Seeing Clearly: Monday night, March 3

Monday, March 3, 2008

Monday night, March 3

Three weeks post-op today. Annie went back to Chicago with her car loaded with the accumulation of four+ weeks here in Holland...thank you, my girl, for being here through all of this. I have appreciated having people around and will continue to need to stay connected with all of you as time goes on and this adventure keeps unfolding. It is certainly one of hills and valleys and I must admit to being in a valley now and then lately. I think that the reality of the loss of my eye and its vision are settling in now. The surgery is over, the cancer is (hopefully) gone, the swelling and bruising are almost a memory...and now for the rest of my life! Realizing that what I am looking at today is going to be the "new normal" is a bit of a blow at times. I am sure that my other senses will step up to the plate and round out my sensory experience as time goes on, but today, I missed the richness of my former visual experience. Of course, I need only remind myself that I at least HAVE vision to get out of that line of thinking in a hurry.

I have joined a website called Losteye.com, a message board and info forum started by a man who had the same thing I did-interocular melanoma. It is a great find, full of resources and supportive, upbeat people who are going through the same thing I am, or who are long past this stage and leading happy and productive lives. There are so many different reasons that people become blind in one eye and the stories are as varied as the people who write them. I am relieved to post questions and concerns and have them addressed by those who know. It is important to check sources, too--I got on one site that had misleading stats about longterm survival from my cancer and it scared me to death until I read further and realized that it wasn't accurate information. My friends, this is one heck of an education.

I drove home from a meeting in the dark tonight and it went fine. The lights threw me a little but I quickly adapted.

Thanks to Jan for the call today, and to Nathan for coming over and helping with the license plate on the RAv. Also to Jade the Warrior Princess for stopping by for a cuppa after work. All of you got me through the day!

As always, so thankful for my life and for my friends and family....feeling a little somber tonight, I guess, and like the road is a long one ahead, but also knowing tht I am safely held throughout....

love you guys....

1 comment:

annie hagar said...: mam! i got home quickly (traffic was a breeze) and unloaded the car with relative ease. there was some huffing (and maybe a little grunting) involved, but aside from that..

anyway, everyone in chicago is asking about you and i think you get to look forward to a carload of twenty-somethings invading your house sometime this fall.

i'll be back in a few weeks!

xx; March 4, 2008 at 5:30 PM

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The Journey

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver.

a poem from TRAVELING MERCIES by Annie Lamott

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feeling we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--w.s. merwin

from Kabir, Indian mystic poet

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!...

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten--

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with

an empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

Night Letter to theReader by Billy Collins

Night Letter to the Reader

I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,

a bird leaving the nest,

a snail taking a holiday from its shell,

but only to stand on the lawn,

an ordinary insomniac

amid the growth systems of garden and woods.

If I were younger, I might be thinking

about something I heard at a party,

about an unusual car,

or the press of Saturday night,

but as it is, I am simply conscious,

an animal in pajamas,

sensing only the pale humidity

of the night and the slight zephyrs

that stir the tops of the trees.

The dog has followed me out

and stands a little ahead,

her nose lifted as if she were inhaling

the tall white flowers,

visible tonight in the darkened garden,

and there was something else I wanted to tell you,

something about the warm orange light

in the windows of the house,

but now I am wondering if you were even listening

and why I bother to tell you these things

that will never make a difference,

flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.

but this is what I want to do--

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling,

the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,

and that at one point, the moon,

looking like the top of Shakespeare's

famous forehead,

appeared, quite unexpectedly,

illuminating a band of moving clouds.

This poem does what all good art does-it makes my heart fill as I recognize myself in it, and I say, "yes! that is exactly it!" and I realize once again that I need to tell you so many things. I feel inspired. Alive.

There are not enough hours.

a note from Kevin Griffin, author and spritual leader from Shambhala