The Best Gift Visitors Could Give Me In The Hospital: Quiet

I found myself preoccupied with the energy levels of my visitors. They were so careless with them. There were spontaneous gestures of their arms, the toss of a head as if it were nothing at all. Whereas the energy of my visitors wore me out, the snail inspired me. Its curiosity and grace pulled me further into its peaceful and solitary world. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

The year of my dad’s cancer, before we knew it was cancer, he had stomach surgery to remove an ulcer. He’d been wasting away for months before the surgery. When I visited him in his hospital in Florida, I was shocked at his appearance—his face looked gaunt and his arms had shrunk to the size of my own.

Wanting to lift his spirits, I rallied the family to help me decorate his room. Soon flowers lined shelves and balloons bobbed in corners, their captions reading, “Get well soon!” and “You can do it!” Nurses exclaimed at this whenever they came in: “Wow, you are popular. Look how much your family loves you!”

Dad smiled weakly from the bed and told me he liked the gifts. But years later, my uncle Roger revealed a conversation he’d had with Dad after I had flown home.

“Okay, Scott,” he said, “now that we’re alone, tell me the truth. Do you really want all this stuff in your room?”

Roger is a tall, athletic man with a warm voice. He’s a Vietnam veteran like Dad, and as the cancer progressed I would come to admire the rapport they had, the way Roger could tease Dad while still showing deep compassion.

Roger told me Dad confessed that he didn’t love all the balloons and flowers. All his life, Dad had kept his own walls bare and sterile at home. He saw no need for decor, which he thought of as clutter.

I had made his room the way I thought I’d want it. It hadn’t occurred to me that Dad might want something different.

Several years after Dad died, I found myself in the hospital. In 2016, I spent the whole summer struggling through C. diff and an ulcerative colitis flare, two gut illnesses that sapped my strength and racked my body with pain.

And in my own hospital room, I discovered that I was not like Dad. I Ioved the flowers lining my own windowsill.

With Dad’s decorations, I’d been right about at least this much: I did want color in my room. I reveled in the scent of the lilies my husband Ron brought me. I spent long moments gazing at their many shades of orange and pink and yellow, contemplating the way some flowers had fully opened while others were still just buds.

But I understood Dad’s experience, now, in a way I hadn’t before. I felt that many people didn’t understand everything I needed here in the hospital.

I needed love and support most of all, which my loved ones always gave. But nearly as much as those, I needed quiet. Simplicity. Permission to rest and be still.

Like Dad, I needed to minimize stimulation. I never turned on the TV that hung near the ceiling of my room, because even the quietest shows would be interspersed with eye-catching, frenzied commercials.

The only thing I watched was “Parenthood,” because it was positive and nurturing and I could watch it commercial-free on my Netflix account. I propped my little Android against the books on my bed tray and watched episodes on the tiny screen, and the screen’s smallness helped contain the show’s energy.

I was happiest when the sky was cloudy out my windows. An overcast sky was dimmer and softer, while a clear blue sky heralded heat and brightness and stark, sharp-edged shadows. Nurses sometimes commented on the summer heat outside, but I felt indifferent to it.

My room was cool and dim, as always. I was glad to be out of the heat and felt vaguely troubled by deep blue skies, which were so incongruous with my world. I was always relieved when the blinds were opened after a clear day to reveal clouds again.

Like the blue sky, upbeat visitors were subtly distressing. I didn’t want anyone to bring a happy breath of fresh air into my room. I remembered, now, the feeling of breezing into Dad’s room with a smile and words of good cheer, as if my own health might bless him or even rub off on him. I wanted to reassure him by being soothingly cheerful, and to show his nurses that someone strong and vibrant cared about him.

But now, I wished badly that I’d had this hospital experience before visiting him. I would have done things differently, perhaps smiled less. I now understood the need for visitors to take on my own energy, not bring me theirs. I needed them to quiet down and become still, like me.

The same went for nurses. My favorite nurses were staid and serious. They smiled, but their smiles didn’t ask anything of me, didn’t expect me to engage. They deftly moved around me, murmuring questions and words of comfort, chatting only if I wanted to. A couple times, I had nurses whose voices were high-pitched and perky, who spoke in a chipper tone they might use with their friends. A ball of anxiety would clench in my chest, and I’d be relieved when they left.

One doctor had the habit of standing too close to my bed, looming over me and talking in a booming voice. From where he stood, it was easy for Ron to see him, but hard for me to meet his eyes without craning my neck.

At one point, I bluntly interrupted in a weary voice: “Can you stand over there, where I can see you?”

He moved to the foot of my bed. Then as he spoke, he grew animated again, making big gestures with his arms, smiling a lot, looking more at Ron than at me, and gradually migrating back up to my head.

I was getting better at advocating for myself, though. Stress, it turned out, was dangerous for me. I couldn’t afford panic attacks like the one I’d had recently after a doctor told me flippantly that I might die. I had later told that doctor to be more careful with his words around me—that I was fragile. I couldn’t afford to let doctors get away with stressing me out.

I’d lost my ability to do most things, and now it was time for me to let go of this, too: the instinct to please others. It was amazing how long it had lasted, how many other pieces of me fell away before this one. My ability to work, and to drive, and to walk more than a few feet had all disappeared long ago. How fundamental this instinct must have been, how deep-rooted!

But by finally letting it go, I could conserve my precious energy. I could focus on healing.

When I’d been caring for Dad, my attempts at good cheer and helpfulness had been well-meaning but misplaced. They came out of love for him, but also out of an unconscious need to comfort myself. By bringing him balloons and flowers, I was doing something. That made me feel less helpless. But the truth is, there is only so much we can do in the face of illness.

Often, instead of doing or fixing, the best thing healthy people can do for the sick is just witness. Just be quietly present, whether in person or by letting them know, from afar, that they are not alone.

Illness is, to some extent, always solitary. The enfeebled, exhausted patient needs permission to disengage. In that place of quiet, simply knowing you are loved and seen can be the greatest balm.