A writer explores how a Jewish ritual changed her relationship with mortality.
I had a hole in my chest.
Three weeks had passed since my open-heart surgery. My body was rejecting some of my stitches, spitting them out like rotten food.
“It should heal on its own,” the doctor said as she used tweezers to pack the wound with gauze.
She was perched just below my neck with her headlight on full blast. I wanted to turn away, but I needed to know: How deep did this hole actually go?
A few weeks earlier, I’d checked into this same building to undergo the surgery I had studiously avoided. There was no definitive sign or test to say “it was time,” but the worsening symptoms made my ailing heart impossible to ignore. A dash to catch a train sent me into a full asthma attack, climbing stairs had become a breathless activity. It was time to accept reality: This wasn’t the version of my heart that could carry me into old age.
At 43, there would be no “good time” to take 12 weeks off. There was a demanding small business and my aging parents.
“I just didn’t have the room in my schedule,” I told a friend.
“Listen to yourself,” she said. “This is not a conference. This is an organ.”
I worried about my husband. How would he manage? What about our kids? Would they be traumatized watching me go through this? And there was always the risk of complications and the fact that I might not be better off afterward. Still, like the good girl that I am, I picked a surgery date.