Tony Judt writes in the latest New York Review of Books about his struggles with Lou Gehrig’s disease, the motor neuron disorder that results in the eventual loss of voluntary muscle movement. At this stage, Judt is effectively a paraplegic, a state he has come to manage (with help) during the day — but being alone at night, Judt says, brings its own particular challenges:
Ask yourself how often you move in the night. I don’t mean change location altogether (e.g., to go to the bathroom, though that too): merely how often you shift a hand, a foot; how frequently you scratch assorted body parts before dropping off; how unselfconsciously you alter position very slightly to find the most comfortable one. Imagine for a moment that you had been obliged instead to lie absolutely motionless on your back—by no means the best sleeping position, but the only one I can tolerate—for seven unbroken hours and constrained to come up with ways to render this Calvary tolerable not just for one night but for the rest of your life.
My solution has been to scroll through my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my memories, mis-memories, and the like until I have chanced upon events, people, or narratives that I can employ to divert my mind from the body in which it is encased. These mental exercises have to be interesting enough to hold my attention and see me through an intolerable itch in my inner ear or lower back; but they also have to be boring and predictable enough to serve as a reliable prelude and encouragement to sleep. It took me some time to identify this process as a workable alternative to insomnia and physical discomfort and it is by no means infallible. But I am occasionally astonished, when I reflect upon the matter, at how readily I seem to get through, night after night, week after week, month after month, what was once an almost insufferable nocturnal ordeal. I wake up in exactly the position, frame of mind, and state of suspended despair with which I went to bed—which in the circumstances might be thought a considerable achievement.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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Do read the whole thing. It promises to be the first in a series on Judt’s meditations on ALS.
Offering platitudes in the face of such monumental suffering seems in poor taste; rather, I feel the need to reread Lizzie Scalia’s piece on suffering, and pray that Judt finds the same grace in bearing his cross.
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