From Zero To Panic In….
Friday I had a full out panic attack. My heart beat too fast. Tears blurred my vision. My throat felt constricted, my chest hurt, my heart hurt, I was terrified.
What brought this on? I’m not proud. It was my husband. I went to work just before seven in the morning, as I always do, about an hour before him, before he even got up from bed. Most days we talk when we are both in our offices sometime during the morning hours. He’ll call me just to say hi, I’ll call him just to touch base. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we complain, sometimes it turns into a long leisurely conversation, sometimes it’s rushed. This happens every day, even after more than a dozen years married. Maybe it’s habit, maybe it’s routine, maybe we really do want to speak to each other. Whatever, it works for us.
Friday started out like any other. I was very busy at work and, so, it was almost eleven o’clock before I realized he hadn’t called. I checked the voicemail on both office lines, but there was nothing. I retrieved my cell phone from my pocketbook and checked for missed calls. Nothing. So, I dialed my husband’s office and after 5 rings I was connected with voicemail. I hung up and dialed his cell phone. After 6 rings it went to voicemail. I redialed his office and left a message. “Hey, hon, it’s a little after eleven. Call me.”
Then, I got to wondering.
I hadn’t actually spoken to him this morning before I left. Sure, I’d tapped on the open bedroom door and announced I was leaving – his signal to rise and shine – and he’d grunted a pseudo goodbye, ok, I don’t want to get up sorta thing …but maybe he’d been feeling sick and decided to play hookey. Yes…hookey. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became. It was sunny, maybe he was just a teeny bit under the weather and wanted one last swim in the pool before we closed it up till next spring. Well, that would be best case scenario. Maybe he was really sick and lying in bed. Maybe he had an infection, the kind that didn’t go away-the kind that had alerted us 6 years ago to what would eventually be a scare with cancer. Maybe he’d slipped in the shower and had hit his head, or fallen down the basement stairs, or…. I reached for the phone and dialed home.
No answer.
I tried again…maybe he was asleep and didn’t get to the phone in time. No answer. Two more times I dialed the office and two more times the cell. Now I was getting myself worked up.
I forced myself to work another 1/2 hour and then I packed up for the ten minute ride home for lunch. Now… more about our daily routine. Not only do we speak daily to each other during the morning work hours, but…we see each other nearly every day at lunch. We each, long ago, decided that a break from the office was crucial to our sanity and each of us lucky enough to be working less than 5 miles from home, we began meeting there for lunch. Not every day-we miss about once a month due to horrific driving weather, meetings that run over, deadlines that need seeing to – but nearly daily. And, this is crucial, if we are NOT coming home we ALWAYS alert each other.
I drove home on Friday with one hand on the steering wheel and the other, risking arrest for not using a no-hands device, dialing his office, cell, and our home. Over and over, a loop of insane speed dialing. 7 minutes after I’d left work (I made every light and drove a wee bit too fast) I made the turn onto my street and saw immediately that Jim’s truck was not there.
Ok, I thought, at least he’s not sick, or bleeding in the tub, or dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. He’d obviously gotten up and gone to work. But…I suddenly worried…but, what if he never made it to work. What if there’d been an accident and he didn’t have his cell phone with him and he…or wait, what if there’d been an accident and he was taken to the hospital, waiting to be examined all this time and no one bothered to call me…or… Oh my God, what if there’d been an accident and he was dead.
There it was. The real reason for the anxious moments of the last hour. What if there was an accident and what if he was dead.
I can tell you that as recently as 7 years ago, I wouldn’t have “gone there”. In fact, I might have gone straight to ticked off or, on a good and rational day, I might have just assumed he’d gotten distracted by something at work. But that was then. That was a different time and different me. I’ve lived the worst possible scenario and, guess what…in my mind it doesn’t make it less likely to reoccur in my lifetime. It makes jumping to that conclusion– something that would be hysterics to anyone else–a very real possibility to me.
I see that look in people’s eyes when I go into panic mode and I don’t care. They don’t understand. 6 years ago I sat in my living room waiting for my son to come home. He was late. He was very late. I never once that night jumped to the conclusion that would ultimately turn my life into an empty shell that would need to be completely refilled again with a whole new me. I never jumped to believing that he’d died and would never come home.
That was the last time I would ever permit myself that kind of naive peace of mind.
Friday I got out my car and went into the house, hoping for one last logical reason that would extinguish the flames of fear now taking over my mind and shaking hands. A note on the kitchen table? A message on my home phone? There wasn’t anything. So I sat at the table and didn’t make his lunch as I always did. I didn’t turn on the noon time news for him. I didn’t fill a glass with ice for his cold drink. I just sat in dread of that knock on the door. A notification. A loss too devestating to survive.
At 12:20, the exact time Jim comes open every day of the workweek, the doorknob turned and sunlight filled the kitchen as my husband walked through the door.
“Hi hon”, he said, smiling as if he hadn’t just brought me back from a place too dark to admit to. “I just got out of the dumbest meeting. Three hours. I tried calling your desk, but I guess I missed you. Guess you must have just left”, he added breezily.
“What’s for lunch?”
