Here’s a drawing I made while Vernon was in a coma. It’s was my best picture for what things felt like at the time. Going underwater with him, hoping to pull him back up.

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Here’s a drawing I made last night at the table while Maki made his own drawing. It’s a bit of how I feel now. The Splashdown of a Shuttle.

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And here is a poem I’ve been putting together, hoping to make some word sense of what’s happening as we come back to ordinary life. “Decompression Sickness” isn’t a very good title. Perhaps I’ll call it “The Return”

 

Don’t know if I’m coming up too fast from depths too low—

I’ve heard free diving pearl hunters

can hold their breath under water for twenty minutes, sometimes.

They squeeze default oxygen from the pancreas and other hidden corners of their bodies.

I guess it’s worth it for the treasure.

The body is a survivor’s final frontier.

 

Sometimes, deep divers get the bends:

In the surge back up to the surface,

their blood can’t handle the altitude change,

the rapidly decreasing pressure they’d been under so long.

Nitrogen bubbles are trapped in the blood stream,

causing pain in the muscles and joints, numbness, paralysis.

 

Don’t know if I’m dropping down to fast from heights too high—

I think of astronauts in their protective space-suits,

floating around in a controlled capsule;

oxygen tanks, freeze-dried food packets, Tang!

What’s in it for them?

To witness a final frontier.

 

Sometimes spacemen get the bends:

In the fall back down to the surface,

their blood can’t handle the altitude change,

the rapidly increasing pressure after drifting in orbit.

Nitrogen bubbles are trapped in the brain,

causing confusion, amnesia, strange mood and behavioral shifts.

 

Don’t know if I’m coming or if I’m going—

Did I crash down on the ocean or come up from underneath?

Either way, there is a lot of splashing…and gasping.

 

I do know this:

I’m here.

I’m breathing.

I’m alive, I survived.

But I’ve got the bends.

 

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