The Unbeaten Heart

Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart beats quickly in my ears like the throbbing of a smashed finger. Baboom. Baboom. All of the blood from my heart rushes to my ears. My chest tightens with each beat. Words assault me through the phone. Words that have never sounded clearer. Words that do not make sense. I cannot breathe. My breath will not come. Helicopter.

The phone I held in my hand but a moment ago has fallen to the ground. Thump. My heart is busy. Attacked in mid-sentence, in mid-beat. My hands feel numb; empty as my heart reels, fighting to regain control of its beat. Searching for homeostasis. Its rhythm has been interrupted. It feels uncertain. Just for a moment or two. A millisecond. The time it takes to realize you are falling. It is just enough time to weaken the hand, to buckle the knees. An ocean beats in my ears. I tumble in its waves. Accident.

Thump. Thump. Thump. A world away his heart also beats quickly in time with mine. Baboom. Baboom. Pain rips through his body with no time for reprieve. His heart struggles to survive. It is the very heart that fought with all of its might as he fell from the sky. An emptied lung struggles beside it. Breath does not come easily. They struggle together.

Summer Days

Days flow by without significance. Ordinary days and unremembered moments in which our hearts beat in their practiced rhythm. Time blurs. We grow comfortable. Dreams seem possible. Hearts soar. Then, out of the clear blue-sky, catastrophe strikes, ending our complacency. Our innocence destroyed, leaving us to pick up the pieces of our broken hearts.

July. It once passed by without thought, without meaning. That changed when a set of helicopter blades contacted metal, eighty feet up in the air. My husband sat inside that helicopter, his hand clutching the collective, as it began to buck violently, then spun around and hit again. A wounded bird too injured to fly.

What seconds to live. His stomach must have dropped as he fell. His heart believing it was beating its last beats, speeding up to fit in more life. Only the presence of a miracle allowed his heart to continue as he hung upside down still strapped in his seat.

 Impact

 Not long after the fall a Qigong master granted me some of her wisdom. She told me about the body. She spoke of trauma. We spoke of the heart.

Your heart feels it first. Trauma. Like a kick from a horse. A slap in the face. A sucker punch. The heart absorbs the hit. Full force. No protection. Thump!

I remember the moment the energy hit me. Slamming me in the chest, almost knocking me to the ground. He does not remember when it hit him. The force would have been enough to break a heart, to burst it wide open. Maybe it did, and that is why he now lives with an open heart.

Falling

The monitor counts each beat. His heart rate rises and falls. I read along as it narrates his story. My eyes watch the screen. Like a car accident I cannot look away from. I hear the alarms each time his heart rate rises dangerously, experiencing the rise and drop again and again. It beats too quickly. It feels too much pain; too much sorrow. A simple high-pitched beep. It goes off almost continuously. A wail in the night.

What is his heart saying? Speaking in a rush of emotions. Is it speaking of loss? He lost so much. Does it want to tell me how it happened? How it felt when the blades hit? The feeling of adrenalin being dumped into the bloodstream. Up in the air, with only the ground below. Nothing to catch the fall but a farmer’s field. There was no chance of flight. The only choice was fight. Perhaps his heart wants to tell me how beautiful the view was, as he spun in circles like a top in mid-air, trying to control an uncontrollable moment in time. Perhaps it speaks of the impact, and of the energy entering his body, breaking bones as it flowed through, and then released.

 Survivor

Trauma is not sexy. It brings out the fighter in us, but it also beckons fear. Fear, the insidious destroyer of the heart. It whispers into the broken pieces, reminding the heart that though courageous, it can be destroyed.

To heal the heart after such a shock, we must allow it to move through its newfound fear of death. Understanding when it falters. We must listen as it sings its mournful song, and praise it as it slowly learns to dance again.

If we do not anxiety will seep in unheeded, attaching to the inner walls, clogging the arteries. It will be unable to feel joy or passion, becoming blocked, uncertain, frightened. It will flounder, over time becoming diseased. Emotional stress from trauma is as hard on the heart as physical stress.

Cliché

The heart. Just the word is cliché. Heart. I heart you. It brings to mind thoughts of love, thoughts of forever, thoughts of days like Valentine’s and surprise birthday parties. Poetry and broken romances.

Oh, to bring back the days when the heart symbolized something simple. When the cliché was welcome. Familiar. Today, the heart reminds me of trauma. Survival.

The heart is the centre of the body. Where the soul is cradled. It symbolizes our will to live even in the darkest of nights and the coldest of days. It is our core. The place that contains the flame. At times it burns as bright as a bonfire. At others it is as dim as the flicker of a dying candle. It is always there. Though it may shatter into a million pieces, it still tries to find a way to pull itself back together. Learning to beat around the scars that will always remain.

Thump. Thump. Baboom. Baboom.