“Forced Stillness”

One minute life is normal.  I am chopping veggies to sauté for pasta dinner.  The next thing I know I am breathing in laughing gas as the paramedics struggle to get me into the ambulance amidst massive construction on the street in front of my house.  It was raining.  I spent that Friday night in the ER in a morphine haze.  All I could think about is that I truly do live in a sheltered cocoon as I watched a young mother with desperately sad eyes sitting next to her daughter’s hospital bed wondering if her daughter would survive a drug overdose.  A young man who had been stabbed in the back walked past my bed.  The patient who was in a head on car accident was sent to the ICU.  I laid there in the most uncomfortable bed and pondered how so much trauma happens daily in the world and yet I rarely see it so close.   My life is far from perfect and I have seen my share of trauma, my friends and family have too but that night my broken body reminded me of how fragile life is and how quickly it can change.  The next few months I needed time to heal from trauma. 

I spent a week in the hospital with the overtaxed, overworked and overloaded medical system and I was surprised by the great care I received.  Prior hospital visits have not necessarily gone this smoothly.  Perhaps the Pandemic has brought even more kindness and compassion out in the most challenging of professions?  During the time I spent in the hospital I had a strange sense of calmness and a feeling that everything was going to be ok.  It could have possibly been the drugs?  I was also buoyed by the love that surrounded me. I am grateful for the visitors, flowers, candy, meals, chocolate and gifts.  An outpouring of caring flowed to me from all across the world – literally.  I was very emotional with every gift. I am blessed.

After a week, I left the hospital and my peaceful countenance disappeared rapidly.  Suddenly doing simple daily tasks like eating, moving across the room and getting into bed became an ordeal with thoughts of writing and painting never entering my head at all.  I swore.  I swore a lot.   I was annoyed at myself for getting frustrated at this temporary interruption in my life knowing full well that I would heal one day when so many others will not.

After my first week at home, when getting through the day became a bit less exhausting, I began to enjoy my “forced stillness”.  I spent time on the deck recovering in the garden.  In this situation there was nothing I needed to go and get done.  I couldn’t go.  I didn’t think about emails, organizing my online art class or decluttering the linen closet, no zoom meetings, no plans at all.  Just friendly visits and home care and time with my brother and my pets, the squirrels, chipmunks, crows and deer.