Illness is a kind of winter...

Illness is a kind of winter. It strips the green, leaving only the bare, peeling branches of your life; but it opens the sky. The view widens. It is a new season, only that. You know it will get colder. You know ice is coming. You retreat indoors; inside.

Reading MFK Fisher, I see that I know nothing, really, of pain; and less of those who live with -- who love -- the person in pain.

I am in a between place. I feel change coming -- which, I suppose, is appropriate to the season. I sit on the deck, alone, late in the night, smoking in the snow.

I shall accept T.'s offer of a tree, cut from his property in advance of the power company saws. We will put it on the deck, and decorate it with icicle lights and the Buddhist prayer flags K. gave me for my birthday. I will welcome this solstice and whatever darkness and light it brings.

I don't know who I am. I am no-one. I am a dark vessel, waiting.

 

Comments

[Mary Scriver]

An ICU nurse in Oregon called today to say that my brother is in the hospital there with a massive heart attack. This is the first Christmas in several years that we've known where he was. He'd been living in his truck, defiant as only a brain-damaged street person can be. This is almost exactly the fortieth anniversary of our father's death and my brother is about the same age my father was when he died. I'm not afraid of death. I said, "I would defend putting "no code" on his chart."

My other brother said, "How dare you? How do you know what he wants? I won't take responsibility for this. Did you ask them to put this on his chart? Did you ask them to kill him?"

I wish I could be empty. I'm swirling with memories, with training, with ideas and theologies, with alternatives... on and on.

I do very little with Christmas anymore. It's solstice that speaks to me. My rich friend has sent me a box of big fat pears. I wish you were close enough for me to share them with you.

Prairie Mary

[Rachel]

(o)