Occlusion

The world looks different upside down. The blood pounding behind my eyes and my unusual position distort perspective. There is no natural light. I can’t tell if what I’m seeing is real. I picture myself in a photo, me strapped into some sort of industrial swivel chair, half naked, with my right breast hanging out.

I’ve never been upside down this long, not as a child on playground equipment and not as an adult in a yoga class. Not in the park with Saul, my six-year-old, wanting me to hang from my creaky knees while singing “Ode to Billie Joe,” a song Saul’s grandmother taught him when she still took care of him, before my father’s dementia took over.

I was given a sedative before the procedure because I was having an anxiety attack. I’m already on anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants, prescribed right after Saul’s father died. And I’m on medication for neuropathic pain from a car accident I had when Saul was three and I was hurrying to a meeting after dropping him at daycare. My body seems to have recovered from the whiplash and concussion, but my neurology hasn’t. Now add this nice pill from the nurses and my mind is wandering and dreamy, my thoughts drifting clouds.

My poor mother. I remember when she started putting little Saul in front of the television, turning up the volume to drown out my father’s almost constant yelling, directed everywhere and at everyone except my son. We don’t fully understand why, but he doesn’t perceive a small child as a threat. His outbursts increased as his world began to dim. A thin shadow falling on the hardwood floor by the hearth was a treacherous ghost. He would put his false teeth in the bread box and would cry when he noticed his teeth were gone, accusing my mother of pulling them out while he slept. A small noise seemed an explosion to him, and suddenly he was lost in the Korean War. He would scoop Saul up, lurching out the door and into the woods as he moved into a realm we could not perceive.

Saul wasn’t afraid. He has always seen his grandfather as a man living between two worlds. As my father’s worlds became narrow and distorted, so too did our perspective change — the day-to-day magnified, separated out from the bigger picture, as though we were living with tunnel vision, trying to survive one more sundown.

And now I’m stuck in this chair, upended, stoned, unable to see anything clearly.

The nurse, Clara, has said we’ll be underway any moment but that was a while ago . . . I think. I would know Clara’s voice anywhere. She has a way of laughing at the end of her sentences, even when she’s upset. I took her daughter’s photos when she was born. Right now I can’t even imagine holding a camera — I can see only inside myself, strapped here, waiting, my memories emerging as though my unusual position has jostled them from where they were sealed.