Modern science has moved the seat of consciousness, long believed to reside in the heart, to the brain. But is the heart really nothing more than a muscular pump?
The doctor said to me, "You have to have open heart surgery within the week or you will die very soon." I laughed. He didn't respond. I looked into the young face of this doctor who had just put me through an EKG and an XYZ of examinations and he wasn't kidding. I was only forty-seven years old and was in the middle of a theater production at the university where I taught and had obligations, but that statement just put the four-pad stop on my life, like my dog Orpheus planting all his feet when he didn't want to go somewhere. "You have what they call an aortic stenosis," the doctor went on. "Your aortic valve will need to be replaced with an artificial valve, a Saint Jude valve. I'll call Saint Vincent's and book the O.R. for next week as soon as you talk to your family and give me the okay. Call me tomorrow." My heart hurt. With a trembling hand I wrote all this down, and I kept writing it all down, even through to now. And I wrote, "And now all I can think of is screaming 'No' as loudly as I can and then going out to buy silk pajamas for the hospital." It's amazing how one adapts so quickly. And then it's not.
It amazes me how one tends to prepare for these approaching crossroads in
life. I had just recently become obsessed with a painting by Victor Vasnetsov, The
Warrior at the Crossroads.
I had seen it in Moscow a few years earlier. It was of a warrior on his steed, a
once mighty, no longer majestic steed, in this really desolate land--nothing for
miles, as far as the eye could see. The sun was setting over the distant hills
and they were standing in front of a large stone that marked a crossroads. There
were two skulls right next to this stone: the skulls of a man and a horse. This
warrior was reading the carving on the stone sign, his shoulders slumped and his
lance pointed to the ground. What does the stone say? "From this point on,
a horseman, a walking man, or a flying man will always find death at the end of
the trail." So the question was, which way to go?
I talked to my family, went out and bought those silk pajamas, checked into the hospital, and then I had to learn something that was the hardest thing for me to do: to just let go. That moment occurred when I was being wheeled down the hallway admiring the overhead fluorescent lights and blue, blue uniforms of the staff and wondering, not what the future would bring, but what strength it took to just be alive at that moment. It was all so clear to me--the moment, just the moment. In the operating room, I turned to the stranger on my left, the anesthesiologist, who smiled at me with eyes I fell in love with. There was so much compassion in his face, and I was so scared. This stranger asked me what was the most wonderful thing in the world to me, and I said with trembling lips, "Being by the river in the mountains on my land." Then I fell asleep, and that’s when the vision started. My heart vision.
She smelled like the earth and spring flowers. She smelled like rushing mountain water and a clean, hot fire. She smelled like the wild pink roses in early summer and the tall flowers of fall. She smelled like the moist soil around the springs and the trees after a rain and a gentle whiff of hemlock across the mountain. She was warm to sit next to and calm. She sang deep in her throat, a quiet, comforting song of rhythm, a heartbeat calm and sure and healthy. Her eyes crinkled as they looked around, watching all the steady activity of the O.R., and she would occasionally turn to me and smile at something we shared. Once I remember she said, "This is the place of courage."
I was in the Intensive Care Unit for a very long time. Each day was a mystery, uncertainty and experimentation, pushing me to my physical limits. There was hard love in my room--a type of intimacy that I have never seen or felt before, an intimacy that had everything to do with the most primal of instincts, survival and connection.
My heart feels different now. Strong. I can clearly hear the valve ticking away like Captain Hook's crocodile in Peter Pan. Sometimes the beat feels so strong that my thin body shakes. But with each step I am getting stronger, and I shall never forget the courage it took for the doctors and nurses and staff and family and myself, the many hearts that it took to make one heart beat. I shall never forget that I have found that sacred place of courage.
Michèle Raper Rittenhouse