The story goes like
this: After receiving the “you’d better come now” phone call from our mother,
my sister Karen arrived in San Francisco on the 5th of 38 days I
would spend in the intensive care unit. I was nearing the triple-digit mark in
pints of blood transfused, and apparently – though I can’t confirm this because
I was comatose at the time – I looked like hell.
My brother, ever the
family patriarch since our father’s untimely death when we were kids, felt the
need to warn Karen before taking her into my hospital room. “Heads up,” Tim
said to her in the ICU hallway. “Lauren is twice her usual size and looks as if
she’s been floating facedown in a river for weeks. It’s not a pretty sight.”
They entered my room and
took their places on either side of the high-tech bed, where Karen – both my best
friend and nemesis growing up – got her first glimpse of me: bloated, unconscious,
amber-yellow skin, lips curled back from my teeth, and tubes, wires, and
machinery crowding and connecting to my barely functioning body. Despite years
of working with the sick and dying in hospitals and nursing homes, Karen’s
expression betrayed her shock that the ghastly and unresponsive body in the bed
was indeed her little sister. It was at this point that my brother leaned
across my distended abdomen (thank you, liver failure) toward my sister and
said, “If she dies, I get her bike.”
It’s an age-old family
joke that elicits a scowl from our mother every time my siblings and I say it
to one another, usually when one of us is embarking on a lengthy journey or
precarious endeavor. “I love you” has never come easily for my family, and humor
– served with a healthy dose of “noogies” – was our preferred expression of
affection growing up. Tim’s utterance of those seven words, at a time most
would deem highly inappropriate, brought an immediate smile to Karen’s face
while simultaneously incensing the attending nurse, who hadn’t yet come to
know, or appreciate, my family’s sick sense of humor.
The off-color jokes continued
over the coming weeks, most frequently during the worst of times. While sitting
in the ICU waiting room after receiving particularly disconcerting news about
my prognosis, my family and a few close friends had a group meltdown. Not one
of them was able to muster any of the optimism they had taken turns providing
when one or another of them would lose faith in my ability to recover. Then,
without warning, my sister started laughing. “She can’t die,” she said with
such certainty the others stopped crying long enough to hear her reasoning. “Why
not?” someone asked. “Because,” Karen said, as if stating the obvious, “that
would deprive us of the pleasure of killing
her for putting us through this nightmare!” And with that, the tension
broke and tears were transformed to laughter, offering the briefest of
reprieves – but a reprieve nonetheless.
Inappropriate? You bet.
Lacking tact? Yup. Necessary for my family as they dealt with the devastating probability
that I wouldn’t pull through? Absolutely!
Not only do I enjoy hearing
the dark humor anecdotes of my time spent in the ICU, but I applaud my siblings
for having had the courage to “go there.” Sometimes, the only way to face the
horrific is with irreverence and absurdity. In the toughest of times, I find that
humor is like chocolate: the darker it is, the better it is for you.
 |
| "No, you can't have my bike." |
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Download a PDF of the first 4 chapters of Lauren's memoir, Zuzu's Petals: A True Story of Second Chances, free. Click here and go to the link below the "Buy the Book" button. Zuzu's Petals is also available on Kindle and Nook. Hardcover signed and inscribed copies are available at www.laurenwardlarsen.com. Happy reading!
