Some things I can’t make up, like having my heart measured on Valentine’s Day.
Not long after Gabriel died, I knew that he had taken up residence in my heart. Not in that Hallmark sympathy card, ‘He will live in our hearts forever,’ bullshit way, but in a tangible ‘I can feel him pushing on my heart’ way. The pressure is in the shape of a cupped hand and I feel it in my chest on the right side of my heart. Not a pain, but a presence. At night I push back on that place, hoping to help me sleep, often it does.
I have an early morning appointment to have a scan done on my heart. My doctor is concerned about a murmur that has recently appeared. I am certain they will find his cupped hand on my heart, it will be a white glowing spot. I expect to need radical surgical intervention, maybe a pacemaker or a heart transplant. Whatever. I don’t have the energy to be afraid or worried.
I don’t know what to expect from this procedure. My visual thinking, artistic tendencies are both intrigued and horrified. Seeing a machine’s interpretation of my heart on a screen is surreal. I don’t like the idea of my essence being measured and translated into data points. It is my heart. It keeps me alive, it holds my stories and my love. How can that be converted into binary code? The colors are beautiful, the image looks like a time lapsed video of the Northern Lights, red, yellow, green and blue, expanding and contracting across the screen. I watch for a few moments then look away, seeing my heart lub dub outside of my chest is too much.
The glowing spot of Gabriel does not reveal itself. I am right. My stories and my love cannot be measured with a machine, they can only be known to me.
As I leave the technician says to me, “You have a very healthy heart for a 34 year old.”
“Thanks,” I say, “I’ll be 39 in two weeks.”
I love your posts. Please write more often. . .
Posted by: Alexia | March 21, 2012 at 02:55 PM