Easter Brochure 

Easter Brochure 

As far as I'm concerned caring if a loved one lives or dies is a pretty immoveable bar.

There is a very strange divide of awareness and denial that when your husband exhibits this, not as a horrible thing said in a fight, not as a irritated spousal drama with rebuttal to carelessness or leaving water spilled on the floor or broken glass not cleaned up. Then that fussy refusal to submit a ridiculously improbable outcome. 'You could have killed me' is something I would have never policed as insulting hyperbole. I still wouldn't now. 

I've spoken to women who understand the difference between marriage cruelty or times your partner went cold when you needed warmth opposed to another parallel duplicate of your life which starts as a fork in the road - befofe he might have? Wanted it to happen? No, he did not realize the severity? Wait, he did know the severeity... so then he must have loved me so much that the thought of my death dropped a giant blackout curtain on all his love and care. Yes, that was it, he cared too much and that is what made him almost... let me die? No, enabled possible death? No. Still not right. 

I spoke with one woman who's husband feigned dutiful concern to family and friends behind her back about her 'depression.' She did not have diagnosed depression but she did live with a terrorizing man and his words were like kudzu gossip so by the time she started trying to get the hell away from him everything she did was a result of her depression. 

On one of his and hers episodic nights on the second floor of their home he flipped from rage to calm and walked to the window behind her and calmly opened it and looked her in the eyes and said "You can't go anywhere. No one wants you. I let everyone know you were talking about killing yourself. If I pushed you out this window everyone'd know you jumped."

First we laughed at the stupidity because it was just grass below and while she'd have been hurt, probably not dead. Then she got that scared look with wide eyes and started a sentence I finished for her. "... right, worse because you'd look even more crazy for doing a shit job trying to kill yourself and then screaming about your saint husband pushing you. What a fucking joke. Did it at least feel validating to hear the words? I sometimes wish I heard the real words, the real real ones, so I wouldn't have to guess."

She wasn't offended, nor was I when I traded back stories and she gasped at me and said; "Wait, he didn't 'could' have killed you, he tried to help it happen, I'd rather have that then no one believe mine said that crazy shit to me. All I could do was take a picture of an open window and I'd look exactly as crazy as he wanted me to by showing a Judge a picture of an open window. Yours actually really did try to kill you." 

"But did he?" 

"Girl, mine was a threat." She was kind of country and I liked her. 

"Yes, I get it. But you knew exactly who he was when he said it and isn't that better to be clear so you can figure out what to do and stop trying?

"I think it's better to not be dead." She leaned back with that and is there anything more punctuating than when a country woman makes the final solid point. Especially the sassy ones, they are always resting their case and honestly, it puts me at ease. They are never taken quite as seriously as they should be. I've found the more country with more dodgy shit they got their babies out of the more logical they are. 

We did agree that when your husband either 'could have killed you' or 'wanted to' or 'wanted you to want to think he wanted to' or almost did and then did not ever realize it and say "omg i almost could have killed you, i am so super sorry!" - They are kinds sort of all the same in terms of dead versus not dead. We were both not dead. 

What I didn't tell her because she was sassy and I wanted to keep pace with her instead of talk about the grief was the first time it happened my response was despair and bargaining because, well, it made no sense. It was clearly a mistake, but by measure of the mistake this one was like really bad. Marriage changing bad. But still a mix up. 

It would take a few more episodes, three or more? Where this very counter intuitive repeat circumstance which in memory reminds me of the person running in the horror movie with another afraid person and they find a locking door at just the right moment. The main person sighs relief and turns and their allly has different looking eyes. That dirtbag doesn't need any dialog for the audience to grab their chair or cover their eyes.

"Nooooo, we thought he was safe! Now she is stuck in this meat freezer with a... wait what is he? Killer? Flesh eater?"

I cannot accurately assert it was the first, but it was the obvious one because the stakes were at actual life and death level. Before there had been other total inversions of what basic regard or even love looks like in a close relationship. But, the first of mortality check boxes went like this;

As far as I know or am told I almost died in labor, but it feels gimmicky to say. I am pretty sure everyone almost dies when a body is committed to the brutalism of mother nature with no way out but through. So, I almost did what many bodies do when birthing which is to be a little too close to the infinite circle of life and death, and once I was not dead and instead holding, I swear, would you believe that I, alone, like every other mother, had the most special and perfect, beautiful embodied stardust who I’d known forever and just formally met? Anyway, not dead, but really annoyingly diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia which is a hair different than preeclampsia which resolves after birth. 

