As I remember these weeks and months in 2011, I seize and am seized: Why do we go through all this suffering? The facility did hold off on the spraying at that time, and my mom did celebrate her birthday with all of us (momma grit!). My brother and his kids arrived for it after mom was out of the hospital, and other good friends were there from out of town too. (But the lawns were sprayed during her party.) Our ceiling did eventually get fixed. But other problems remained chronic and very painful. People say:
Frankly, people who have easy answers to the question of suffering scare and offend me. You can’t say the truth of someone else’s life for them. People who do are not living their own experiences and questions as human beings. Can you really say these things about a child being horrifically murdered or to a 15-year-old sex slave or the few survivors of a near genocide or the lead-poisoned kids of Flint, Michigan? The more gates I have passed through, the more I see how few people face themselves or the difficult questions of life. Avoidance. Denial. Projection. All the goodies come out to play when you yourself go through tough times and look to others for help and understanding. Yours may have been a different journey, but this has been mine. I’m not saying I have this beat, I’m a work in progress as much as anyone, but here are my tracks. Because at the center of the labyrinth, after having paid in blood at each of these gates, I went in search of my own answers. I luckily found guides worth my time skilled and wise enough to support me in this wilderness—who have helped me make my own heroine’s journey in search of my own truths and wisdom, meaning, and healing. WTF?? It's December 2015 and I re-read my journal from May-August 2011 (see Part I: Bone and Air): I hold my hands cupped, hoping something of substance will be poured into them. What comes are tears pouring out of my eyes like a flash flood crashing into my curled fingers and tumbling onto my shirt and belt, releasing even as they shock and scour me with their intensity. So my first effort is compassion—to feel the pain and suffering, the onslaught of these two perfect storms crashing into one another. There was no way around it, looking back. Shit just kept happening. I weep, bend in pain remembering those days, especially of watching my mom suffer and not being able to prevent it, but also for what I was trying to do, all I was trying to fix, to hold, to protect and defend, to recover. My second effort: I throw my gloves to the ground and curse and slam my ski poles against a Doug fir tree. I am alone in the woods and am damn fucking mad. (Not only about all that happened but about today: my ’88 4Runner on its last legs, financial stress, bills, a need to move into more work/my career but feeling burned out. And I’m one of the lucky ones…) My third effort: I cup the question in my palm like a small candle. Okay, why do we go through all this suffering? What is all this about? We come here, we have good and bad times, sometimes a lot of bad, and then we die. WTF?? I hold this question out into the sheer blackness of night, clouds blocking stars, hoping something will find its way to this flame before the winds snuff it out. My fourth effort is to go to my spiritual help. We sit. We have tea. Why do we go through all this suffering? It is so painful for you because you are not using the right tool. What? See with your heart. They obviously don’t know what they’re talking about, or they don’t understand what I mean. At least the tea tasted pretty good. There’s so much shit that goes on. We just have to deal with it. I don’t see anything else. There’s no meaning in it. It just happens. So much suffering. What do you mean: see with my heart? Little sparks fly. I am a bit lost. I take another sip of tea, put the cup down onto the saucer. Breathe. Something has touched me, and I relax a little. I don’t understand, but I feel something. My fifth effort: back to the woods. What the hell does it mean to see with my heart? And what do we do about all the harm and violence, the suffering, the pain? After days of snowshoeing and skiing in the dusky woods, I am muscle weary and the skin around my eyes is rashy from tears splaying across my face.
I chisel off the pesticide spraying notice and let it fall to the ground. I pound the blade in and break off a monstrous chunk—my mom’s suffering. I let it land. It shatters and the pieces scatter for miles. I carve off the scent of Tide, the menstrual cramps, ducking under scaffolding, the exhaustion, our arguments, our stress, the snowstorm, my asthma attacks, the roof failure, the light bulb shattering. They are now at my feet, powder. What’s underneath all this shit is our love. It’s both fire and gemstone, Light and Matter. What I see is this fire being stoked and fed, this gemstone being carved in each moment we gave and received love. The point isn’t the poison, the fracture. Yes, those had to be dealt with, and they were significant and all encompassing for a while. The point is what we fed, what we carved. That’s the point. That’s what lasts. No, it’s no silver lining; it’s no panacea. There’s no ‘take away’ here. It doesn’t make it all worth it. Don’t be cheap. My mom did die from the myeloma. Jeff and I did come to the end of our marriage and get divorced. The pain and grief and suffering did not end in 2011. But, we gave and received love, however mixed up in stress and arguments and burnout it was at times. The pain has run its course. Echoes of it are still running through and out of me as I write, do Tai Chi, do yoga, ski, weep. But I see now, what remains is this love—glowing, burning, casting beautiful rainbows on the wall when the light hits it right. It has survived death. It has survived divorce. I know because I burn with it; I am alive in it. Nothing will ever be the same. I grab my hip pack