SECTION 3 — Hospital, Loss, and What Remains

The story continues in my mother’s words.

My mother, with her brother Ed and Belle, shortly after her release from Shriners Hospital for polio care.

The first night, they put me in a big crib at the hospital. I didn’t know how to use a call light to call the nurse when I needed to use the bathroom. Luckily, a nurse came by. Once again, I was a stranger by myself.

Once a day, I did physical therapy exercises with a therapist on a table. I had a heavy metal brace on my arm. I didn’t like the food, and it was hard to eat.

One time in the hospital, I fell out of bed. Crash. They came in and thought it was a girl in a big body cast. They looked at me and said, “Oh—it’s you.” I just had a brace on my arm and a brace on my leg.

When Christmas came, we got lots of presents, but it wasn’t my mom’s time to visit. That night, a nurse caught me crying and asked why. I couldn’t say it was because I wanted my mother, so I told her it was because I didn’t get a doll. She went and found me a doll.

I left on Easter Sunday. I left everything I had gotten there, including the Mickey Mouse watch my mother got me for Christmas. She worked for 50 cents a week and spent everything she had on that watch. Everything.

They came and got me. They just took me. Everything I had was left at the hospital, including my Mickey Mouse watch, all my books, my clothes, and my doll. They burned it all.

When I got back from the hospital, it was too late to go back to school, so I was two years behind. I had a left arm brace, and I was still wearing a long brace on my right leg.

I was standing in front of my house when a little boy across the street taunted me about my brace. I picked up a stone, threw it at him, and hit him. He cried and said he was going to tell his mother. It scared me so bad.

I went into the house and did something I’d never done before. I read a little book Grandma Warehime had sent me for my birthday, called Among the Hills with Ellie, from cover to cover. I still have that book.

Luckily, I hadn’t gotten it before I went to the hospital, because if  I’d taken that book, it would have been burned.

One book I remember and wish I could find—I don’t know the name—was about some children who sailed off in a ship they’d made from a box and had many adventures. One part stayed with me. They came to a deep wood, and the harder they struggled, the worse it became. When they finally turned around and walked the other way, they found it was behind them.

I wondered about that then. I understand it now.

Too often, we struggle with things that are better left behind.