When nothing makes sense, rules don’t either

Hank got arrested.  Well, I might be exaggerating. I feel that the telling of this incident requires a little drama, because I was so raw with emotion at the time.

Keep in mind, I like rules. I follow them (mostly), and I do expect others to follow them. I function best with minimal ambiguity. To me, rules make the world feel less chaotic, and fairer and more predictable.  

But the day Hank had a run-in with the police, my map for navigating the world had just become completely useless. The guardrails that I counted on for direction and safety were no longer there. I was in a fog. I was disoriented. Nothing felt fair or predictable. And when nothing makes sense, rules don’t either. They feel arbitrary and pointless.

Tim had an interesting relationship with rules holding true to his complexity as a person. As an anesthesiologist, it is clear that he had a great respect for rules and could thrive in an environment with them.

There is a joke in the world of hospital operating rooms that a chair is an anesthesiologist’s best friend. They do a lot of sitting. They are the ones watching the monitor while the surgeons are doing all the dramatic work. Tim would tell you that during this time, monitoring a patient in the OR, he was mostly bored, but it was his job to keep it that way. If it got exciting, it was not going to be a good day for anyone. In that world, I think Tim would agree that life-preserving guardrails are critical and should be there to reduce risk. Dosing, timing, airway management, monitoring are very exact. Small mistakes have big consequences

Even still, there were components of his role as a physician where the rules felt stifling to Tim.  This was happening more and more in healthcare during the last few years before he retired and was one of the reasons he was ready to stop practicing medicine. Too many checklists, long checklists, insurance company guidelines, and corporate hospital CYA’s. Unnecessary protocols can limit authenticity, and Tim was a person who preferred to respond, to patients and their families, from the heart. Make them laugh, increase their comfort, and let them know they were in the hands of Dr. Wonderful. From Tim’s vantage point, the nuances of patient care were getting lost in one-size-fits-all obligations. Tim was not a checklist person.

But he also was not a rebel. He did respect authority. He wasn’t a rules-were-made-to-be-broken kind of person. He simply detested rules that were in place for stupid reasons. And, he hated to be caged in or stifled.  He felt most free when there was flexibility. This may be one of the reasons why Tim’s hobby and passion for cooking was so important to him. It was the place where he could make it all up and even do it completely differently the next time.

When Tim was dying, I believe he settled into his most authentic self. And I do think this can, and will happen, when a dying person is given just enough time to shed anything that is not true to them. I think we naturally discard roles we may have considered a necessary part of our life, and we relinquish any effort to meet other’s expectations. I think we’re returning to our innate self. Our most comfortable and peaceful place.  

On one of Tim’s final few days of life, already confined to a hospital bed in critical care, he had a lot of visitors. They were streaming in all afternoon and staying. And, oh my goodness, did this make him happy! At one point, the rule-aware person in me said something like, “I don’t think we’re supposed to have so many visitors at one time. We are probably going to get in trouble.” And what did Tim say with a smile? “Fuck protocol.”  One of the many times he made us laugh that week. Tim. His most authentic self. No more rules.

And so, there I was about a week after Tim died, I broke a rule. I took Hank to Fisher Farm, a beautiful open space and land conservation near our home in Davidson.  A place we frequented and one where most of us took our dogs off leash despite the town’s ordinance to the contrary. It was an unusually quiet Thursday afternoon.  And oh, how I needed to get into nature with my boy.  

We started our walk along the asphalt path leading to the creek where Hank liked to careen down the embankment for a swim. He was eager, walking, off leash, about 10 yards in front of me. And around a blind corner, came a Davidson police officer in a marked truck edging slowly in our direction along the path. When I saw him, I thought, oh dang, we are busted. But that’s not what Hank thought. He picked up his pace, pep in his step, anticipating a treat from the person whose arm extended from the truck window. And just like the gentleman he was, when he reached the truck, Hank sat and looked up and waited. Good boy, I thought, maybe that will help our case. But as I approached, the police officer said to me, “Mam, I need you to leash your dog right now.”

And so, yada, yada, yada, he wrote us a twenty-five dollar fine for breaking the leash ordinance. No one was around but us. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I mumbled, “my husband just died last week, and we just needed to be outside.”  There was no flexibility from the officer who was there doing his job. No offering of a first warning to this well-behaved dog and his, normally rule-abiding, weepy, widowed, dog mom.  “It’s not a ticket,” the officer said, “you just need to pay the fine, Mam.”

We walked away, Hank on leash, no less pep in his step even having nearly been arrested. But I was feeling sorry for myself. I also felt the tiny wave of injustice for this pointless fine, and all I could hear in my head was Fuck Protocol.  That’s when I knew Tim was still with me and would be for a very long time.