Carol Bergman

 

I survived, but it's not a happy ending.
          

 - Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

 

        How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

          ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

 

 

 

In the midst of this one particular war—the  war in Gaza, the war on Gaza—there  were too many dead children and too many wounded orphan children. Doctors Without Borders gave them a name: Wounded Child No Surviving Family, WCNSF.

 

What is too many? One is too many.

 

Apart from rescue operations, many of which fail even as they inspire hope, the stench of death is absolute in every war zone  Unless they are soldiers or humanitarian workers, most Americans are spared the sorrow of witnessing such losses: 25,000 dead children, 50,000 wounded children (UNICEF). Even the horror of 9/11 does not come close to such devastation. Nor does a hurricane, or other natural disasters. Of course, the U.S. of America has sent plenty of soldiers to fight in wars overseas, and supported others with armaments, expertise and intelligence. Are there just wars? Necessary wars? Probably, most definitely in some obvious instances. To stop a genocide, for example, as in WW II, or Rwanda. The soldiers never arrive on time, or they simply never arrive.

 

I am raising questions because, in truth, I am not an expert, and I do not understand destruction and mayhem most of the time. Why this war? Why that one? Is a response to an attack "appropriate"? Or not? And if it is not, who will be held to account? And how? Will the international courts and international humanitarian law still exist in ten years? In twenty?

 

And then, closer to my home, I read that a survivor of the war in Afghanistan, who is attending Bard College, has been swept into detention. And we see images of masked men—are there any women?— smashing the heads and hearts of protestors. Are we now living in a war zone, the first war on American soil since 1812? Are these masked men "the enemy within?"  It certainly seems so.

 

In the midst of evil we carry on regardless. We want to protect our friends and families and co-workers. We do our best to stand up for them, and for ourselves. We must not stop. But there are days, and moments within those days, when we must withdraw to rest. The broken cup on my kitchen floor remains shattered, or it is partially mended when there is good news, but remains mostly shattered.

 

Usually, as Thanksgiving approaches, I plan a gathering of friends and family, and I cook, which is unusual for me. The gathering is a promise I made to my husband when we married: I will cook you a Thanksgiving meal every year wherever we are. Since I have lived in upstate New York, I have invited one or two international students from the local college to join our celebration. Sadly, there are very few international students on campus this year. I'm grateful that there are airplanes crisscrossing the country again, though, and our relatives from California can join us at the table.

 

Is the end of war and suffering—international and domestic—ever in sight? Or will it come upon us unexpectedly after years of struggle? Or arrive only piecemeal, one victory at a time? Or never arrive at all?

 

This post is dedicated to all children in war zones.

 

 

And it may seem now like it's someone else's children but there's no such thing as someone else's children…It was just what happened to certain places, to certain people, they became balls of pale white light.

 

--Omar Al Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

 

 

I try to imagine what it must be like to be a Palestinian right now, to witness another  Nakba (catastrophe)—unfold in real time from a street far away in a peaceful town in the mid-Hudson Valley in New York, and to wonder which friends and relatives have been deracinated from their homes in Gaza, or gravely wounded, or buried under rubble. Was it the same for Jews in the diaspora as the Warsaw Ghetto was obliterated? Such an imagining is both necessary and futile. Necessary to remain sane and empathetic. Futile because the killing juggernaut could not be stopped. The Jewish Holocaust continued unabated,  the promise of a Palestinian nation-state has not been realized, and Khartoum has been over-run by descendants of the murderous Janjaweed militia. How far back in time do we have to go to find such genocidal killing sprees at their source? How far forward in time until they end?  Razan Sadeq-Keyes, resident of Huguenot Street in New Paltz, has created an installation as a set for a theatrical production next to her house that asks us to reflect on the ongoing devastation in Gaza. "I have several Jewish neighbors and they have all been very supportive," she told me in a recent telephone interview.

 

It took ten days for Razan to write a script for the agitprop production. It was performed by friends and colleagues on Halloween. Resident of Huguenot Street since 2021 with her American-born husband and now two young children, Razan, who works for a tech company, does not have a background in theater. "I felt like a vessel  as I was writing," she told me.  She participated in the performance holding her baby, and describes the emotional sensation as "embodying grief." After the performance, the "set," a replica of a tent in a refugee camp, remains standing.

 

When her father registered her as a citizen of Palestine in Nablus in the West Bank 25 years ago, Razan could not have understood what it meant.  But she does now. "If Palestine is ever a country, I will have citizenship there," she says.

