This is what all the therapists at my Pulmonary Rehab Class are telling us. There’s more moisture in the air and that makes it heavier, harder to breathe in, harder to push out. The class, made up of roughly a dozen people, most of them twenty years older than myself, are struggling. People sit slumped, breathing hard. Scratchy, hospital towels around their neck, dixie cups full of water in their hands.

The instructor continues to lead us through our paces, but gently. Beside me a woman in a wheelchair has fallen asleep. The intimacy of that. To look over and see the flaked, yellowed skin exposed above her black socks. Her face relaxed to the point of formlessness. Her glasses smudged, fallen. What dreams now forming and dispersing within. And across the room a very elderly man, so old and thin he looks like a fledgling, has fallen asleep, too. Almost fetal in his wheelchair. And the instructor says something with her eyes, perhaps, and we all begin to exercise so gently. Nobody speaks. Everything softer, everything hushed. And as we pretend to jog in our seated places, we’ve become as silent as ninjas. As cats hunting. As clouds touching in the skies above.

It’s the coldest day of the year and somewhere within, each one of us feels a premonition of mortality shudder our bones. The foyer of the Western Hospital has more homeless people than usual. Mostly men with jagged, unfashionable beards, they curl into the hospital’s available lounge chairs. Shapeless under their winter gear and salvaged miscellany, they appear to be melting—whatever had lived inside, now collapsed and unsupported. These people, so candid, they doze all around us.

I used to spend an awful lot of time in taverns.

Typically, I’d take my place amidst a stretch of solitary men drinking at a long bar. The conversation was a slow background rumbling, almost like distant thunder, and it lasted all night.

Sports.

The weather.

Women.

TV.

The past.

Strangers who had no expectation of seeing one another again, with little in common beyond the drink in front of them, making a conscious effort not to be alone, to try in some way, to connect. These conversations were beautiful to me, and I’ve come to miss them.

As a substitute, I’ve taken to listening to Sports Talk radio at night. The other day was a call-in show out of Toronto. Lacey from Oshawa had a few things to say about the Blue Jays. She was stubbornly defending third baseman Josh Donaldson:

“ Josh is far and away the greatest Blue Jay, and just because he’s injured the team shouldn’t quit on him! He’s given them everything, and now they just want to abandon him? That’s just so crappy. You can’t treat people like that. It’s wrong.”

The voice was familiar, and as I listened I realized that I knew her. Lacey from Oshawa was part of a group of patients I did pulmonary reahb with at a facility in Toronto. She was so thin then, and so angry, and every single day she wore a Blue Jays jersey with Josh Donaldson’s name on the back.

Her path had been difficult, and the heavy veil of sadness and pain that shrouded her was rarely lifted. Maybe at Bingo, if she got a line, she might allow herself a thin, bitter smile, but that was about it. She simply could not bring herself to socialize, and what we found out about her was through observation and hearsay, all of which reduced to this: when she fell ill and became incapacitated her husband left with their young son. That was how her life had worked out.

As I listened to her on the radio, hearing her speak more than I had in the two months we shared at rehab, I heard a stronger, braver voice. She was– with this phone call decrying a lack of loyalty to somebody doing their best in the face of physical limitations– making a conscious effort not to be alone. She was reaching out, and it felt like a miracle that I got to witness this, that I got to imagine her recovered and at home, fully herself now, and fighting for somebody she loved.

There’s always one just-past-middle-aged man– usually with long grey hair pulled back into a pony tail or up into a samurai knot– executing some interpretation of a martial art using a huge wooden stick or some such. Whenever I see one of these men I am forced to imagine their apartment, and I do not like that. I do not like the fabrics and odours and screensavers

that puts in my head, and so I’ve always kept a kind of hostile distance from them.

Our park, the park where we take our son Jones to play every day, has one of these guys. He is pudgy, dresses all in black, and looks like somebody whose life had been taken over by Columbine ninja fantasies a long time ago.

