MEDICAL HISTORY After Nicole Sealey
I have had headaches since I could speak
but before I had the language to explain them.
I would tell my mom my head had its own heartbeat
and in a way, it did. when I was 10, my grandfather died
of a heart attack and he was not that old but not that young
so no one could tell how sad they should be. when he died,
a new year began and my little sister’s eyes developed to be able
to see the face of our mother. the ache pulsed, in my head and in my aunt’s
and in my grandfather’s though he never told anyone, only silently took his hat off
and rubbed his skull through the weathered skin. around the time he died and my father
became an orphan – though he in his fifties, he was still an orphan – a few cells went haywire
in my neck. years later, an oncologist would sink a knife into my throat and scoop them out but
there was so much disbelief to come before then. the day of my first surgery, I cried and my grandmother told me about her friend, who was on her seventh surgery and I stopped crying.
my sister had a miscarriage the year before the cancer was found and then
when my neck was being opened, she sat in the waiting room knitting a yellow
baby blanket. everyone lived for awhile and we were all lucky enough until
I hit my head on a steering wheel and didn’t wake up for long enough
that my brain still hurts years later. my last grandmother died at the same time
as hundreds of thousands of other people and okay, she was old but
we couldn’t go to her funeral so no one knew how sad they should be.
the grief in my body seems too much for my skin to hold so it breaks
and softens and bruises instead.
and I’m embarrassed but I understand, too.
it wants everyone to see.
it wants the pain to set your teeth on edge,
like it sets ours.
