Bad Things Happen to Good People

I know, I know, I know. I am going to sound incredibly trite and stupid – but I want to know why bad things happen to good people. I don’t want to know why good things happen to bad people, because I could care less about them. All I want to know is why the good ones, the very ones who don’t deserve to suffer, end up doing just that. I never actually ask this question out loud, but I've been silently thinking about it all week. 

Right now a good one (good, better, best), my dearest, sweetest, most generous, long-timiest West Hartford friend, was silenced when she stopped breathing before the EMT’s arrived. She’s now lying unconscious in the ICU, plugged in to what appear to me to be an incredible array of machines – but they are keeping her alive, so I’m grateful for their intrusive existence.

But, oh, oh, oh – how she’s suffered (often in silence) these past few years, from terribly debilitating problems like GERD, asthma, non-stop sinus infections, and diabetes (brought on by all the prednisone she has taken to control her freaking sinus infections). She has been so sick that she has no longer been able to breath easily, teach without struggling, take her dogs for long walks, travel, go out on the town, or talk as much as she used to.

She’s undergone so many invasive tests, procedures and treatments that it’s amazing to me how positive and upbeat she’s continued to be. We often compare and contrast her breathing problems and my migraines, but usually end up laughing hysterically at ourselves for generating so much kvetching and moaning. 

I’ve been visiting her in the ICU, where she’s still unconscious, paralyzed (by drugs) and unresponsive. Even though I’ve never talked to anyone who’s unconscious, it’s not as scary or bad as I thought it’d be. I merely lean over and let my spontaneous babbling loudly fill her ears with details about the nurses, her friends who have visited, her daughters, various doctors’ explanations, and the highs and lows of her blood pressure.

As I talk, I pretend to myself that we’re talking on the phone, which makes it easier for me to talk up a storm to the one person I’ve talked to almost every single day for the past 24 years. I blab on and on, saying anything that comes to mind, because talking helps me (Ms. Glass-is-Half-Empty) believe she (Ms. Glass-is-Half-Full) will recover. 

According to one nurse I spoke with, “…hearing is the last thing to go.” I want to believe she’s right, so I keep filling up the silence with my words. In my humble opinion, at this point in time, silence is the farthest thing from golden, "hope is the thing with feathers..." and talk is anything but cheap.