Coming home has been its own kind of healing. Each day, my sweetie is a little stronger, a little steadier, and a little more himself. He is willing to accept help when he needs it and has already begun taking assisted walks around the backyard. This morning he made coffee, which sounds like such a small thing until you have spent days watching someone you love surrounded by monitors, tubes, and machines. Later, we unpacked his new drums together, and I could see that familiar spark in him, the part that wants to engage with life again. Then, just as wisely, he took a nap.
That may be one of the things I am most grateful for right now: he is listening to his body. Before we knew what was happening, he had been pushing through headaches, exhaustion, gigs, and rehearsals because that is what he has always done. Now healing is asking something different of him. Rest when tired. Walk when strong enough. Accept the hand that is offered. Let the body set the pace.
In many ways, this whole experience has asked the same of me. For years I have talked about presence, trust, surrender, gratitude, and meeting life as it arrives. It is one thing to teach those things when the world around you is calm. It is another to discover what they look like at six in the morning when a hospital calls to say your husband needs emergency brain surgery.
This experience gave me the opportunity to walk my talk. I could not control what was happening, so I chose to stay balanced and allow the situation itself to show me what was needed next. When decisions had to be made, I made them. When the doctors knew more than I did, I trusted them. When people offered help, I let them help. When tears came, I let those come too. Surrender did not feel passive; it felt like being fully present with what was actually happening instead of exhausting myself trying to control what might happen next.
Gratitude became part of that presence. Even in the frightening moments, there was always something to be grateful for. The doctors had found the bleed. He was in the right place. The surgeons were skilled and compassionate. His children came. Friends checked in. People offered food, help with the dogs, prayers, and love in whatever form they had to give. Most of all, my sweetie was still here, and that awareness never left me.
One of the most moving expressions of that love came from a musician friend of his. We had been talking about the heart monitor in his hospital room and how fitting it seemed for a drummer—the steady rhythm of his heart, the rhythm he has spent a lifetime creating, and the energy we are always sending into the world. I had also shared the reading I had done for him in the midst of everything. His recent past held the Tower and the Ten of Swords, cards that spoke to me of something major already having happened, even the need for surgery. His outcome was the Moon: walking through shadow and uncertainty and emerging changed by the journey. My feeling was simple: he’s got this.
That night she went to a jam at The Grape. Before playing, she told the room what was happening and invited everyone to imagine the rhythm of Sweetie’s heart monitor. She asked them to put a hand over their own hearts, feel their own rhythm, and send love toward his. Then she took the melody of “Love Letter,” wrote new words especially for him, counted the band into a 3/4 waltz, and sang it from her heart.
Later, she sent us a recording of herself singing those words a cappella. It touched both of us deeply. Somewhere beyond that hospital room, a room full of musicians and music lovers had literally joined their rhythms to his. The web of love I had been feeling suddenly had a heartbeat.
At night now, I give him Reiki, and he has spent some time on my healing bed. I cannot know what part, if any, those things are playing in his recovery, but they are ways I know how to support him, and they feel good to both of us. The rest belongs to his body, his medical team, time, and the mystery of healing itself.
His staples come out on the 8th. When he was discharged, the doctor told us he expected him to be back to normal in about six weeks. Perhaps he will be. Perhaps his body will have its own timetable. We are comfortable allowing that to remain unknown.
That may be one of the greatest gifts in all of this. So much fear lives in the future: What if this happens? What will recovery look like? What if life is different afterward? We had those questions too, but underneath them was a quieter knowing between us: we’ve got this. That never meant we knew the outcome. It meant we trusted ourselves to meet whatever arrived.
And right now, what is arriving is wonderfully ordinary: a walk around the backyard, a cup of coffee, new drums waiting to be played, a nap when his body asks for one, laughter, Reiki during sleep, another morning together. Those things feel sacred to me in a new way.
This experience has reminded me that spiritual practice is not separate from physical life. It’s not only meditation, ceremony, healing work, or beautiful moments of insight. Sometimes it is sitting beside a hospital bed. Sometimes it is signing the papers in front of you, accepting help, trusting someone else to carry what you cannot, or choosing gratitude while still acknowledging that something is frightening.
There is no grand conclusion yet because healing is still happening, but I can say this with certainty: my sweetie is home, he is healing, and every day brings another small sign of returning strength. For now, we are not rushing toward six weeks from now. We are here, taking it one day at a time, trusting the present moment and knowing that whatever tomorrow brings, we’ve got this.