Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Breathing in the silence

Our story has been a lot about breathing lately, for whatever reason.  I'm rejecting all attempts to make sense of it all, all quasi-mathematical postulations that begin, "Maybe the universe is trying to tell you..." -- as if somehow Event 1 + Event 2 + Event 3 = some lesson something/someone is trying to impart.  Nope.  Not buying that line right now, even though maybe there could be some form of comfort in it.

All I can say is that it's super-weird that two times in as many weeks, there's been something Really Big in our direct experience to do with pneumonia, lungs, danger and death.

It's making me think about breathing a lot.

Weird that virtually all of what we heard from the vets about Jasper's condition at the end is what we heard from Joe's doctors on Sunday.  The same rounds of tests and xrays and ultrasound and CT and bronchoscopy and oxygen masks and danger and everywhere death, its looming possibility in the room, in the rooms next door.

I realized yesterday, sitting in Joe's quiet hospital room, wanting visitors and dreading them at the same time, that I am still grieving my dog so much, that I wasn't ready for something else to happen already, that I'm feeling a bit battered by the sight (again) of my husband's body broken by bicycle.  It's so easy in some ways to be always the patient, never the care-giver, never to walk into the room into the horror of what has now been done unto the beloved, what harm this time, how many months reversal of fortune.

I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.

And breathing.

And realizing that for the first time in 14 years, the entire time we've been in this house, last night was the first time I ever slept alone here-- no dog, no husband, no kid.  That's just super-weird.

And really, really quiet.  I'm breathing, savoring each deep intake of breath fully, filling my lungs with it and then letting it go.

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