As such, I have not yet chatted with him, and have chosen instead to make fun of him behind his back. However, since my completion of pulmonary rehabilitation I have hired a personal trainer and I now work-out in this park, which brings me in direct competition with the Columbine ninja for the creepiest man in the park. Yesterday, he was stationed, with his collection of magic sticks, by the bench where I now work out.

This is the conversation that took place:

Me: Hey there, what are you up to!?

Columbine Ninja: ( Continues his maneuvers without saying a word.)

Me: I’m about to work-out. Here. By this bench. This one here. Is that okay with you?

Columbine Ninja: (Raises one hand to shush me)

Me: (Begins to pull out resistance bands from a Shopper’s Drug Mart bag)

Columbine Ninja: You must never disturb a warrior when he is training.

Me: Are you a warrior?

Columbine Ninja: ( Does a maneuver with his big stick, strikes the branch of a tree)

Me: Nice.

Columbine Ninja: The true warrior is invisible to those who cannot see.

Me: Yes, of course, I should have known that.

Columbine Ninja: Not all who wander are lost.

Me: Are you a part-time life coach or something?

Columbine Ninja: I am a student, not the master.

Me: Uber driver?

Columbine Ninja: I am a student of Kenjutsu!

Me: I think you work at a weed dispensary.

Columbine Ninja: Anata wa seik? shite imasu.

Me: What was that, Klingon? That doesn’t impress me in the least.

Columbine Ninja: I wonder why it is that you have trouble breathing? Is it because you fear life? I think you are a scared man. In Kenjutsu they teach you how to control your breathing, how to master your fear before it masters you!

Me: I only have one lung.

Columbine Ninja: And all you need in order to live a failed life is one excuse.

And then the Columbine Ninja just walked away and I commenced the most melancholy work-out in history.

Excellent form, though.

I don’t much like the food here at Pulmonary Rehab.

The hatred of hospital food is pretty much a universal, and so I imagined that all the other residents would share my point of view. But no, I was dead wrong. The people I spoke with liked the food, even the simulated pork thing that had been pressed to make it look like ribs.

The reasons for this are simple enough. Many of the people here– by virtue of their condition– are unable to work and have little money. Many of them are older and live alone, lacking the will, funds or ability to attentively feed themselves, and are thus entirely grateful when a meal is delivered to them three times a day. This food, regardless of its quality and regardless of whether it’s “Instagrammable” or not, is a good thing.

Its presence is a relief, a daily stress crossed-out.

People enter into this program eroded and depressed, little more than shadows of who they once were. On Fridays we’re allowed to go home for the weekend, but not everybody does. Some people are too sick or live too far away, but others stay because they have nothing they want to return to.

One man, heavy with sad eyes, said to me as he settled in before the TV, “Why would I want to go home and just sit there, staring at my four walls? I like it better here.”

Sometimes people forget just how breakingly lonely illness can be.

But soon enough, people are reanimated. Men who wouldn’t make eye contact when they entered are shortly cracking wise, singing along to the oldies while working out, and women who hadn’t played cards in years are laughing together over Euchre.

Collected from disparate lives and thrown together in common cause, we get to know one another gradually, through the honesty of proximity rather than the spin of words. You see the pain first, because you know the pain, too. But gradually, that’s chipped away to reveal the person lost inside, the person capable of joy and wonder. It’s a gift, this, and all of us here gathered beneath the mortal cloud of our illness become family, and will linger as family long after each one of us has stepped out the door and receded back into the mysterious worlds from which we came.

And so I did.

The place, stripped to a skeleton staff and now loosely populated by the permanent residents– most of whom were confined to wheelchairs of varying complication– was pretty empty. The days, now shapeless and free of plot, offered little and so I wandered hallway after hallway. Seeming more memory than music, the theme song to MASH drifted from one room I passed,

while another was antiseptic and empty but for Trump/Pence banners taped defiantly to the wall, and then through a doorway, I caught a glimpse of a nurse changing a patient’s tracheotomy tube– so intimate and tender as to be virtually erotic. Downstairs, scattered like islands, I came upon people who sat anchored and voiceless in wheelchairs, each one stationed near a window, watching.

