December 24, 2003

The Still Point

It's raining in the Berkshires. I accidentally went to morning yoga today, owing to a clock-setting mistake which got me up an hour before breakfast was served in the dining chapel. I'd already dressed and washed before I realized it was ten to SIX, not ten to seven. Rather than go back to sleep for an hour and get up and do it again, I went ahead into the main sanctuary where maybe eight or nine people were already on mats.

I've only started doing a little yoga, mostly at home, so it's all still excitingly foreign to me and I'm not all that flexible. But I'm lured by the frequent assurances that a) you don't have to start out being adept, and b) you get more so as you practice. And I did miss both classes yesterday. So there I was, in the big room lit only by a few fairy lights (they dress it up for Christmas, with a big effigy of Ganesh at the door resplendant in his party vest, and blue and white fairy lights along the walls, and pictures of various blue-skinned deities scattered about). Aside from an aching lower back and some cramps, it was pretty good. A gray dawn broke just as we were finishing.

You've guessed by now that I'm not at home. We're playing a Christmas Eve concert at a yoga retreat tonight. They don't pay a great deal but we get to stay for up to 3 nights free, eat 3 meals a day, and go to any basic classes we want. When the weather is nice there is also a lot of hiking, and a labyrinth up the hill which I've been known to walk, in troubled times, as the sun comes up and burns off the predawn haze. I've spotted deer there, and the birds do a special sky-dance I've never seen anywhere else.

Yesterday I was a little weepy and slept most of the day when we weren't eating. Period, I guess, plus Will has gone back into the hospital. I was hoping he'd have a better weekend since the doctors adjusted his meds last week, but I got a message from him yesterday where he sounded so weak he hardly had breath to finish a sentence. He was then on his way in and didn't know whether they'd keep him for a few days. I remember the last few months of mom's life, and how she so often just wished it would be over. It's hard not to think morbidly about Will's prognosis at this point. Do I pray for him to get better enough to muddle through for some more months? Or that he'll be so bad off that they'll hurry up and find him a new heart? I don't know what to ask for. If I just say, please make him comfortable and unafraid, is that a copout when I could have prayed for a recovery? Is it even right to pray for recovery, when the transition to spirit might be the next right thing for a person?

Needless to say I didn't see him last week before our VT trip, as the doctors grounded him for the holidays. I know he wanted to visit his folks in Ohio, and of course I wonder if he'll see them again at this point.

It is amazing to me to think of all I've gone through in the last two years regarding this man. I felt deeper and more debilitating desire for him than I've ever felt for anyone (and have felt no significant desire for anyone since). I suffered through about a year of paralyzing depression before beginning to rise up and see light again. Somehow, by trying different things, I figured out how to cope, and a slow, deliberate healing took place. Finally it even transpired that we came back together to continue a friendship that I thought was lost -- sporadic though our contact has been, owing to distance and heavy schedules. I can't say how grateful I am and how it all feels so overseen, and on some level okay. But it's still so grieving to think of him suffering now, since now is the only time there is, and I can only help in such vague, limited ways. I walk down the hallway here and think, he can't do this today. I have to be grateful to my core, utterly conscious, utterly mindful that I can walk down a hallway.

So I do my breathing, and try to hold my poses, and keep reeling my thoughts gently back in to center. Out to Will, back in to the breath. This is how it will be. Breathing, and waiting at the still point for news.