oasis
The surgeon was running a little late. I was right on time. I had followed every pre-op instruction to the letter: donated a unit of my own blood to receive back during surgery, had an MRI and new X-rays, taken my liquid iron and B vitamins and blood thinner and Celebrex, met with an anesthesiologist, a physical therapist, a pharmacist. I’d given up coffee and my evening glass of wine days ago, had my teeth cleaned (from now on, that will involve a precautionary dose of antibiotics), tidied up the house and paid the bills, and scrubbed my right hip twice a day for three days with Hibiclense. I even got my hair cut.
Through it all, I worried and wondered. Was I doing the right thing? Would I be better off to accept my lot, buck up, and carry on with my own two painfully arthritic hips? Was I trying too hard to hold on to youth? Being greedy to want to hike or do triangle pose or ride a bike again? Or would I look back, as a few hip-replacement veterans predicted, and wonder why I waited so long to get new parts?
By the time I climbed into my assigned bed in a small pre-op cubicle at New England Baptist Hospital last Friday, there was nothing more for me to do. And there was certainly no point to any more mental dithering and debating. A curious, unexpected calm descended.
I was warm and comfortable. Whatever happened next was completely out of my hands. I’d expected to find myself at this juncture feeling terrified, with clammy hands and a heart pounding with anxiety — my typical response to stress. Instead I was . . . peaceful. It occurred to me that this is what faith feels like – the quiet, still, rather unfamiliar place Khalil Gibran calls “an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.”
Somehow, moments away from the first major surgery of my life, I had found my way to that oasis. An accidental destination, deep and mysterious and welcome.
“We’ll give you something to make you relax before we take you in to the operating room,” a nurse promised as she deftly slipped an IV needle into a vein in my wrist. As it turned out, there wasn’t time to administer the drug meant to soothe my nerves. When the doctor was finally ready, he wanted me in there on the table, pronto. It didn’t matter. Some invisible current had already begun to flow. And I had given myself over to it.
As I sit on the screened porch at my parents’ house six days later typing these words, there are many small details of the last month that come bubbling up. Since I last wrote in this space, my beloved friend Lisa died after a long journey with brain cancer. The intensity of her final weeks and the intimacy, wonder, and grace of the three-day vigil friends and loved ones created after her passing — sitting with her body, reading and singing and praying and speaking to accompany her soul as it departed – every bit of this is all still vivid in my mind. (A subject for another day perhaps.)
The grief I feel is fresh, but not raw. There is a quiet oasis in my heart for this sadness, too. I keep thinking of the dream I had in the recovery room on Friday, exactly two weeks after Lisa’s death. While swimming my way back to consciousness after surgery, I experienced something that was perhaps more illumination, or visitation, than dream: Lisa and I sitting together having a picnic by a lake, a shared sense that all was well, that there was nothing very unusual here, just our simple joy in seeing each other.
Moments later – or maybe an hour later? who knows? — I woke up from that shimmering picnic, surrounded by nurses speaking my name. The first days with my new hip were more than I’d bargained for: the pain, the nausea, the foggy brain, the plugged up digestive system, the pully hanging over the bed for slowly moving my leg, the hesitant steps on crutches, the mushy, marshy nowhereland between sleep and wakefulness, neither of which was fully achievable.
And yet. Somewhat to my surprise, I was still in the oasis, still at peace, still surrounded by kindness and love. Held afloat by the good wishes and prayers of a whole circle of dear friends, I had only one task: to relax into that love and allow it to bear me forward.
On Sunday afternoon, my husband drove us here, to my parents’ house, the finest rehab facility anyone could wish for. My mother ceded to us their king-sized bed and bathroom on the first floor and greeted me with turkey soup, tulips, and the ice pack of my dreams. And so, just months before my parents leave this dear old house forever and move into the new smaller one they’re building closer to us, I find myself returned to the home of my childhood for one last time.
The autumn leaves drift down, a golden dance of deliverance. In the backyard, the apple tree – so much broader now than when we two first met nearly 45 years ago – has released her generous crop of golden apples, spread around her like a skirt. As I make my way slowly around the back yard on my crutches, I must be mindful of fallen acorns thick underfoot, the oak trees’ abundant yield. Every where I look, it seems, something is letting go.
Even as my parents await their moving day, the new owners of this land have begun to realize their own vision for it, carving out roads and house lots and felling trees. Each day, we listen as the forest my brother and I wandered as children disappears. Early this morning the huge machine was right at the edge of the yard. For my mother, who has spent most of her adult life in silent conversation with these trees, it was wrenching to see them shudder and fall, one after another, each loss forever changing the landscape of this place we all still think of as home. Little wonder that we found ourselves in tears.
