those moments would shatter me, because of how utterly sapped I felt, but also the discouragement of what seemed to be defeats.
On that first night home from hospital, even though I was exhausted, I insisted on bathing Junie again, and sitting with Serena as she fed Junie to sleep. And in the quiet of that moment, the whirlwind of the past week caught up with us, and in the dark we both cried with thankfulness. It was in those moments that we had to be thankful. I was still here with her, and in this season of life when I was recovering from my stroke, Junie was actually getting more time with Dad than she’d ever gotten (if a less energised version of him).