This piece is quite a bit different than other blog posts. It is a very personal recounting of an experience I had on the east coast of Canada that had such a profound impact.
Loving can hurt
Loving can hurt sometimes
But it’s the only thing that I know
When it gets hard You know it can get hard sometimes
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive
(Lyrics from Photograph by Ed Sheeren)
One Saturday afternoon, I arrive at Beaty’s house from the 2-hour drive that I have taken monthly for 5 years. It is a beautiful fall afternoon. The leaves have turned golden and are falling to the ground. As far as I can see, the sky is blue. The air has the slight whiff of crispness despite the warmth of the sun that is unusual for this time of year. It is an excellent day for gardening; Beaty had spent the afternoon doing just that.
Our monthly get-togethers are filled with laughter, stories and walks in the park. These are times we treasure. Sitting at the dining room table looking out over the back yard, we eat a dinner of hot freshly made soup, and catch up.
As the evening wears on, Beaty’s left arm becomes really sore from the accidental whack against the sharp edge of a wooden beam in her garden. It seems that the best course of action is to have it looked at the nearest hospital. So we hop into my rental car and take the short 5-minute drive to the closest trauma emergency facility.
We walk into emergency prepared for a long night of waiting. Now Beaty is in pain. Every time she moves her wrist or forearm, the pain shoots up the arm almost reaching her shoulder. Triage is quick and soon we are escorted to the part of the emergency room where they take care of broken bones. Beaty is giddy and in shock. The force of the blow to her arm left her body shaking. As we wait, we laugh and talk. I read out loud the book that I am reading. With her one good hand, she texts others to let them know what is happening. We laugh as she reads the hilarious responses. It is all a big adventure. We watch as people ahead of us are attended to. Others arrive with sundry broken bones and sprains. Young hockey players bare chested arrive in their hockey pants with dislocated shoulders and broken bones from the ravages of the sport. They are wheeled in gurneys or wheelchairs up and down the hallways in front of us on their way to various diagnostic appointments.
As we wait for Beaty to be looked at, I am vaguely aware of a family congregating in a room next to our bench. People come in and out of the room talking. Pop cans, empty coffee cups, and food wrappers cover the round table in the center of the room. Several generations have been waiting for awhile for news of their loved one somewhere in these ER halls.
My legs need a stretch, and I am curious about what is going on in other parts of the ER. Half way down the hall, the doors to a trauma room suddenly open to reveal the scene inside. A thin blond nurse in her 30s, dressed in blue hospital fatigues stands in the door way, a stethoscope dangling around her neck. She shows a young couple from the room. On the trauma room table, a big burly young man lay motionless surrounded by equipment and monitors. His chest is bare. A ventilator hose is taped to his mouth. Electrodes monitoring his heart rate are stuck to areas around his shoulders. The starched white hospital sheet covering him is perfectly smooth, and is folded down neatly just above the waist. Someone had taken a great deal of care to place the sheet in such a perfect position possibly anticipating that the sheet would be released from the fold to cover the face. As quickly as the sliding door opened, it closes again.
This Saturday night, I am glad to be in the company of one of my oldest and closest friends. Our friendship has grown into an oasis of sanity, and acknowledgement. Our paths had crossed so close to each other over the years – two continents and two degrees, but like ships passing through the same harbour, we never met. Our lives finally docked in Europe and we quickly became fast friends. I am grateful for a friendship strong enough to hold all that is painful, hard and difficult about the world and about relationship.
It had been a particularly emotional weekend. My client work in the days before were of death and sudden death. There were conversations that people wished that they had had but now regretfully would never have. There were conversations that people refused to have leaving others wondering, hurt and bereft. Listening is a painful reminder of being shut out by someone I love deeply. In the silence after asking for a conversation where I will be contrite and humble in the truth of my actions, I plug up the information holes with my projections, fears, worries, and likely false interpretations that are way more painful than the original rupture. I wish that it wasn’t so.
I wonder sometimes if I am too naïve or idealistic. I believe that it is possible to have healing conversations; to be complete in relationship ruptures even if the relationship doesn’t continue in the same form. The journey to forgiveness and acceptance can take a long time; it doesn’t have to. Anger, betrayal, resentment, grievances, and hurt calcify into bitterness, grudges and holding on to being right – friendships fade, lovers disappear and people die with regrets.