“You knew this was going to happen,” my dad reminded her. And of course we did. Still, for a few moments there, as I stood on my crutches and my mother leaned on her cane in the unseasonably mild sunshine, and the trees crashed down one by one, the symbolism was almost too much to bear – the last act of The Cherry Orchard revisited.
But in a little while the workers moved on, out of sight. The felled trees were silent, the view out past the field so much vaster than before.
My parents spent many years creating a home here, but they leave it behind knowing full well the time has come to let go. In a sense, the letting go happened already, as they chose a new place to live, sold this one, began cleaning out sheds and cellars and drawers. For them, too, the debating and deliberating is over, and there is nothing to do but have faith in their own next steps.
A few days before my surgery, I admitted to my husband that I wanted a break from lessons in letting go. The last year has been hard, one loss after another. And the two hip replacements, though my own choice and surgeries from which I expect to fully recover, well, they represent a kind of loss as well.
It’s been a long time since I went up the stairs without grimacing or walked without pain. The two-year-long medical journey that led me to this decision has been humbling in every way. And, too, there is a vulnerability after surgery that’s altogether new to me, as challenging in its own way as any of the physical trauma. Like most of us, I much prefer the role of capable care-giver to that of needy patient. But here I am. My husband spots me as I step gingerly into the shower. My mom wrestles my tight support stockings up over my calves. My friends, bless them all, are offering meals. A nurse comes every couple of days to check my INR levels. I look at the pharmacy’s worth of medications and vitamins on the counter and can hardly believe they belong to me, the girl who eschews Tylenol.
And so, moment by moment and day by day, even as I heal and graduate to one crutch and learn to use the four-foot-long shoe horn to get my sneakers onto my feet, I also have to surrender over and over again to this new vulnerability, and to the loss of my young, fit, able body that served me so well for so many years with all its own parts intact. Right now, my newly operated on right leg is one inch longer than the left. The next surgery, no longer optional, will even me out. Till then, I’ll wear different kinds of shoes on each foot. No matter; I’ve had to let go of my fashion aspirations, too.
But just now, as I finally have the time and space to sit quietly and begin to reflect on all that’s happened in my life this autumn, I’m beginning to see things a little differently. Perhaps the hard lessons I’ve been learning haven’t been so much about letting go as they have been about letting be. “Letting go” suggests a need to actively do something: let go of hurt, let go of fear, let go of what’s over, let go of expectations of what will be next.
What if there is a path to the oasis in the heart after all? And what if that path opens at our feet when we stop trying so hard to decipher the roadmap through life and allow ourselves instead to simply be with life as it is?
Everything comes and goes: the green of springtime and the fleeting gold of fall, the apple blossoms of May and the ripe fruits of October, the tiny acorn and the mighty oak. Not to mention youth and age, homes and bodies, hopes and dreams, life and death. We don’t have to do anything – neither hold on tight nor let go. We can just let it be.
“People who have faith in life are like swimmers who entrust themselves to a rushing rivers,” says the wise Benedictine monk David Stendhal-Rast. “They neither abandon themselves to its current nor try to resist it. Rather they adjust their every movement to the watercourse, use it with purpose and skill, and try to enjoy the adventure.”
Enjoy the adventure. I love this idea just as much as I love the image of an oasis in my heart. And it seems that “letting it be” is both a profound affirmation of faith and an opening to possibility. I am savoring this quiet, healing time more than I ever would have expected. After many, many months of doing, being is quite a welcome relief. After all that worrying and second-guessing, it is lovely to allow my own caravan of thinking to come to a halt for a while. After a long chapter of caregiving, offered with all my love, I’m deeply grateful to those who are showing up to care for me. I do my new hip exercises. I read and take naps. Slow walks up and down the driveway. Some chair yoga. The oasis in my heart is green and quiet, its waters undisturbed. The days fly by.
a bit more. . .
So many of you reached out with kind words during my friend’s illness and that circle of support meant a great deal. It was an honor for me to have an opportunity to write Lisa’s obituary, to spend a few days trying to capture the essence of this very special friend and teacher. For those who might wish to know more about her, here’s a link that will bring you to the full version of my remembrance of her. May you, too, be inspired by the qualities she embodied. Click here.
On September 27, I joined Team Diane for the last seven miles of the Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk. Buoyed on by ibuprofen, my commitment to this important cause, and my dear friends (and glad that by mile 19, their pace had slowed down a good bit), I was able to walk that day in support of ovarian cancer research. And thanks to YOUR incredibly generous contributions, my walk brought over $2,500 directly to Dr. Ursula Matulonis and her ovarian cancer research team at Dana Farber. My very belated individual notes are coming soon. But in the meantime, here, now: thank you!
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