IN THE STILLNESS
NB.This will be the last post on this site. From now on I will be posting on my website, which along with my art and novels will include the blog.I would love it if you would visit me: www.maggiebarrett.com You will find there a place to subscribe so that you will automatically continue to receive new posts, along with other news. I think you will find it more user friendly and of course, I will continue to welcome your comments. Oh, and don’t forget to tell your friends!
I stare at this blank page. Minutes pass. Sentences begin to form, and immediately unravel. I am looking for an entrance that will lead me to an outcome that makes sense, that allows me to accept this reality: the one that began on a sunny afternoon in Siena and ended with my right femur broken in 2 places, pain beyond measure, hours in the emergency room until an X-ray was taken and my leg then put in traction for a week before surgery on our Wedding Anniversary; surgery for which I was anaesthetized from the waist down but throughout which I remained conscious, while an 8″ titanium plate was attached to my femur with 8 screws!
I will give only two details, brackets if you will, that will give you an idea of what the in between 10 days of hell were composed.
When, on that first night, I was finally transferred to a room that I would share with a woman who snored like a truck driver, a male student was sent in to insert a catheter. After two attempts during which he shoved it in my vagina, muttering the Italian equivalent of “fuck,” it became clear to me that I would have to fight for my survival in that hellish place…in a foreign language… whereupon I demanded a nurse.
The day before being discharged, I was left lying in my own fece for more than an hour. The result being that I arrived home with a severe UTI.
Okay. So, that, evidently is the inescapable entrance through which I had to pass in order to arrive here, today, sitting in my spiffy new wheelchair, writing to you.
The old, loaner wheelchair, the day after arriving home.
I’m sure many of you have experienced some kind of injury that enforces dependency and stillness, both of which bring into startling clarity the magic of our bodies capabilities which we daily take for granted. It is in this stillness that I do my best to surrender, for as my mother used to say, I have a bum like a ball-bearing, which is to say I am, by nature, constantly on the move.
Stillness, like meditation, is the state of being that most allows us to clearly see reality as it is, not how we are continually willing it to be. In this stillness, small achievements become hard earned victories: oh, the joy of saying goodbye to the bedpan; of navigating tricky doorways; hopping out of the wheelchair onto the toilet; getting the good leg strong enough to stand like a stork before the bathroom sink and wash myself, shampoo and cut my hair, before gratefully sinking back on my wheels and heading outside for breakfast with my beloved Joel.
And it is there, in the stillness, that I’m faced with the painful reality that the garden I birthed and tended for 8 years is beginning its slow decline; partly because I am unable to daily care for it and partly because global warming has arrived here in Tuscany. Where once May and June were temperate, now they are sub-Saharan. Temps in the 90’s started mid-May and continue to rise, promising 100 +degrees for the next four months, coupled with a lack of rain. The farm, on which we have lived for nearly 10 years, is already low on water. As a result we can only irrigate once instead of twice a day. Weeds are taking over; roses droop upon arrival, even the lavender spears bow their heads.
I always knew that one day we would leave here and that after our departure the garden would gradually disappear. But in the stillness I struggle with the pain of witnessing its demise at the same time that I am working hard to rise again. It is obvious to me in these moments, that our need to continually be on the move – whether it is scrolling on a device, or shopping, or inserting our will onto a stubborn piece of the planet – is our futile way of trying to avoid the inherent losses that are a part of life. I can only say that our fear of feeling the pain of loss numbs us to the mystical, spiritual gains in life…fleeting as they may be. Whereas our hubris in believing we can outsmart and outpace nature leads us to the greatest loss of all: not only the destruction of the planet, but the missed observations of the musical shiver of every leaf, blossom and blade, all of which move in synchronicity with the elements.
I will walk again, not as soon as I would wish, but maybe that’s a good thing. Perhaps the longer I experience stillness the more likely I will continue to incorporate it into the next phase of my life. As I have said before, I do not think “things happen for a reason.” We live in a universe of random energy. Shit happens. How we choose to deal with it is up to us. Don’t get me wrong, I have moments of self-pity and despair, but I choose not to stay there. I turn and turn again to the light and marvel at all that it reveals.
With love
Maggie