I return to where Beaty is sitting. A doctor comes out of another set of sliding doors and plunks down on the bench beside her. “Hi my name is Adam. I am one of the doctors here. There aren’t any beds available so I will have to see you here.” He twists and turns her arm. Her face winces in pain. Adam says that they need to get an x-ray. Twenty minutes, Beaty is called down.
While we wait for the results of the x-ray, I become aware that the situation facing the family has drastically and tragically changed. Earlier in the evening, there was a hopeful but pensive waiting. Now there is only grief – heart wrenching and profound. In front of us, a woman grabs onto her boyfriend for comfort and cries uncontrollably. I overhear someone say “he was only 17. What a tragedy” A few minutes later, the young man’s mother walks towards us with her hand over her mouth. She finds a seat in the family room and bursts into sobs. Others leave the room and walk down the hall. It is clear now that each member is being given the opportunity to say their good-byes. Death has arrived and staked its claim. The crisp white hospital sheet has found its final resting place over the face.
The young man’s death is reported in the papers the next morning. The only son of a First Nation Chief failed to negotiate a turn in his car; a car that he had just posted as a cover photo of his Facebook page only the week before. The car had landed upside down in a pond where he would be for 10 minutes before rescuers could extricate him. While paramedics found a pulse and he was airlifted to the hospital, the trauma team doctors and nurses are unable to save him. Unable to do anything more, the family makes the painful decision to remove life support. His pride and joy tragically became a vehicle of death.
Beaty gets a cast on her arm and we make our way back to the car. It is just about midnight – a liminal time, a threshold time between one day and another; a magical time between the worlds. I pull out of the parkade for the 5-minute drive back to her house. We both turn our heads to face the front doors of Emergency. The sliding doors open and the family walks through them with one less to count as their own. All heads are down. In unison, they walk slowly, methodically and so close together; breaking away from the tribe is not an option. Being together is necessary to suffer the weight of the profound grief. In the dark of this night, this family now emerges at the beginning of a new day and a new reality that had changed so suddenly and abruptly. They have entered into the time of the death rite.
I can’t sleep that night. The day for that family started like any other day. By the end of it, the world is radically different. My heart suffered along side them and I witnessed something profound.
It is so easy to be complacent and forget that life is fragile. We forget – I forget – that life can change in a blink of an eye. It is in these moments I struggle with the questions – “What matters most” “do I live from my heart, love and compassion for others or do I get stuck in ‘right fights’ and holding on to past hurts”. Negativity crushes the soul and bruises the heart.
We profess our intention to not hurt or to be hurt yet we break bones, break friendships and break relationships. In the words of Leonard Cohen, there is crack in everything and that is how is how the light gets in. If we are to live our integrity, we must take personal responsibility for our shadows and take ownership of the parts of ourselves that make us uncomfortable and for our outdated childhood agendas. The shadow erupts through the cracks to make us more conscious of our conditioned responses and neurotic adapted reflexes that break things.
Have I lived up to my own ideals? Not in the least! Do not think that I am above holding out and on to the need to be right. However, I am coming to believe that the soul keeps a ledger of when we do not follow our hearts, go against the truth of our feelings, and mis-align with the harmony of the universe.
We think that it doesn’t matter when it does matter.
We think that we can continue through life in our self-righteousness and arrogance meanwhile the poison of our wounding festers and gnaws at our souls.
This moment is all we have. Do we hear the call? Or do we dismiss it and postpone it to another day.
My own holding out demanded redemption and for amends during the writing of this piece. The universe presented me with an opportunity to apologize for my part in a relationship breakdown that happened several years ago. I had held onto anger and hurt for far too long. While saying “I am sorry” was vulnerable and very uncomfortable, I took the opportunity to say it, and received an apology in return that was very welcomed. Something shifts and heals through a mutual authentic acknowledgement of hurt done to the other. The soul is appeased and soothing balm begins the healing process of the heart.
“What matters most in this moment” is a question that we need to answer for ourselves as we negotiate the struggles and pain of life. As James Hollis said “Despite how risky love is, how easily we are hurt, none of us can run from risking the dangerous shoals of love, compassion and openness to others, lest we live a sterile, unrelated life locked within the constricted frames of our history and our comfort zones” (What Matters Most. James Hollis p xi)
Loving can heal
Loving can mend your soul
And it’s the only thing that I know (know)
I swear it will get easier
Remember that with every piece of ya
And it’s the only thing we take with us when we die
(Lyrics from Photograph by Ed Sheeren)
© Christina Becker
December 2015