gifts of illness

My vow ‘to be of service’ has guided me for 20 years. Teaching, writing, and volunteering were expressions of this practice. However, since January 3 my plans for cruising into blissful retirement age imploded: first a total knee replacement surgery led to prolonged complications and, soon thereafter, a blood infection (sepsis) involved a night-time fall, transport by ambulance, and urgent hospital care. “You were very, very ill,” someone explained on day four.

Recovery from double trauma is apt to be slow and complicated: some days are more promising than others. Predictions are that it’ll continue for several more weeks (even months, according to this). Confined to quarters and limited in mobility, I’m learning to ask for help; again and again I’m touched by others’ generosity.

Throughout I rarely see myself as suffering. Instead, I sit at the bank of a slow-moving river, watching with curiosity as bits and pieces flow into view and then disappear, replaced by others. With each moment, a new vista. I welcome being reminded of life’s unpredictability and fragility. Quite frequently, I weep, overwhelmed by an abundance of love within, through, and around me.

“In me / a tenderness I find / hard to allow.”

(John O’Donohue, Echoes of Memories, 1994/2006, p. 60)

℘

“If you do not see the Way, you do not see it even as you walk on it. /  When you walk the Way, it is not near, it is not far. / If you are deluded, you are mountains and rivers away from it. / I respectfully say to those who wish to be enlightened: / Do not waste your time by night or day.”