One night my husband took the dog out. It took a while, I got worried. The janitor called the intercom: “Your dog is going up in the elevator.”
And her husband?
“Her husband was hit by a car. Run!” Rich was lying in a pool of blood with his head split open. Harry had slipped off the leash and Rich started running after him. My life had just changed forever.
Diagnosis?
Head trauma to the frontal lobe. Part of the brain slipped through the sinus cavities.
Did you meet a new Rich?
Yes, and a different me. My perception of time changed, for Rich the passage of time did not flow in the same way, it was a complex time, it could take 40 minutes to put on a sock, and I learned from it.
Couldn’t Rich live at home?
He lived in a center for people with brain damage until his death. He suffered hallucinations, outbursts of rage, terrors and, sometimes, briefly, the old man would appear again but with unusual perceptions, he knew things that were impossible for him to know, as if other channels of perception had been opened.
Tell me some example.
I was in Mexico looking at some beautiful tiles and talking to him on the phone. I asked him what they were doing downtown and he told me that they were making tiles, and they didn’t do that and never had.
Did it happen to you often?
Yes, and that made me think that there are people who know what is happening somewhere else or what is going to happen. He also had very deep reflections.
Do you remember any?
“The goat has its mouth full of stones,” seemed to me like a phrase taken from the Delphic oracle. I liked his way of seeing the world.
Even with a damaged brain?
In the center there was a very large aquarium full of fish and Rich asked me if those fish knew where they were and if they remembered being in other aquariums or in the sea, which is a very lucid comment for a person with such extensive brain damage.
Did you recognize her?
Yes, I knew we were married. One day he asked me: “Did we get married a year ago?” “Seventeen,” I said. “Abby, our life has been so simple that the days go by without feeling.” Before the accident he was a very generous and sweet man, and that is something that did not abandon him except at the beginning, when he was very angry because he did not understand anything.
So I had three dogs.
The dogs were a great comfort, and even a joy, I loved watching them, seeing how they live in the present. It was easier to be a pack with them than to be with people.
Did you feel guilty?
When I left Manhattan and moved to a house in the country, in Woodstock, near his residence, I began to like my life, I made new friends, I started giving writing workshops, everything was pleasant.
And that tortured her?
“You’re building this life off of Rich’s tragedy,” I told myself. Luckily I got over that stage of guilt.
What is the most terrible question you have ever asked yourself?
If I could go back and make sure Rich’s accident had never happened, would I?… I hesitated and felt like I didn’t deserve to live.
How hard.
And as I always do when I am insecure, I went to look for a word in the dictionary: acceptance, one of the meanings had to do with the thread, I thought that we are weaving life with a thread of light, and I continued weaving.
What happened to your relationship?
I still loved him very much and saw the person he had been in those many people he had become. What I needed to overcome it is to talk to myself, that’s writing, and that saved me.
What did you learn from that ordeal?
Patience, and that love continues although in a different way. I learned to live in the moment and wrote a book that I love. We have to do something with the hard things that happen to us, we have to create a place for them to live that is not always inside us.
What is love?
Even if things happen that change everything radically, love does not go away, you just have to make small adjustments; and you always have to have a dog, they know how to love.
His love is unconditional.
The nice thing is to feel that this unconditional love is from you towards the dog and not the other way around.
What is your advice?
Even if your mind makes things complicated for you, don’t put yourself in hell.
What does living consist of?
Stay curious, get excited. And although sometimes life is tragic, it always has things to discover. You know, I really like being old, because there are already a lot of things that I don’t give a shit about.
