Ice Core Crisis

Sensitive themes: Death, Cancer

I was born Catholic. Well, maybe not born, because who really knows if we enter the world with not only the gasping cry of our first breath, but with a basic moral or spiritual sense of being at our core and in our bones.

Did you know that there’s a “Baby Lab” at Yale that studies babies as young as 1-year-old to find if they are born with a sense of morality and a simple understanding of the difference between good and evil? In one of their experiments, researchers begin with a puppet show; after all, what underdeveloped mind doesn’t fall for a good puppet show? Three hundred years of the shocking antics of “Punch and Judy” can’t be wrong.

The premise is simple: a toddler watches one puppet, a gray cat, trying to open a plastic box. The determined cat tries repeatedly, but he can’t open the lid. A bunny in a green T-shirt then comes along and helps him open the box. The scenario is repeated, but this time a bunny in an orange T-shirt arrives and slams the box shut and abruptly runs away. The green bunny is kind and helpful. The orange bunny is unkind and unhelpful. The baby is then presented with the two bunnies from the show and asked to pick one.

Which bunny do the babies in the study choose? More than 80% of the babies showed their preference for the “good” bunny, either by reaching for or staring at it. The researchers concluded that even before babies can speak or walk, they can judge good and bad in the actions of others, in this case kitties and bunnies, because they are born with a basic sense of justice.

Well, I have a real live kitty who is excellent at opening and cramming into boxes of all shapes and sizes and would, at the sight of a bunny regardless of color or motive, maul it and proudly bring it to me, dead, as a gift. This, I’m finding as I get older, is more aligned with my own sense of self and the universe’s random distribution of justice.   

Let me explain.

I was raised Catholic: early sacraments were made on schedule and with great reverence and celebration. My mother did not take me outside into the world until I was baptized. I was given my godmother’s unfortunate middle name, which left me forever tied to a B-List actress. Holy Communion followed, white gown and veil proudly donned and Confession accomplished, bringing the requisite guilt and Penance though my sins were rather slight in second grade. Confirmation and another adopted name followed, the best part of that sacrament ritual being the early dismissal from Public School with a handful of my classmates every Wednesday for the two years of required spiritual training. The walk to our nearby parish from the schoolyard was invigorating and made our CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) instruction seem like a special calling. I was the only one in my group of fellow Public School Catholics, however, who was forced to take on a third year of fraternization, where the shine of my growing spirituality started to fade.

For years after the last Wednesday afternoon I spent being initiated and fraternized for full Confirmation, I dutifully went to church every Sunday, beating my breast, unenthusiastically singing hymns and mindlessly repeating prayers, distractedly trying to follow along with the Latin, recognizing Kyrie Eleison as a Mister Mister song and being proud of myself, and shyly shaking strangers’ hands wishing an elusive peace to be with them though I secretly had none to offer. I was more interested in the lector who often served during mass who looked just like Dustin Hoffman disguised as a woman in Tootsie, and it became increasingly hard for me to mentally separate the two, making me feel both guilty and clever. The smoke of the burning incense meant to symbolize the prayer of the faithful rising to heaven made me choke uncontrollably. And I was not allowed to drink the wine, mother’s order. Apparently, the blood of Christ was off limits to the likes of me, given my family history of alcoholism, I grew to suspect, despite my curiosity and protest.

Then, suddenly, after I started High School, I stopped going to Sunday mass. I became a lapsed Catholic, or worse yet, a “cafeteria” Catholic, content to pick and choose what teachings to follow, choosing to ignore certain aspects of Catholic doctrine, and interpreting said doctrine in a way which did not always agree with established Catholic moral teachings. By that time, the candles I used to ceremoniously light for loved and suffering souls had been converted to electric candles without ceremony, just a button to push. The alcohol denied me became my underage refuge. I started dating a boy five years older than I and as much as I held to my Catholic belief in no sex before marriage, we found ourselves a loophole and I got engaged at my Sweet Sixteen party, much to the shock and surprise of my parents and invited guests. Engaged seemed like married, I reasoned, and I gave my first fumbling blow job to my fiancée in a neighborhood park for his 21^st birthday.  

The rocky and volatile engagement didn’t make it to my freshman year of college and by my senior year, he was dead at 26. Brain tumor, leukemia, much suffering and many surgeries. Had we married, I’d have been a 21-year-old widow. Or would he have survived if I stayed?

Three years after my fiancée died, my father followed at 50. Quit my advertising job on Madison Avenue (long before Don Draper became a household name) to be his proxy and surrogate nurse at home and in the VA hospital, where he eventually died. Six months of suffering; amputations, dialysis, coma, sepsis. I read him “The Old Man and the Sea” while he was in a coma. When he awoke from it to live months more, I asked if he heard me. He answered, “No. But my spirit did.” Had I been more informed and attuned to his spirit or more proactive in his diabetes management all along would this have still been the outcome? 

A year after my father’s death, I married. My husband died swiftly, without much warning, in the month of June, a month before our 22^nd wedding anniversary. From a diagnosis of inoperable glioblastoma to death was only two months. At the height of the Corona virus. He took his last breath with me in at-home hospice but was left to suffer alone due to hospital visitation restrictions during the pandemic. Attuned to his suffering, the last words I said to him were “It’s okay to go now, my love.” And with that, moments later, he did. Would that have been his fate if I had seen the signs—fainting, falling, imbalance—and demanded he get treatment instead of making and canceling many scheduled appointments out of our mutual fear?

As I lay here in my own hospital bed, less than two years later, I know I should be praying, or meditating, or reading uplifting words. As I see friends suffer and ask for prayers on social media, I secretly rage at the seeming insincerity and emptiness of “thoughts and prayers.” I tell only my immediate family because they were there when the ambulance came to get me, my best friend, and my psychologist and psychiatrist that I am hospitalized. My elderly roommate is dying of cancer right behind our flimsy curtain divider and has asked with great determination for a DNR and a DNI order, denied invasive surgery, and just wants comfort and a reprieve from the cage that her body has become. She has a gentleman visitor who asks if the hospital Chaplain can marry them because she doesn’t have a will. She concurs, but later reveals aloud to her caregiver that she doesn’t want to get married at all but will, against her will, without a will. Her biggest desire besides morphine has been reduced to two cups of ice chips regularly delivered. The nursing staff is negligent fulfilling this simple request. I ask for ice chips of my own intermittently and sneak her some of mine. We both beg that despite the blizzard outside our window, the stifling heat in our room be turned down. It never is.

My only afforded independence has been reduced to my feeding card, dutifully yet randomly collected daily by the masked food delivery woman. Everyone is mandatorily masked, so it is hard to apply simple face recognition to our visitors and caregivers. I repeatedly circle corn muffin, which is on the menu every day, and never get one. Initially settle for an untoasted piece of whole wheat bread wrapped in plastic and cold, unspreadable butter. Then spitefully refuse to fill out my card except for a circled corn muffin. So I get what they bring me, never a corn muffin, for this act of rebellion.

Today, as I prepare for my discharge, I think back to the Yale baby study and watch Catholic Mass on my tiny hospital TV. My faith and quest for spirituality and justice is as absent as that corn muffin that never came and the heat that was never lowered. I lie awake later listening to my roommate’s gasping towards her last breath, machines going wild and teams noisily attending to her bowel movements and cries for ice chips. This shakes me to my very core and brings back a cold nostalgia that chills me to the bone.