Light On, Light Off

Over the last two weeks, I’ve had leg pain. I call the doctor, and I ask for something that won’t make me walk into walls during the day. We spend time on the phone, and she comes up with a pill. Great. I take the pill before I go to sleep and wait for an hour for it to kick in to working mode. Since it says I can take three pills per day, I do so in the middle of the night. I’ll sleep it off. RIIIIGHT.

I spent my Saturday fighting sleep—with no caffeine in the house. I now believe that there isn’t a painkiller that won’t make you dopey. It’s the nature of the pill, and what it needs to dull. Endure the pain and stay awake. Take the pill and let the body heal. But you’ll have to sleep it off at night and deal with pain during the day. So, I must listen to the pain during the waking hours.

I can take pain, but this time it made me cry as I walked on my leg, and this time I didn’t like what I heard. It was a cry of an animal in pain. It scared me to hear it. That is why I phoned the doctor. The physio says it’s neurological. She’s entitled to her opinion. I’m entitled to my thoughts: it hurts and I want the pain gone. I also want to know why the other leg is acting up, and the physio is most likely correct about why my right leg is hurting.

While pain can serve the function of letting us know that the body is in need of rest and care, it also lets us know we’re injured. Pain is nature’s message to us that we need to listen to our bodies. Pain also takes time to recover from. In Western society we aren’t good at listening to our bodies. We push them, abuse them, and, ultimately, and many times when it’s too late, pay attention to impending doom. And yet it is the same with mental pain. It is also a signal that something is wrong, and we need to listen and get help for the pain. That’s my job: to help you through the mental pain.

The body amazes me, and baffles me. I’m amazed that this thing I dwell within is complex and functional, and that it for the most part allows us to move and do things for ourselves from a young age. We’re the only creations that must be cared for during the first years of our lives. We have no instincts that kick in to tell us what is safe and not safe. Parents are supposed to do that. We’re born helpless, and we’ll die and go out helpless. I say this about death because we can’t control our deaths, and thus can’t control the process: we’re helpless.

The body baffles me because of its complexity and how things function. When things go wrong, we try to fix them. I marvel at the brainpower at Utrecht’s UMC. Every time I set foot in that place and I head to the right to all the outpatient clinics I must access, I understand that the physicians in those clinics are full professors and researchers. They are curious souls who want to know everything they can about a particular part of the human body. While something might baffle them, their response is to research about it. A statement of “we don’t know” means that they don’t have a legitimate answer for me. They keep plugging away at the questions that need answers.

When I think about animals and how they die, many go off alone. It’s instinct that drives them to separate from the group. It is a community preservation instinct. As humans who are older and nearer to death, our sleep habits change. Some people start wanting a light on, while others drift off to sleep quietly. Some become religious, while others swear like sailors. 

This last year has caused me to think more about the process of death. I don’t know what death holds. Do we just switch off? I don’t know. Do we drift off into the cosmos? I don’t know. Is there a heaven where we go? I can hope, but I don’t know. I think about death more now because I’m at that point in time where I have more life in front of me, and much more behind me. Hmm.

When you start thinking about death, it becomes an existential issue. What happens? What do I do with all my stuff? What do I need to resolve before it all ends? People might want to draw family near to them. The realization that soon it will be too late to say what needs to be said becomes real. This is why hospice and chaplains can be such a great gift for so many. Making peace with it all before we die is important.

Maybe that’s why sleeping with a light on when you’re older and near death is a thing. If you die, and it goes dark, you’re dead. If you die, and it gets brighter, you’re dead. If you die without the light on, will you know you’re dead? Light on, or light off? That is the question.