Gratitude

Hello dear readers.

I am starting to feel the impending surgery, starting to get preoccupied. While I hesitate to go there, I am thinking about the weeks and months after. It is hard not to. I’m noticing changes. I’ve already started letting go – or putting my head down as I count the days. Since the fall I’ve spent the first hour or two at dialysis by doing work – either grading or reading for my class at the U. As you know I also finished work on my teaching license this fall (yay!). So I’ve worked to keep doing my things, to keep living my life. But since I heard that the surgery was scheduled I’ve been less concerned about being productive, about getting things done. I noticed that I no longer do work at dialysis – it’s all Netflix shows and cribbage on my phone. For a long time dialysis felt like a Monday, the interminable expanse of the week ahead of me. Suddenly it’s Thursday afternoon, or even Friday morning, when I’ve lost track of the week and the stretch of Saturday and Sunday morning lay, invitingly, before me. I’m worried less about being productive – a good feeling certainly.

Thank you for your overwhelming response to the good news. It is humbling to receive so much love and support from you. The capacity for love and care from people continues to astound me. I marvel at it.

When I am open to that compassion, when I feel it, everything is OK. I don’t know what it is about me that resists that compassion, that insists upon remaining outside and battered. I do know that remaining open to that compassion is a struggle – it is an awful lot to feel. It takes a lot of strength to be that vulnerable. 

The other day a colleague of mine stopped in to wish me luck. We talked a bit about this blog and wondered at our colleague Jackie, at her generosity and care. Then he said, “Its hard for people – its hard for me, I assume its hard for some other people – to know that people care for me.” “Yeah” I said. I teared up, and I think he teared up – it was a moment where everything felt OK. Thanks for reading!