Grief Knees

A story inspired by a Facebook Memory. Whatever next?

This morning's digital time-machine ticket was from November 2016. Which means I was in one or all of the stages of grief about the recent Presidential election. Here's what I wrote: "Ha! I seem to have developed Grief Knees! My body is an old pro at manifesting emotion as physical pain - but this is a new one. I'm actually finding it kind of funny - you sneaky little unconscious mind, you. Gives me something to smile about while hobbling through the morass..."

I'd forgotten about having been made physically as well as emotionally rickety after that election, but I'm not surprised. Those were dark days, even though the most atrocious things The Narcissist actually did and said were yet to come. Like COVID-19 was yet to come. And AI coming for our jobs; coming for the truth. Rapidly worsening climate catastrophes! Ceaseless mass shootings. Unspeakable war crimes. 

Today I have Grief Wrists. A Fear Elbow. A Suppressed Emotion Hip. In fact, my left wrist is visibly swollen, the inflammation pressing at my skin, stretching it young-looking again. Of course, the news headlines alone could have brought these Grief Joints on today, I think. Even if my father weren't having surgery tomorrow. 

Here's what I mean by all this woo-woo shit. (I suspect it doesn't need to be explained that I generally don't go in much for woo-woo shit, but this is the exception.)

My mother suffered horribly from Rheumatoid Arthritis starting in her 30s. I'm talking joint destroying, excruciating pain whether she tried to move or to be still. Whether she tried to stand or to sit. Don't even get me started on doorknobs. The tsunami of medications and their consequences, and the surgeries that only temporarily straightened her shock me still when I let myself think about them.

This was, obviously, awful. And of course, she handled it heroically, because that's what she does. It's not my story to tell. But I will say that after he oversaw the ravages my mother suffered, when he had to diagnose her 16-year-old daughter with RA too, her lovely, loyal rheumatologist wept. 

I got lucky, though. At that time, I had fallen out of love with ballet, or with myself in ballet, but I somehow thought everyone would die if I stopped, or some juvenile nonsense like that. I'd been quite a good ballerina-fish in our very small pond. I'd had the leads in a bunch of recitals and everything, even once puberty hit, and I began to transform from willow-the-wisp to Viking. But as I seemed to be doubling physically, I minimized myself in every other way. Including, you know, actually telling anyone I was unhappy, and that I wanted to stop. So, I lugged my expanding body through the motions in a fog of unexpressed rage and despair. I danced my final "Parents Observation Class" with tears and a look of murder on my face. Which must have been fun for absolutely everyone! 

But as luck would have it, the arthritis affected me most in my shoulders and in my feet. Neither of which can be avoided as a ballerina-fish. I couldn't raise my arms in a port de bras. I couldn't elevate myself onto my toes. So I got to quit. And no one could call me a quitter, because no one could reasonably be expected to endure such unjust pain. (Smash cut to my mother, hunched over the steering wheel, grading English tests via dome light in the ballet school's parking lot during my five-times-a-week lessons, gripping a pencil at her own cost.)

Two years later, I took that penchant for the dramatic to New York City, where I was once again in love. I loved everything in that city. Everything. I was in love with NYU, and with my acting program, and freestylers in Washington Square Park, and a dizzying array of passers-by, and nighttime, the subway, the noise. And delis! And Broadway. Broadway, which I wanted to reach via a direct twinkling line and never, ever leave.

One of my stops on the Starlight Express was a private singing teacher whose name is lost to me, but who was an imperious and rather severe man with a shock of Beethoven hair who had the power to save me, I was sure. At one lesson, presumably discussing my goals for musical theater, I told him the story of having had to stop dancing due to RA. His eyebrows and his dander flew right up to the ceiling, and he proclaimed "Arthritis!? You don't have TIME for arthritis."

And, dear reader, it was so. 

More or less from that moment on, my symptoms went away. I could raise my arms again! I took a tap class and the teacher said he reckoned I could become a Rockette if I really worked at it! (Which made me laugh. Even then, I knew how inapt that advice was - second only to the high school guidance counselor who'd said NYC was no place for a girl like me, that I should go to a tranquil, leafy, liberal arts school instead. Which made my head explode.)

I had some x-rays taken of my hands and feet*, which showed almost no permanent joint disfiguration. And although to this day, the indicators for RA are still present in my annual blood work, I do not have joint pain except in periods of acute stress. Either physical (like when training for the half-marathons I used to do) or... emotional.

So, there you go. My brain flipped through its rolodex of potential ways to save me. Got me out of ballet without my having to admit defeat, and then set me free to run full-tilt for the footlights. See? Woo-woo.

I know, I know. It could be something I ate. Or my posture. Or something I should see a physical therapist about for hours of mind-numbing mini-exercises. There's probably a more scientific explanation. But this is the one area of my life that feels a little... mystical. Some delicate glimmering thread connecting me back through the darkness to the witches. Lord knows I could use a tiny bit of wonder.

So that's why I believe I came to be hobbling home from Canal Club in Venice, CA on election night, 2016, USA. And that's why, when I seem to have unexplained joint pain - with not even a millionth of a marathon run any time recently - I try to find a quiet moment and ask myself what my witchy body is trying to say. Like today.

It's only shoulder surgery. And my father had the other shoulder done years ago, and it was a success. But this time, we're all a lot older. We've all now lived through the despot, the plague, the shocking wars. And general anesthesia is just never completely risk-free. Especially if you are already dealing with cognitive issues. As my father is. My star-discovering, cello-playing, sharp-shooting, Finnish and German-learning, daughter-embarrassing-with-ballet-moves-in-the-parking-lot, Loki punster of a father.

My witchy wisdom is trying to say: I'm sad, I'm scared, I adore my dad, and I hate that this is happening. And Mom deserved better bones! Better luck of the draw! And she deserves to have Dad continuing to baffle and delight us all with what has always been the sharpest mind in the room. But. Still. We have each other. We're lucky little fish. I'm lucky. Even with Grief Knees. Even with a sadness so big it has to push its way out through my skin.

 

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*This was before Digital Everything, so the x-rays came back on oversized films in a gorgeous manilla envelope with one of those red sting twirl-closure things. I was shown the prints on a light box in the rheumatologist's office, and the elation they created flew me; catapulted me through the city, though I paused every few blocks to look at my bones against the sky, the river, the streets. Never more alive than when shown what I'm made of.