GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #537: CLIVER BARKER AND MY MOM'S COMA

 So today is Clive Barker's 70th birthday. It's weird because Stephen King just turned 75 last month, still alive despite struggles with addiction and having gotten brutally hit by a van. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm of the firm belief that King is the best he's ever been now, and considering the beloved classics he gave us once upon a time, that's saying something huge.

But it's hard to think of Barker at 70. I imagine (Imajica?) he's more or less retired from writing, considering his ill-received The Scarlet Gospels. I liked it, but I understand why most everyone despised it. I met him a couple of times and enjoyed both experiences. I know he's had some struggles of late what with the toxic shock incident, but it's good to know that he's still around.

So when I was in high school my mom was in a coma. I know that sounds like an odd transition, but I promise it will make sense soon. She was in a drunk driving accident so severe that she lost a year and a half of her life in the hospital.

I only have a teenager's memories of this, so I might have the details wrong, but she had been partying at a bar and got a ride home from a guy who was also pretty drunk. They wound up crashing into the back of a UPS truck at full speed. I'm told the car looked like an accordion. The driver was OK. Mom was not because she had a lifelong habit of not wearing her seatbelt properly. You know the part that's supposed to go across your chest? She always put that behind her back because it irritated her, she always said.

So instead of protecting her, the seatbelt destroyed her guts to the point that she had to have her belly open for about a year. The doctors had to keep going in for surgeries, and sewing her up would defeat the purpose. She lost a lot of her insides because of this. The nature of her injuries was pretty singular, and the doctors who treated her wrote her case up in medical journals. All in all, it was a pretty grim situation.

I visited her every night with my family. We would spend hours at Loyola, usually in her room, but a lot of times the doctors had to get inside of her, so they asked us to wait elsewhere. The caf was kind of awful, but the waiting room was decent and comfortable enough.

I forget who gave it to me (I want to say my dad's friend, Garth, but I don't recall for sure), but I had a gift card for the local B. Dalton. Remember those? If you don't, they were a chain of bookstores. Not too long after the accident I went into that B. Dalton to cash in the card. They had a bunch of Clive Barker books, and I'd heard a great deal about him and had seen Hellraiser (and possibly Nightbreed, but I can't be certain), so I bought the first three Books of Blood. I would sit in the hospital room and the waiting room and even in the dreaded cafeteria reading those books.

So my earliest memories of Barker's fiction will always be entangled with my mom's coma. See? Toldja I'd wrap it up in a nice bow.

Happy 70th, Clive Barker! And many more!

HEY FUCKERS #19: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY AROUND COMA PATIENTS

On Tuesday I watched the new episode of SIRENS, in which the father of one of the main characters ends up in a coma. The son wrestles with the possibility of his father's death, all the while wondering if his father can hear him. (It should be noted that this is a comedy. While there is some seriousness, the situation is ultimately played for laughs.)


Be careful what you say around coma patients. The character advised his father to go to the light, and when the old man wakes up, he gives his son shit for telling him that. It comes as a surprise to the guy that his father had heard him, but it didn't come as a surprise to me.


When I was in high school, my mother got into a horrible car accident. She was at a bar, and the guy she was with was giving her a ride home. Along the way, they rear-ended a UPS truck, which turned his car into an accordion. Mom never wore her seat belt the way she should; she always put the top belt behind her. As a result of this, she was damaged pretty badly. Her injuries were so unique that the doctors wanted to write a medical paper about her. She required a lot of surgery to fix her, and most of that time, about a year and a half, she was in a coma.


My family and I all wondered if she knew what we were saying in all of that time. When she woke up, she confirmed it for us: she was aware of us the whole time. She knew we were there, and she knew what we'd said. Could you imagine being aware of everything around you while you're in a coma for more than a year? To top it all off, the doctors had to keep her torso open. They had to keep getting inside of her for reconstruction of her organs, and to close her up each time would have been crazy. So they left her open and stuffed with something they called packing.


She told me that at one point, she thought I was playing a practical joke on her. She thought I'd dressed up as a doctor and was fiddling around with her guts inside of her. She tried telling me the joke wasn't funny and tried to get me to stop, but she couldn't communicate. Then, the doctor took his mask off, and she saw it wasn't me, which was a great relief, even though she was still aware that someone had been putting his hands inside her torso.


She eventually made a full recovery, but it always haunted me that she could stand being a prisoner in her own body for that length of time. I couldn't stand something like that. That's why I'm a firm believer in pulling the plug on me if I'm in a coma. Wait maybe two weeks, and if I'm not back by then, pull the plug and be done with it. I don't want to be bored out of my fucking mind for more than two weeks.


And if any of you fuckers tells me to go to the light . . . ugh. (Unless it's a POLTERGEIST reference, which I'll find funny the first time. Anymore after that, and I'll be plotting your death.)