There was a church service later in the morning that took place in the same space that hosted Bingo, Pub Night and all our other events. It was Catholic, which occasioned a few religious props being removed from a box and placed on a cafeteria table, and somehow this act was achingly beautiful.

A strong, elderly woman dressed all in black walked in, made the sign of the cross, and then nodded warmly to all who made eye contact. She went directly to a middle-aged woman who was frozen and strapped into a wheelchair, and touched her with a tenderness that exceeded language. Gently, she pulled a favourite sweater over her head, and then smiling,  began to brush her hair—a mother’s imperishable, radiant love, holier than a saint.

An impossibly old woman was reclined, almost prone, in a wheelchair. Blankets and knitted things covered virtually every inch of her body, and her skin was so very thin, her body so frail, that it seemed as if a soft gust might be enough to push her through the veil. A couple of hospital staff tended to her, telling her that her brother would be there any moment now. Her eyes flickered open at his mention, and as if surfacing through water she said, “Oh, I hope so,” and then she fell back down and in to sleep.

Ten minutes later a tall, elderly man, clearly ill himself, entered and sat stoically beside her. With a bible open on his lap he mumble-prayed along with the priest. He never touched her, nor did he say anything to her while she slept through the service, but it was clear that he was her brother. He was her tie to this world, the one now disintegrating around her into a living mist. Drifting in and out, all of time swirling around her, what version of her brother might she have hoped to summon, what memory returning in dream, what ghost to see her home?

These are the text messages my wife sent to me the other day:

*********************************

Rachelle: How’s the pulmonary rehab going, my love?

Rachelle: Oh, I’m so glad to hear that you’re dominating the warm-up exercises!

Rachelle: Yes, you are a natural leader, it’s one hundred percent true!

Rachelle: What’s The Flower Pot?

Rachelle: I see.

Rachelle: So you sit in a chair, and then move one of your legs as if you were lifting it over a flower pot?

Rachelle: What a strange name for an exercise!

Rachelle: Well, I don’t know. Maybe something a little more macho, something like The Grizzly Stomp or The Sumo Crush.

Rachelle: I like The Grizzly Stomp, too. You should write that down and put it in the Suggestion Box.

Rachelle: You already suggested a Cosplay night! Interesting idea, Pickle, but aren’t all the other residents elderly?

Rachelle: I see, that’s good thinking on your part, you can make your oxygen tanks look like rocket packs!

Rachelle: You are very creative, it’s true, and as you say, you are the Wayne Gretzky of The Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Really? The physiotherapist asked you to lead the class yesterday?! How flattering!

Rachelle: Yes, I am sure it was a great honour that everybody else was bitterly jealous of! I’m curious, did you get to choose the music for the work-out?

Rachelle: That’s great! Who did you pick?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: Well, it just seems like an odd choice.

Rachelle: I didn’t know, Tori Amos just seems weird to me. Complicated, annoying.

Rachelle: Sorry. I am trying to encourage and support you, my love.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: Right in the middle of the stretch she said you had a very small flower pot?!

Rachelle: OMG, That’s hilarious!

Rachelle: I mean nasty, just nasty.

Rachelle: 90 is old, and aging can make people mean.

Rachelle: You’re probably right, that smart-alecky Yvette lady likely had dementia.

Rachelle: Because it’s not your class, honey.

Rachelle: That’s why they wouldn’t let you “expel her from your program.”

Rachelle: Well, I’m glad you put her on notice, anyway, and sorry that everybody is now calling you The Little Flower Pot.

Rachelle: Think of it being like Dear Leader, a term of respect and fear.

Rachelle: Well of course I miss you terribly, but I’m struggling along. Even had a little party last night to fight the loneliness.

Rachelle: Probably less than 25 people, I don’t remember.

Rachelle: He might have been there, not positive.

Rachelle: Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this!

Rachelle: He brought his Porsche over the other day to take Jones for a ride, and Jones just loved it! I’ve never seen him happier! It’s astonishing Pierre doesn’t have any kids because he is just SO amazing with them!!

