for the love of the Sage Bug, no.3: 08/12/10

~'Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.' ~  (Meditations from a Course in Miracles)

~'For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.'~ (The Magician's Nephew, book one of The Chronicles of Narnia)

For the last three days, I've been reading to Sage the beginning of one of her favorite chronicles (and mine!): that of the fantastical world of Narnia, how it came to be and, interestingly enough, the role humans played in it from the get-go. Many would say it's just a childhood fantasy, yet I'm not so sure about that. Its author C.S. Lewis seems to have a curiosity and connection to things spiritual and divine, questions of God, love, rebirth, renewal, what is eternal and therefore what actually matters in this life. Being in this particularly intense world where life really and truly is right now and could shift at any given moment, the current runs deep as to seeing and realizing the worlds of which Lewis writes.

It's a funny thing, being here in the ICU. It's a world that you hardly know or even consider at all, and then when you are in it, it becomes the only one you know. Time slips away and is measured in the path of the sun across the sky. Days go by and I have to remember to ask the date and what day of the week it might possibly be. I have my own rituals that until two weeks ago would be unfathomable. Getting up and moving from the chair by the bed, eating food made by unknown hands, excessive amounts of underclothing, showering late at night, sleeping on a cot. Finding comfort in the path I follow to my bathroom of choice, to the same stall that each time provides a strange familiar solace. An odd gift of privacy, in this world that has none, where nothing - and I mean nothing - is hidden.

So this story, "The Magician's Nephew".  It's an interesting read at any time and yet there is something about it right now that's so close to the bone, as they say. About worlds that are there which we tend not to access, worlds that are called into birth and ones that die away. Newness. Life. Regret. Anger. Birth. Decay. Death. Recovery. Angst. Joy. Choice. What it is that, when there seems to be absolutely nothing, is the thing that brings the cure, holds the salve, discovers the touch. 

It's a wonderful story, full of imagery, wonder, fantasy and curiosity that takes me out of the here and now of medications, tubing, numbers, containers, monitors and measurements of everything Sage's body does: fluid intake and output, oxygen saturation of her blood, heart rate at any given time, blood pressure and what that means and can mean (which raises my own blood pressure), and the machine, always the machine, which inflates her lungs and relentlessly pumps air into them. As we hear of Narnia, Aslan, the white witch and talking animals, the present world Sage and I physically inhabit fades just a bit. I focus less on the people in the white coats and green scrubs (don't get me wrong, I've come to look for, feel affection toward, and admire them), who constantly and consistently come in and out, back and forth, monitoring and checking on Sage's progress-lack of progress-dip-forward movement-trends-like-dislikes-signs-numbers. When they come, I look to Sage, check with Peter Rabbit, and silently bless them.

It's the only thing I can do, really. I can't see any other way; it's part of the "positive energy" that is absolutely a basis of Sage's course of care -according to me. I don't really know if it's a bit off.  I'm not really sure if anyone considers the sign on Sage's door that has been placed there by yours truly, which reads: HEY! GOOD JOU JOU ONLY! THAT MEANS ~POSITIVE THINKING / LOVING ATTITUDE / ~ STRESS-FREE ZONE/ THIS MEANS YOU! NO MATTER YOUR CONNECT TO THIS HEALING SPACE! - FAMILY FRIEND OR MEDICAL MIRACLE MAKERS! FIND THE GOOD, BRING IT IN!

Is this new age? ridiculous? absurd? grasping at straws? worthy of consideration? You hear people say things like, 'well the ICU patients who get better are the ones whose families are really involved' or 'even though she will have no memory of this, she can hear you and knows you're here'....so then, if this is true, it would then follow that what occurs around Sage's space AND how anyone enters into it could be as important as the medical and numbers component. I know there are plenty of people who think it's nonsense, that it's up to the body and no matter what you do, it's all just going to go the way it's going to go. I guess I just happen to have a different opinion, along with empirical evidence from our three months in the NICU 19 years ago, that the miracle can be attained and you have to visualize it into existence. I've been here before, I know this world. My own memory body serves my anxiety as well as my resoluteness. And if I know any one true thing, it is just as Lewis intimates: there is a symbiotic relationship between your experience of seeing, hearing, living - and who you are.

Sage is alright. I just know this. I cannot explain it, the why or the how. It just is this way, and believe me, I have no rose-colored glasses on. I know the meaning of the furtive looks, furrowed brows, breath slightly held, words carefully chosen. I know I know I really deeply know all too well what is at stake - and I call forth some other knowledge that comes to me when I least expect it.  I have come to read the language of those caring for Sage as much as the numbers they interpret. Worlds that are out there and here right now, open to being accessed, if we just dial in.
Speaking of which:
my lovely Lucy, dearest niece and birthday cousin to Nathan called me up the other day and confirmed that she is most definitely dialed in.... She wanted to tell me two things, her mama said. Okay, yes and good, I need a reprieve. And in that voice that only she possesses, Lucy brought me back to wonder and to knowing that the God of details and small ones works in profound and mysterious ways:
"Blessing to Sagey," she said over the phone. "Blessing for Sagey. Sophie is sad. And I love Sagey and Sophie." Her mantra continued - blessing for Sagey, blessing for Sagey - and I stayed with that small steady voice, holding onto it as long as I could, finding a comfort in it beyond measure. Holy hell, she knows me better than I do myself, I realized - the wisdom of this child, to know such truth and speak it.
Yes Lucy I am sad, sad beyond the world of words. I can't uncover it right now or peek under the  mantle. It's too soon, too soon, just not time to go there - and besides, Sagey Bug would have NONE of it!!
So I temper myself and hold the course. I focus on what my Vancouver friend Ann McQueen sent to me, that the Navaho believe that when someone is ill like this, their spirit is on a quest while their body remains. We are here to stay with and by their body so that the spirit can find what it needs to learn and know, and then return.
So I wait for Sage to return. Blessing Sagey. Blessing to Sagey. I love Sagey.