 

 

 

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

 

-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

 

 

 

Maintaining a sense of humor in an operating theater, while  more or less awake I must add, is not easy. We'd had a 5 a.m. wake-up on the morning of my first cataract surgery, and a humorous perspective, shall we say, was not top of mind. We got there, I paid the hefty co-pay, we relaxed in the waiting room, my husband fell back to sleep under his baseball hat. And then, finally, I was called into the staging area for all the preliminaries—more drops in the eyes, blood pressure, etc. etc. The woman next to me said, "I've heard this surgery is a breeze."

 

"Well, it depends what you mean by "breeze," I mumbled. I was not feeling particularly breezy. I was tense. I was hungry. I was exhausted. Maybe it was because I had been fasting and was ravenous, or because I'd had little sleep, but it took a while for my observing writer's brain to kick in and note, with satisfaction and curiosity, the diversity of all the attending nurses and techs, particularly their eyewear. One very tall tech was flirting with the anesthesiologist who had just checked my height and weight for what he called  "twilight" anesthesia.  He was handsome, true, but she was embarrassing herself, and me, with the twists and turns of her lanky body. And her eyewear: thick black funky frames. Have you noticed that both men and women are wearing thick funky color-coordinated frames these days? I interrupted her flirtation with, "I like your frames." She turned, laughed, and thanked me.  I was suddenly in focus again, not as a patient, but as a person

 

Then I started feeling cold and asked for a blanket. I had been instructed to wear a loose-fitting blouse. I don't wear blouses so I borrowed one of my husband's interesting shirts. I liked it, it cheered me, but the surgical staging area was arctic. I asked for a blanket. No problem, it was on me in minutes. I think it was made of disposable papier mâché. It felt like candy floss, more air and light than substance.

 

Finally it was my turn to be walked into the operating theater and settled onto a slab-like gurney. An array of men dressed in blue scrubs were standing at attention to one side—instrument reps, I think, supervising the installation of an update of the laser? An update!!  So bright were those circular lights that I felt as though I was entering a space ship. I let my mind drift as my surgeon told me I was doing great, really great, and there were only a few seconds left of floating in outer space.

 

When it was over the doc asked how I was feeling. "It was like childbirth, " I said to her.

 

"Childbirth?" she asked, perplexed.

 

I was too drowsy to explain what I meant. And I am not exactly sure what I meant except to say: all the pre-op instructions did not prepare me sufficiently for the actual event. The actual event was much more interesting.

 

 

 

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

 

― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

 

  

A pun on eyes to begin my blog post today as I am having cataract surgery on Tuesday. Eye #1 gets an update. And I am relieved; it's blurry. Now comes the hard part: the cost of "laser assisted" surgery which is required in my case. I figure the surgeon knows of what she recommends. I do not doubt her. But my insurance company does. There is only a code for ultrasound, they say, not laser.  Are you sure she is in network?  And so on and so forth, as the conversation spins off into outer space.

 

Who will take responsibility? Who is in charge? Who will untangle the patient from the tentacles of worry about surgery, payment for the surgery, and the unending phone calls to the provider and the insurance company until she is so exhausted she gives up and pays out of pocket, which is exactly what the insurance company, who is not exactly insuring her, wants her to do.

 

I have a letter I wrote to United Health Care after my husband's cataract surgery. It's addressed to the former CEO of the company who has since been killed on the streets of New York City. That letter is now a collectible. I suppose the company has had a lot of meetings since then re: how do we save our customer base and grow it? I was not surprised to receive three phone calls in the past three weeks from 1) customer service (Taylor) and 2) the grievance department (Jan). Nice people, both of them. Polite, affable, friendly, interesting, seemingly concerned. Jan grew up in my neighborhood and misses it, Taylor is in South Carolina as he speaks and wishes me well with the surgery. But I still have to pay up front and then apply for reimbursement.

 

I asked Taylor and Jan if they'd heard of Catch-22, if they know what it is: a world in which no one takes responsibility. My question was a conversation stopper.

 

So, in a country without the safety net of universal health care, what does health insurance mean exactly? Not enough. It's not a "system" that works, and it is not sustainable.

 

I reflect often these days on the decade I lived in the UK where everyone is the beneficiary of universal health care and where my daughter was born. Before her birth we received delivery of a "layette," the basic necessities for the first few weeks of life. Our primary care physician made house calls. There was no charge for medications. I could go on.

I am sure much has changed since we left the UK re: problems with funding and waiting lists for life-saving procedures. But the intent is there, and  no matter the government in power, medical care is considered a human right. The populace, meaning everyone,  is spared the indignity and stress of begging an "insurance" company for coverage.