No Small Miracle

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 11, 2023

I had felt pretty good about myself that day, the day before St Patrick’s Day, after a successful date. Still got it, I said to myself. But upon deploying the subway, I opened a text from my mom and the world spun upside down. My uncle had a heart attack. And without spilling all the personal details, he went brain dead for nearly a half hour before going into emergency surgery.

He was going to live. But people who go brain dead that long don’t usually wake up with their cognitive facilities. The ultra grim reality we were facing was that we were never going to talk again to the man we knew and love.

As someone who worked in a nursing home, I can tell you for certain there are fates in this world far worse than death. Dying doesn’t quite frighten me, not like the alternatives. Death can be a gift. A door to something else, if nothing else besides the end of suffering.

My regular readers know, I come from a giant family. Both of my parents are one of six. There are nineteen first cousins, twenty if you consider me. It is a large, functionally dysfunctional, fucked up but loving family.

Uncle Kenny is one of my mom’s older brothers. He is my mom’s closest sibling. Kenny is to my mom what my brother Mitch is to me. Which is quite a lot. Additionally, Uncle Kenny is hilarious. Supremely intelligent and wicked funny. I swear to you, my Uncle Kenny could sit at the famed table at the Comedy Cellar with the best comics in the world and hold his own. He’s like a walking encyclopedia of history as he reads a ton and somehow retains it all.

He is a professional wise ass, and I looked up to him until I actually became a professional wise ass. And yet. He is so much more. Uncle Kenny is a retired police officer. He used to say that every one on the force should have to read Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserable.’ Now, I am a literary nerd. I’ve read more literature than at least 95% of the population. However, I’ve tried and failed to get through the novel ‘Les Miserable’ three times. It is a dense read. It is my favorite musical though. Anyway, the reason he thinks the police should have to read it is because it illustrates that just taking orders because you’re the law doesn’t always mean justice.

Personally, I’d just suggest everyone watch “The Wire.”

So, Uncle Kenny is more than just an Uncle to me. He’s a father figure. He’s a comedy hero. He’s my brother. He’s one of those rare people in the world that don’t make me feel so alone— he’s my person in a world full of people I feel alienated around.

I know for a fact that neither Kenny nor myself want to live with our minds shattered and people taking care of us… only bits of ourselves left— the wrong bits. To say I was scared was an understatement.

St. Patrick’s day came and I went out with friends. I was consuming anything to make me feel good. A couple of my friends advised me to slow down, knowing the situation. “For fucks sake, you know this is the only way I know how to deal with grief, so I’m going to get forget my name drunk and you can either join me or not.” They shrug their shoulders and drink to that. I can be a hard person to bargain with.

More days went by. We all worried. The family prayed. Mom asked me to pray, but what my mom doesn’t understand is my version of ‘prayer’ is just being angry and cursing gods I don’t really believe in. Faced with grief, I’m just all rage all the time.

But the days offered glimmers of hope. And as a short time went by (that felt long), it was clear that he was going to be fine. He woke up and remembered everything. And was back at making offensive jokes almost immediately. All the doctors that worked on him said they never saw anything like it. They never saw someone go brain dead that long and then their brain not be… well… dead. It was, in fact, some sort of a miracle. Scientific or spiritual.

We’re not all given second or third chances. To search for reasons why some people get multiple chances while others don’t is a fools journey. Don’t ride that merry go round. Surely, you’ll go mad.

On Easter, I texted my Uncle… “Happy Easter, Uncle Kenny. Can’t say just how happy I am that you came back from the dead. Jesus got nothing on you. Dude never even had a job or raised kids.”

Kenny said, “Yeah. He would have fit in great today. No job, no haircut, complaining about the government holding people back, telling rich people they should share the wealth. Guess that’s why he didn’t choose to show up today. No one would take notice. We’d just tell him to shut up and move to San Fransisco… but he did save my tail.”