Rachelle: Yes, you’re amazing with Jones, too.

Rachelle: Sure Jones misses you.

Rachelle: Well, he’s still not really talking yet, so he missing you in a kind of subconscious way, I guess, but I can tell that he really does miss you!!

Rachelle: Tonight?

Rachelle: Oh, Steve needed to take somebody to the magazine awards at some fancy hotel and Jen is out of town, so I have to go as his date. Barf.

Rachelle: He was nominated in two different comedy writing categories.

Rachelle: It is a shame none of your work was nominated!

Rachelle: No, I have no idea why Steve won’t accept your Facebook friendship.

Rachelle: The world is mysterious.

Rachelle: Never mind that though, what are you up to tonight, my Little Flower Pot?

Rachelle: Fish stick night! Yum!

Rachelle: You’re my favourite fish stick, you know.

Rachelle: It’s true.

Rachelle: Don’t ever doubt that!

Rachelle: You will always be my favourite fish stick! xo

As of this writing, I am on day 7 of a 6 week stint at a pulmonary rehabilitation facility.

Last night was an event known as “Coffee House.” It took place in a generic, over-lit cafeteria style room that was made all the more depressing by the tiny gestures of decorative cheer added by the well-intentioned staff.

An inspirational message taped to the wall.

A balloon tied to a folding chair.

Somewhere a Dollar Store streamer that wouldn’t stay in place, hanging limp as if injured.

All of us gathered there were quiet, standing around as awkward and vulnerable as children at a school dance. Those who were most profoundly ill, those for whom recovery was out of reach and who lived permanently in the residence, had been pushed up near a three-piece band that was getting ready to perform. These people sat in complicated, tongue-controlled wheelchairs, and at a casual glance appeared fused into the metal of their containers– their mouths open, faces rigid and untranslatable. The rest of us, those attached to oxygen tanks and those not, just looked lost and a little sad, like we’d long given up hope of being asked to dance. You felt what was missing rather than what was there—and it seemed as if in each breath we exhaled a shallow puff of loss, all then gathering together like a weather system to form a heavy, oppressive cloud that enveloped us.

It was heartbreaking.

The band, a kind of folk outfit that was comprised of a woman who looked like a community organizer on tambourine, a bongo player in a Toronto Blue Jays cap, and an electric keyboardist who tried to project energy by wearing a Hawaiian shirt, began to play. At first the music seemed like it was designed to be little more than sound, just a “something” to help fill the emptiness of the situation, but then the woman began to sing I’ll Fly Away. Her voice was beautiful and true, and everybody in the coffee house fell into it.

When the shadows of this life have gone

I’ll fly away

Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly

I’ll fly away

And that voice, that song, it seemed to come out of us, too. And for a few moments we were all living beyond our mortal cages, we were all soaring– everything effortless, everything weightless, everything beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNM0OO_iVI

The woman who mops the floor of my room is so fair and blonde as to be practically transparent. I am somehow embarrassed whenever she comes in and has to clean around me, and I hope to compensate for this weird power imbalance by being excessively friendly, and she’s kind enough to indulge my need for small talk. She has a thick eastern European accent and far away, sad eyes hidden behind blocky glasses. As she wipes down the plastic casings of the rails on my bed, she says, “Look, you see?” I don’t, and have to look closer. “My superior leaves little marks with a pen so she knows if I have cleaned properly or not. You see it now?” I nod as she wipes it away and say something I think is funny and disparaging about her superior. “No, it is her job, the cleaning must get completed and she must make sure it is so. We all must do our jobs.”

I feel like a child in the face of those words. This middle-aged woman who used to be a professor of accounting in the former Yugoslavia, now in a scratchy blue uniform cleaning floors in a hospital a million miles from all that she had known and loved and earned. My heart could break for her– her country vanished, her life now so improbable and alien. And she looks at me. She knows what I’m thinking, or at least she thinks she might know. She pauses for a moment, “It is true that life is hard, but we must live it, no? We must live it,” she says, as if we had both been forced to leave our native land.