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CONTEMPLATE
Famous Author Joyce Carol Oates Offers Me a Few Words of Comfort
On Twitter
The devastation, the tumult, the stress and uncertainty of having a severe chronic illness that’s rendered you bedridden for years. What does one do? I routinely seek out connection online, particularly social media, due to the isolation of being alone in a room all day, which at times is intolerable.
On this particular day, I was on Twitter, responding to the accounts I found most interesting and amusing. American literary icon Joyce Carol Oates was on my radar. She’s prolific on Twitter. At eighty-six, she’s as sharp as a tack and very, very opinionated.
A small blue, yellow, and white painting of the finish line at a race by an unknown artist hangs on the wall above my bed. My mother got it at a flea market and thought it seemed fitting because of my journey. But whether the finish line symbolizes recovery from chronic illness or the end of a life is not for me to say.
Three plants sit in my room to give it flair — a large Dracaena gifted to me by a rich American friend in Sweden, and the other two, a snake plant and a small succulent, from my mother, who seems to have a present or home-cooked meal for me every time she visits.
