I may just be good and depressed. Every day is painful in some new way, something hard to handle, some pain that frightens me. I feel ungrateful and uncharacteristically whiney and none of it makes sense. I hurt and I want the hurt stopping. I have things changing with my body I don’t understand or recognize and can’t fix.
[Barbara writes this a few days AFTER successful cataract surgery, 5 months AFTER open-heart surgery, and 3 years BEFORE being beset by a brain tumor and, eventually, a broken hip.]
I came home and was so hungry I stuffed myself and made myself sick from it, and since this morning have been trying to recover from what I did to me.
Maybe it just felt like too much, maybe I’m getting too much done at once. [Heart surgery, eye surgery, dental surgery] I’m overwhelmed, maybe that’s reasonable.
It’s funny, peculiar funny, odd. None of the usual remedies come through . . . a longer sleep, a happy day, a good painting session, a good story written . . . things that buoy my spirits. I still don’t feel as if I’m moving up and out and away from the great low hit in September [open-heart surgery], and so much curing is being done why don’t I feel it inside and outside me?
I may just be good and depressed. Every day is painful in some new way, something hard to handle, some pain that frightens me. And new doctors for consulting and visiting. See this one see that one. Now my skin’s broken out terribly in blotches, I’m guessing it’s nerves or the heart medicine, the doctor says no, then what is it and it’s horrifying me and why can’t I make it go away. And gaining weight, exercising more and gaining weight. Makes me feel so wretched.
I haven’t felt good for close to a year and I still don’t know what happened to me, how this happened, why. Or, most of all, how to fix it and finally feel better.
There are a lot of things, critical things that need fixing. Eyes, teeth, restoring muscle, I’m working on a long list. I’ve been accustomed to feeling strong and hardy and healthy and fit, and now I’m swept away from myself.
Yet here I am having survived by some miracle exactly what kills less fortunate 
multitudes. And on the heels of that my eyesight restored [successful cataract surgery], incredible. Think of it! I do think of it.
I was speaking with the recovery room nurse. Several years ago she got a sudden splitting headache pain in the lower back of her head at her neck. Her husband said something’s wrong, drove her at once to the hospital, she’d had a brain aneurism that burst! Flown up to Stanford, operated on, recovered in time, and back at work!
That seems even more incredible to me, and there we were talking, caring about minutes in a way neither of us had before, yes minutes. I asked if they’d stayed together through her recovery and return and yes, something which can drive people apart, she said sometimes he looks at her and tears will roll down his cheeks in gladness. He’s making dinner tonight, they share the dinner duties, she’s in her 60’s and lovely.
Not everything’s perfect she said. She has some residual paralysis in her face, her throat, scalp. She looks wonderful, her face was mobile as far as I could see, entirely. She said she can no longer whistle. She can’t gargle. She said it with feeling because these were things taken from her that she missed and I understood every ounce of that pain. The sense of it, too.
So the trouble I’m in is maybe this desperate lust for perfection, for not being called out for not being 100%, imperfect; vulnerable; some of that wretched history I still need to lose and have not.
I feel confused by the dramatic change I think, and eyesight returned is sure part of it, I mean, my God, the difference is beyond monumental, I may never get over what it is like to see again, and really that it’s been so long since I could. A very long slow process that may have been more than I could stand without knowing it.
Books. It’s an enormous pleasure to be able to read once more. Oh the printed word! Page after page of any book. Any time. Any light.
I don’t know John, I feel ungrateful and uncharacteristically whiney and none of it makes sense. I hurt and I want the hurt stopping. I have things changing with my body I don’t understand or recognize and can’t fix. I know what small things they are in truth. I can walk, I can take care of myself. I can still paint and read and write and sing.
And maybe all of it is the new normal.
And maybe fate provided that moment this morning when I got to hear something I needed to hear . . . a survivor of dramatic sudden near-death assault on her good health expressing to me the sadness in her when she said no, she could not whistle any more.
The Hawks Perch 
The foods we eat, the medicines we take, they do things to our bodies, minds, spirit we do not contemplate. The things we digest once we swallow, is often key to all that we are, for better or worse. Natural. How far from natural are the things we consume. The further from natural, we build an unnatural self. Simple but complicated. Reading this post led to these thoughts. The natural things we take into ourselves, work and build in harmony with natures way of doing things. In short, sometimes a natural blend tea is what we need, but will know or consume. A fruit, veggie, herb or spice – maybe they had the keys we needed all along. Thanks your post started up my thinking – that’s good.
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Yes, I was there in recovery with her for the open heart surgery, but then life happened, and I never saw her again, although we emailed and shared. I didn’t know about the brain tumor. By then, our communications had fallen by the wayside.
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I suppose at face value this post seems to suggest that Barbara was approaching melancholia in her last years. But not true, as future posts will show. I think in this narrative Barbara, always the literary artist, was exploring a mood, like a jazz musician playing on a tune, to see where it might lead. I sense an emerging acceptance, a positive undercurrent, and, indeed, her next couple of years are happy and productive. And what a wonderful metaphor about not being able to whistle any more!
And, FYI, she singles out you & Valerie over and over again as being incredibly helpful and generous and loyal friends during her last years, especially during her heart attack. Your support, emotional & otherwise, was lifesaving to Barbara, and I hope she was able to express her gratitude to you in person as much as she did to me in writing.
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