If it wasn’t for this awful thing called a mag bag that kept me tethered to the maternal ICU, I doubt I would have noticed. A week or so later I noticed only because a doctor was snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Chelsea? Excuse me, did you hear what I am telling you?”

“Yes, I heard. That’s why I didn’t want so many people shuffling in and out of the hospital for visits. They were being too pushy and I didn’t feel great and wanted to just look at my baby, wait sorry, I was pulling up a photo of her to show you.” 

I was actually sent to this strange new place I had not been before. My OB was not in the building. She didn’t go here. It was a brown building on her campus but it did not have all the pictures of babies she’d helped deliver on the wall and instead of the sofas in the waiting room that took tipping to the side and rolling my pregnant body out of its depth, there were these.. chairs? Kind of like chairs they put in hotel conference rooms? Also there was no TV in the waiting room and the chairs were all facing one direction and not in little break out clusters so you could choose a location like a cat circling before it finds its spot to tuck its tail under its chin. 

“Ms. Crowell, I am going to give you this literature so you and your husband can take it home and re read it. Your mortality rate is roughly at a fifty percent higher and while is does decrease, five years is the average that it stays at this risk. Here is the checklist sheet, this is the one I want you to keep somewhere like your nightstand or wherever you can find it if you need it.” She looked at me and narrowed her eyes a little and grabbed an extra one and put that in my hand. “Do you have a wrist or arm blood pressure monitor at your home?”

I had homework. I do love a task so I told her I had both and went home and ordered the cuter of the wrist ones. Then I read what she gave me while laying in bed with my newborn. ‘Nope. I would like a do-over where I did not have this condition and I did not go to the brown building with chairs all facing the front desk and my god, why did we not talk about how there was no exam table in the exam room. Wait, they bring patients in there just for talking, that cannot be a good sign.’

So there was my little brochure packet. One part of it was bold letters yelling as if it was designed to do what it pretended to prevent. The other part was a laminated0larger than a bookmark but similar thing with those awful green graduating to red brackets on one side and a firm bulleted check list on the other reading “call 911 immediately if you experience three or more of these symptoms.”

It got lost in baby items often so I took a picture of it to keep on my phone. 

I did not have cause to check the list until April, but when I did, it did not help my blood pressure that I was experiencing every single symptom on the list which was far more than the quaint three needed to meander to the doctor the next morning. 

It was the middle of the night and I had put her royal tininess in the bassinet next to the bed to go to the bathroom and decide if this was real. I re took my blood pressure five or more times and each time I re read the list nothing on the list nor the exact description of them I was experiencing in my body changed. I went to wake him and I was so afraid that I was quiet and slow about it. 

The dance began. Irritation first, then a little tantrum where he stood up and acted like he was doing something before telling me to get some water as he laid back down. 

“Hey, I am serious. You really need to take me seriously.” 

I do not recall the specifics of his cruelty. There was some thrashing of covers and cursing at me which I quickly told him would wake her and his continued cursing and thrashing the covers to let me know he was trying to sleep. 

I went into the kitchen and did drink water, trying to grasp with what calling 911 really looks like when you really are doing it and it is really happening. 

I needed some more time and went back in the bedroom where he was back asleep. It took a lot of coaxing and fawning to convince him to come out into the kitchen where I showed him the check list both on my phone and on the big bookmark. I was really pushing the calm and gentle thing. I kept focusing on if I am really nice then he will be nice in return and care if I die. 

He argued something I can’t remember and did not read my big bookmark. 

The dizziness of the symptoms and the dizziness of both negotiating with myself and trying to reason him into believing I was worthy of medical assessment - just like the brochure said - took me to the floor. I did go willingly as I while I could be dying I was not about to lose enough control that I couldn't slowly get myself to the ground so I did not fall. 

The thing is, suddenly it became way too real. They had made a whole brochure. That exam room did not have an exam table. Fuck, I am not special, I am just in a percentage. 

