for the past ten days, my brother and i have accompanied my mom through test after test, appointment after appointment–126 in total. we have been waiting in limbo-land for life and death information.
waiting at the intersection of life and death, living takes on a realness that is both heavy and liberating.
the heaviness comes with the overwhelm of our human attempts to pin things down. and of course, try we must! after all, there are jobs, children, …responsibilities. there have been moments, feeling stuck here in minnesota in the midst of a blizzard, with my ailing mother, i’ve thought, i can’t just keep waiting here. i have to get home–i have stuff to do. i have meetings on monday! i have to get cat litter! i have to make sure meg gets to her first guitar lesson. after all, this period of waiting and limbo and in-between could go on forever and who knows what we’re going to need down the road? i have to spend my time wisely. yes, i need to go.
and then, reality hits and with it the truth that my mama’s heart is giving up quickly and that minnesota ain’t down the road from home and that this is where i need to be. after all, meetings and cat litter and guitar lessons can wait or go on without me.
and then again, can they? should they? what’s more important? missing meg’s first guitar lesson or waiting with my mom? bailing out on work or waiting with my mom? this is the heaviness of decision-making at the intersection of life and death, where every decision takes on a whole other layer of meaning. more is at stake.
and the joke is, we are always at that intersection. every day, every moment. we forget this truth, with all the business of our lives. and with that forgetting, we lose some of the meaning that adds weight to our decisions, to how we choose to spend our time and energy.
to be honest, i’m kinda grateful we forget! it’s easier. this limbo land of waiting ain’t exactly the most comfortable place to be. it can be exhausting.
mostly, it feels exhausting when i’m flailing around trying to grab hold of something solid. i wear myself out trying to stake my claims and assert my control. essentially, i wear myself out when i fight the present moment. on the other hand, when we can accept where we are and the reality of our situation, a peace sets in. an easiness.
yesterday, i witnessed my mama’s ease with awe. i’ll never forget her fearlessness. as she was prepped for her surgery today, she was being bombarded with all the people and all the interventions, all day. she was starting to grow weary of it all. she wasn’t alone. just as she started to order her food, two other staff entered her room and explained they were there to discuss nutrition. i’m assuming, to address her diabetes. one of them sweetly asked, “is it okay for us to talk with you?”
“oh, we can we talk.” my mom replied. “I’m about to have my second heart surgery tomorrow and so let’s wait. There might not be any need to have talks about nutrition.”
my mama’s truthfulness was a gut punch to these two, well-meaning staff who fumbled and mumbled and slid out of the room. when they left, the three of us broke into hysterical laughter, tears streaming down our faces as we sat squarely at our intersection. a sweet moment of being wholly together, with no pretense separating us. liberation from our delusions that we are ever anywhere else. freedom from our desperate attempts to be elsewhere, where things are planned and comfortable and where we police our own being.
as i sit here in the waiting room of the ICU, waiting for news on my mama, this is what i know to be true:
waiting is where we find God, Spirit, Source. it is in this in-between space, the land of limbo, where we face that we are always, in fact, at this intersection of life and death. this space is exactly where we humbly accept that being present is a place of liberation, where we can hold the joy and suffering of it all.
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