and an apple, bending over from intense menstrual cramps. I duck under the scaffolding inside my house and greet the construction guys—one of whom still reeks of Tide. Jeff gets him some replacement clothing—a T-shirt and jeans—that have only been washed with fragrance-free laundry soap. I grit my teeth, hoping the pain will subside, breathe through my mouth to minimize my dizziness and throat tightening from inhaling Tide fragrance, climb into my ’88 4Runner, and drive an hour to the hospital in Boulder. Two “perfect storms” coming together … me in the middle. Six days earlier, on July 8, 2011, the phone rang a little after midnight. When I heard my mom’s voice—metallic and reverberating with pain—I zeroed in on the details. I fell; I’m on the floor; it’s cold; they are taking care of me. I broke something in my leg or hip. I am in a lot of pain. I can’t move my leg. An ambulance is on the way. Will you meet me at the hospital? I said something to make her laugh, but she caught the tail of it and wrapped it back around my neck. Okay, that was a test. This is pretty bad. Her tolerance for pain is extremely high. She is alert and herself but seriously injured. Shit. Get a move on. Jeff and I packed up and went to the hospital where my mom was already in surgery to have a metal rod inserted alongside her femur. The question was: will the rod hold? Was there enough good bone in there not affected by the myeloma? And if not … true: the pain and the fact that she would probably never walk again meant that these could be her final weeks. And, rough ones… The Context My mom had just recovered from a bad case of shingles—the scars still radiating and red on her kyphotic back—and, prior to that, a week plus of intense pain during which I had walked into her room to find her curled up from it, eyes half closed. No make up. Her skin hanging. Her pain meds had been pushed to every two hours when they should have been at every hour. We also had to go back to the pain doctor multiple times for more treatments and medication adjustments. Meanwhile, the myeloma never took a vacation. Mom continued taking low-dose chemo when she was able to. On the home front, Jeff and I had been talking to contractors in May and June about getting our ceiling fixed. In early January 2007, in an 80-mph wind and snow event, the roof failed on our newly built healthy home and snow packed the ceiling and melted into the house. Drips lined the inside of the window wells. While I was on the phone with our builder, the light bulb in the loft exploded, shards tinkling across the loft floor. Water in the wiring. The bulb was on, and hot. We evacuated within 24 hours, driving down Boulder Canyon at night in a snowstorm, finding respite at Jeff’s parents’ house an hour away. At that point and for weeks to come, I didn’t know if I could live in the house again given my mold sensitivities from previous mold poisonings… And aside from one friend’s house, it was the only place I could be day after day and not have physical reactions. It was my hospital. My recovery center. My safe zone. My home. Long story short: We did seal up the roof vent and rip out a third of the interior of the house (while living in a shed on our property), dry it out and check for mold, and then rebuild it all. But, the next summer, we were hit with a devastating smell. The new insulation was heating up in the summer sun warming the roof and off-gassing into the house, triggering asthma and other symptoms for me. Home: still not safe. Back to It I arrive at the hospital to get hit by two more storm waves. The doctor had reinstated the chemo and steroid for my mom. F*** #1. No. Not yet. Wait till she’s through this and is clearly in recovery before hitting her with more chemo. Why would he do this without talking to her primary oncologist? My mom’s friend and hired caregiver handed me a flyer from mom’s residence. They will be spraying pesticides on the trees and lawns on Monday and Friday. F*** #2. Last time I encountered fresh pesticide spray, I was numb on the right side of my body for four days. My doctor’s orders: wait at least three days before going by trees or across lawns that have been sprayed. I am on the Colorado Pesticide Sensitive Registry, but it only provides some modicum of protection at my residence, nowhere else. I get the chemo and steroid DC’d. I call the facility where my mom lives and through tears and strong words explain that my mom is in a precarious situation, may not live long (if the rod doesn’t hold), may need my help when she returns, and that I can’t be poisoned in trying to simply help my mother. They hold off on the spraying, but feathers are not only ruffled, they are on fire… I am on fire too and shaking. The fact that the very cancer that is slamming my mom time and again is likely caused by pesticides (among other suites of chemicals) shoots red flames across my eyes. I take a deep breath, dry my eyes, shake out some of my anger, vent to a friend on the phone, and head back into the hospital, taking the elevator to my mom’s floor. I step into her room. She perches on the edge of the hospital bed trying to shift her weight toward the walker, her gown open in the back showing the smear of scarred skin from the shingles—the series of thoracic vertebrae that had crushed from the myeloma causing her to hunch way over. Her usually well-kept hair is frizzy in the back from days of being pressed against the pillow. She turns to me, but her speech is a bit slurred and dimmed from the pain meds and the pain. I can’t hear her. The physical therapist coaches her on. She pulls the walker closer in, inches forward, carefully stands up, but then doubles over in pain when she puts weight on the injured leg. I break in two. |
Christine Weeber
Writer, editor, healer, and not-so-professional carousel rider. Archives
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