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Routines are like pages in a book whose material inspires, entertains, and instructs. Skilled in the craft and art of bookmaking, authors nuance the next right word to carry their project forward, until the work is completed.
I liken the routine I follow, daily, to this process. At first it was awkward to string the components together, not knowing what was wrong who me. For several years, what I call picky eaters or symptoms, have lodged in my lungs gnawing on my limited energy and enveloping me in more symptoms, especially inertia and shortness of breath.
The eventual diagnosis, ILD with RA, set the necessary pacing and parameters for living in this aging body. I learned timely pauses interspersed among activities of daily living. I learned to accept help with personal care and meal preparation, with its clean-up. I learned to rest/sleep atop my bed when wipe-out reduced me to inactivity. Such patterned each day within the doable routine of my housebound status.
However, the progression of my terminal illness has mandated major adjustments: use of continuous oxygen, the use of a speech amplifier to increase the volume of my voice, the dependence upon my walker, longer night-sleep maintained by low doses of liquid morphine and Lorazapan, and recently, time-released doses of morphine, 24/7, to help me breathe—all within my flexible routine.
Like authors at the end of their day, I’m glad to let go of my routine, until the following morning. It’s working, with God’s help.
At 7:10 A. M., I awoke with this shocking dream:
I’m alone, watching a horrifying scene: a bald nude unconscious man, with pasty skin, lays on the ground surrounded by enemies, their steel-toed boots kicking him. One of them covered his privates with a rag when a cameraman came by and began taping.
This dream from the collective unconscious still shivers my innards—more visceral than accounts of Nazi and Soviet torture that I’ve studied over the years. Even the morning spent at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp was tamed by the sense of it being a tourist attraction, with informative signage.
Stunned, I still shudder. Long ago, I learned that the Dreamer tells the truth: hatred, anger, and penchant to retaliate—even with violence—behaviors I would never own in the conscious world, hide within the shadow of my psyche.
But such behaviors come with being human. Following the collapse of inner restraints, instinctual madness zings through dripping caves like bats: their mayhem terrifies. We all have breaking points, and I have mine, whether expressed or not.
The concentrated negative/evil energies, all masculine, also suggest the collapse of my own, in the face of my mortality, given the minuscule increase in my symptoms, from month to month. No longer is it appropriate to remain passive, unconscious like the victim. I am still breathing and the Twelve Steps of CPA are still to be practiced.
The antidote to this insanity is found in Step One: humble acceptance of my powerlessness and the acceptance of the unacceptable; then on to the cleansing and forgiving Steps, with Higher Power’s release of noxious energies and restoration to wholeness, until the next time.
It takes daily practice…
He was fussing for something, his dark eyes fired with desperation. He wanted something, badly, this very moment. He’d just woken from his nap. At intervals, his lips struggled with the semblance of a word, intelligible to him, but not to his mother kneeling next to him. “But!” it sounded like; then, “Chip!” Tension mounted between them. More sounds came from pursed lips, and more fussing and jiggling his bare feet on the kitchen floor.
To break the impasse, the mother placed her fist in her opened hand, their agreed-upon gesture for help. Immediately, the toddler understood, returned the gesture, and giggled; then, ran for his Sippy cup on the chair. He needed a drink. More giggles and hugging enlarged both worlds as she watched him suck on the plastic straw. His efforts to make speech rather than point were not lost on her. He was learning.
This anecdote reveals the difficulty of acquiring words and stringing them together in meaningful sentences to get our needs met—an ongoing task between the developing child and his parents.
Yet, language is a living exchange among peoples and demands consciousness for accuracy. With more words coined to accommodate new experiences, this ongoing task continues throughout life. More than ever, relevance in speech and the printed word is urgent.
Such is the ideal to which I hold fast, despite the jargon, around me, that passes for communication and seeds global exchanges with confusion.
Returning to heart-solitude and listening deeply for the gift of words can warm the frigid condition of our language. Real intimacy is still possible.
Heart Whisperings 