My body doing exactly the thing I did not want it to do. I was desperate. So desperate that I kept responding to his attacks as if I didn’t notice them, as if I was calmly in discussion about the pros and cons of living. As if I was asking him to take one more look at the laminated highlight sheet of the brochure packet before he walked away from this great opportunity to invest in a time share. 

And then black circles did some tricks in my eye sight and I was no longer in negotiation. My body had decided what the check list confirmed. I moved back sightly so I could lay all the way flat. He was still arguing some attack about me, the time of night, logistics, how inconvenient I was to wake him for this and not wait at least for morning when he demanded “What the fuck do you want me to do.” 

My limp surrender as I prayed seemed to pour gasoline on his rage, my lack of ability to be better prey, springy-prey running from him, not lifeless prey that was too easy to catch. 

My phone was on the floor, out of reach from where I’d first sat down. I responded directly to cover my worst of fears; “I need you to call 911.”

He was standing a few feet away with this specific way he held his eyes and jaw whenever he’d go violent. Either I’d not noticed it before because it did not pair up with feeling hunted, covering our baby’s body, or fleeing the room, or sometimes not and getting stuck too near him to avoid the catch. Or maybe it had never happened before he became violent to a mother and infant and so it was new, not unnoticed. 

Noticing it was about the amount of time before he looked at my phone on the floor and with almost no drama but instead full force, kicked it at me. At my head, and said, not screamed “call 911 your fucking self” then turned his back, walked into the bedroom and shut the door. 

The phone was in reach now, so that was a good thing and I pressed the buttons for 911. 

He must have heard me talking to the dispatcher because he stormed back out to ask what the fuck I was doing and when I continued the call in front of him he heard the sound of another person on the line, his face turned back to looking like himself. 

When I was inside the ambulance demanding of God that I be fine and return to our child, I remembered him quickly moving around the house while I laid waiting for their arrival. I have no idea what he was doing or why. 

My focus was on living, determinedly so. It was only when I looked at the texts between us long after to confirm this and the other times - the matter of possible serious harm or death also too came with rage - that seemed to egg on what I was most afraid of, death. I noticed his typed words directly after sheer malice were incongruent. 

“Are you checked in? How was the ambulance ride?”

I didn’t notice at the time or times.

A few hours in and I was cleared of heart attack and stroke but diagnosed with an infection which the doctor decided had raised my blood pressure while already having unresolved hypertension from the brown building diagnosis. 

Still, he put a heart monitor on me to wear a week that I was supposed to then drop in the mail. 

I texted home to let him know I would be discharged in enough time to give him to pack up our daughter and make the drive to pick me up. 

He confirmed what we’d decided hours before while I waited on test results, that he would leave to get me when I let him know when it seemed they were wrapping up their medical checklists. 

I watched the sun come up while sitting on the sidewalk painted red for ambulances to navigate by. He’d not responded since that heads up. 

A man asked me to move for medical vehicles so I went to the grass nearer to the street in the case he pulled up so he could see me. 

After no responses from the grass I called my sister and let it ring once, maybe, before hangin up. 

I did not know what I would tell her because there was so much more to tell her than “he must have fallen back asleep.” So I ordered an Uber eventually. 

Nearly home in the Uber he called and cursed at me for not waiting longer for him. He cursed at me for spending the money so pointlessly. 

It was now Easter morning. I got home and crawled in bed and kissed our daughter with infinite gratitude and tears with no sound. We both slept for a short time, under an hour, before he came in and threw her easter dress at me. I’d hung it weeks ago on wooden pegs in her nursery that I installed to match a wall lamp when I was pregnant. 

With its tiny pink velvet hanger still inside the dress, he raised his voice to tell me how “fucking selfish" I was for "ruining Easter” and another hundred greatest hits but this time Easter edition. 

Ultimately, I assessed that getting me and her dressed would be a calmer decision for us all. 

I don't really want to think about how I got angry that day in front of other people. I apologized to the ones I directed it to. I avoided a lot of things after episodes of his after that so I wouldn't shame myself again after already feeling like I was someone else's garbage. 

When I tried to talk about the brochure night in our next therapy session, we spent the rest of the hour talking about how I had told him I felt dehumanized when he threw her dress at me. He did not feel heard that being called dehumanizing was not ok. I couldn't quite get my foot in the door of the story because this issue of how I did not understand what it was like for him to hear me say that word to him. 

Then the hour was up.