The Intuitionist: Found

On November 30, I rushed to the hospital in Glasgow. They were flying my grandmother from the Medical Center in Tompkinsville there to better treat her after she had stopped breathing, they said, as a result of pneumonia. I beat the helicopter and paced the hall of the ICU as they transferred her into a room. It was there we learned that she had had a massive heart attack. It was sudden. The doctor was direct in his prognosis: she was beyond their care and needed to be moved to Bowling Green. It was a heavy blow to us who had waited by her side in Tompkinsville for six hours thinking she had pneumonia. I followed the ambulance to Bowling Green, an ambulance because the weather would not permit a helicopter to fly. We got to Bowling Green and they said it could be several hours wait while they completed the surgery. Not able to stay in a room of thirty people I volunteered to return to my apartment to get overnight clothes for everyone about my size. On my way out the door I grabbed the Intuitionist.

In the waiting room, I read the same page over and over and over. I didn’t see the words, but I couldn’t look at my mother’s face, my grandfather’s face. I couldn’t let them see mine. Nurses came in and out updating us with worse an worse news. They moved her to another room… they were now doing this. That wasn’t working… they were going to try doing this and then that and then… there was nothing left to do. I held my grandmother’s hand as she slipped away. I promised I would forever take care of her family. I would always miss her. I would never forget her. As I said the words into her ear, tears slipped down her check. She’s crying I said, but the nurses said no, it was something else. Still, I wiped her tears, I held her hand, I said good bye.

The Intuitionist was left on the table. My tears streaked on that first page. They tracked down my mother and returned it to her- I don’t know what to do with it now. Every time I see it, I think it will bring on a bad memory. I don’t want to remember the hospital; I want to remember her laugh and smile and joy. But I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of it. Have you ever had something you didn’t like, but couldn’t quite get rid of? Have you stumbled upon it hidden away somewhere and experienced the rush of emotion from the memory?