Matters of the Heart

My heart has always gotten me into trouble. It is big and loud and lacks any kind of functioning filter. I love without boundaries, without expectations, without limitations, without regard for my sanity. I love with reckless abandon.

And that gets me into trouble. I joke about it with a wry smile, in that insouciant way that people do when referring to regrettable hairstyles or bad relationship choices.

But ever since my father died of a heart attack, like his father before him, I secretly wondered whether my heart would get me into the kind of trouble that I wouldn’t be able to get out of.

Every random twinge, every flutter, every uneasy sensation in my chest I felt stopped me in my tracks. But I was always able to quell the momentary pangs of fear with the calm of my brain. There was always a logical explanation.

Until one day two years ago, there wasn’t. Until weeks of chest and arm pain, extreme fatigue and shortness of breath could not be explained away by a pulled muscle or an ill-advised meal. Until false bravado and stubborness could no longer keep the crushing waves of panic at bay. Until I was petrified that my boys would find me on the floor like we found my father. Until a bunch of bad test results landed me in the Sentara Heart Hospital for four days.

It’s a remarkably quiet place, the heart hospital. The machines don’t beep. The patients don’t make sounds. The doctors speak in quiet voices. Alone at night with the cacophony of my fears ringing in my head and the tangle of wires attached to my body, I was faced with the profound realization that the legacy of my father’s death was not the fear that the people I love will leave me but that I will leave them.

The question of my own health became overshadowed by the unending loop of questions playing in my head about what would happen to my boys if I weren’t around. If I’m being brutally, uncomfortably honest, I will tell you that the scariest thing about being a parent is not the fear that you’re going to do something wrong but the fear that you won’t be there to do it at all.

Sitting in the dark of the hospital waiting for answers, I wondered whether I should compose a list of all the things I wanted them to know, but I didn’t know where to start. I could write down instructions for how to make my spaghetti sauce that they love. Where I hid the Elf on the Shelf. A list of courses they should take in college.

But how could I leave a manual for what to do when their heart is broken? How could I draw a roadmap to comfort when their soul is beset with anxiety or insecurity? How could I leave instructions for how to pick themselves up and try again when they fail? I couldn’t. I froze. I choked. Words have always been my jam. My love language. But in that moment they failed me. And they have failed me ever since.

In the months and endless parade of specialists and tests that followed, I had to let my body heal. I had to say no. I had to drop balls and be okay with it. I had to set limits and reneg on commitments. I had to set boundaries in relationships where I was used to carrying the weight. I still couldn’t write. And I had to give myself the grace to accept that. Thanks to some incredible doctors both here and at Duke, we got the answers about what was wrong with the physical muscle of my heart – a rare cardiac inflammatory disease called Myocarditis – and last year the doctors at Duke told me my heart function is normal.

But still I couldn’t write. Every time I felt like I had something to say, the words would disappear again. If I couldn’t think of what words I should write to my children in the biggest of moments, what could I possibly have to say about the small ones?

But the truth is the small moments are the big ones. We often place such importance on the big moments of life – weddings and graduations and births and deaths – that we forget it is in the small moments of life that our character is most deeply and intimately formed. All the moments when we unknowingly help our children build the foundations of resilience and courage and patience and compassion so that they know what to do or say or feel when the time comes.

How to lead a good life is about so much more than words. It’s more than a pedantic list on Facebook or a slogan to keep tucked in your back pocket. I can’t leave my children a roadmap for how to have a good life. Life is like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. At the end of the day, the people we become is not the result of a handbook we were given but of the millions of moments where someone showed us what love looks like. What it feels like.

It’s the way you brush their hair from their foreheads, the way you dance around the kitchen singing songs off-key, the late nights bent over the kitchen table doing homework together, and the balls you throw in the backyard.

It’s the way you answer the hard questions truthfully, the way you admit your mistakes, the way you ask for help when you need it.

It’s the way you buy lunch for the homeless man outside your grocery store and talk to the person beside you in the checkout line.

It’s the way you read books and watch plays and listen to music together. It’s the way you explore the world and expand their horizons.

It’s the way you give your time without complaint, your grace without judgment, and your love without strings.

And I hope that even after my mortal heart stops beating, my children won’t need a manual on how to live a good life. It will all be inside them already. They will know they are loved and, in turn, they will know how to love others.

That, after all, is the alpha and the omega.

#LoveHard
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