I recently, unexpectedly, spent six days in a local Behavioral Health Unit due to the sudden onset of severe and debilitating panic attacks. I’m so grateful to be home now and feeling better. My time in the hospital now feels almost like it never happened, but I feel a need to integrate that experience as part of the truth of my life. This poem is part of that attempt. I hope if maybe you’ve had similar struggles it will somehow speak to your experience.
Brown Paper Bag
It’s not the
barcoded wrist band that gets to you
nor the
constant roll-call and waiting in line for meds.
No, it’s the
brown paper bag that holds your belongings,
the t-shirts
and clean underwear your husband gathered from dresser
drawers not
his and packed into a small suitcase to be dropped off
on his way
to work early the next morning.
Without that
suitcase you have only the pajamas you arrived in –
Yoga pants
and a three-dollar t-shirt from the clearance rack at Target.
Even these,
though, are better than the scrubs some patients wear,
their
clothes along with their freedom and, for a time at least, their sanity,
inexplicably
misplaced.
The suitcase
is vetted at the nurses’ station,
belongings checked for that which
is not allowed –
sharps, strings, medications.
Now you
wonder, though you didn’t then,
what they thought of the board
books
your husband packed. You asked him
for “something
to help you
remember” although now you cannot remember
what. The books, among them The Carrot Seed, were his
first picks.
Your journal and bible, your bra, socks and shirts,
are piled
together in two hefty brown grocery bags and brought to you
in your
room. These you place on the floor in a
large door-less wardrobe.
You arrange
your toiletries with care, the small toothpaste and white plastic toothbrush,
the hospital-issue baby shampoo and lotion, taking organizational cues
from your roommate’s side of the
room.
When you
leave, six days later, half of your things
will go back
into the black suitcase, returned to you
from the safe place where it was
kept. The other
half you will carry out through the locked doors
in a brown paper
bag. You will stop at the nurses’
station
to have the wristbands cut off and their phantom presence
will cause
you to touch your
arm again and again
well into the following day, but it will be a week or more
before you begin at last,
to unpack that brown paper bag.
Photo source HERE.
I haven't experienced this, Kelly, but through your brave poetry here, I feel I have been offered a glimpse and an invitation into the emotion of it. You have a gift, because you left out words that describe much emotion and instead allowed us to feel it in the way you brought us along. I cannot say how valuable this is, what an honor it is. Thank you. Praying for you as you continue to process, integrate and speak the truth of this piece of your story.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting Amber. I feel like it's very important to me to remember the experience for a number of reasons. Writing is a way of remembering, of giving witness. Thanks for being a friend 🙂
You are right, Kelly, when you say that writing is a way of remembering, of giving witness. But too many wish only to remember certain parts of the story. Or to color it beautiful, when only time, and God himself, can do that sometimes. Your willingness to invite us into this space for you is a treasured gift. Holy Ground. I know you will treat it as such always. And I am blessed to be among those you have entrusted it to. That I, too, might be willing to unpack the "brown bag" places.
Thank you Beth, for chiming in. I'll admit to being afraid that no one wants to read about the darker sides of our stories, the taboo struggles. I know no other way to allow God to "color it beautiful" as you say, than to wait and write my way through it. Thank you for being here, friend.
You are fortunate to be able to articulate your experiences through language. I pray that you will continue to find ways to express yourself, process, and integrate.
Thank you so much for doing this, Kelly. It's important and you do it so very well.
Wow, Kelly. wow………. I've walked through some very tough times (one of them was last Tuesday) and writing is the only thing that helped.
thank you for sharing this. (And The Carrot Seed? Now what an appropriate title, planting and waiting and all that……..).
Kelly,
thank you for being brave and praying you will be gentle with yourself as you process what you went through…((hugs))