for the love of the Sage Bug, no.4: 08/26/10

~ "When, after ages and ages, you finally reach the telltale world of truly high ground, where the chilled air smells of pine sap and the vegetation is gnarled and tough and wind bent, and push through to the mountain's open pinnancle, you are, alas, past caring....with a weary puff, you roll over,...struggle to your feet, and realize - again, in a remote, light-headed, curiously not-there way - that the view is sensational: a boundless vista of wooded mountains, unmarked by human hand, marching off in every direction. This really could be heaven. It's splendid, no question, but the thought you cannot escape is that you have to walk this view, and this is the barest fraction of what you will traverse before you've finished." ~

(Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods )

I think maybe there are very few coincidences and that maybe much of life is just a matter of paying attention.

My friend Catherine from Boston came to visit last week and asked me to think of anything she could bring. Books, games, food, Sudoku. Books, oh yes I thought, books. Yes of course; there are hundreds to read, so many that would be a good read right about now. But nothing came to me except  A Walk in the Woods. It was the only title that came floating out of my tired brain - why I don't know, as I've read it several times before. I asked for it anyways and Catherine brought it.

Thank Goodness. It's so funny; it has me laughing and my mother as well, reading parts and being almost in tears it's so hilarious. Bill Bryson - who again by coincidence lives right here in Hanover, NH - writes of returning to the United States after living abroad for 20 years. He somehow determines that what he needs to do most is hike the Appalachian Trail, so he sets out with too much stuff and probably not as lean as he could or should be. His buddy from Iowa, Steven Katz, joins him, whose diet requires donuts, Snickers, or Little Debbie snack cakes to prevent seizures. The book charts their course and encounters on the trail. It's a priceless read.
It's a book that Sage has read as well, probably several times. I figured that reading it out loud to her, apart from bringing some lightness and humor to the room, might also be a guide to waking up in, and becoming more cognizant to, such an unfamiliar place as Room 12 in the ICU.

So we started reading it last week, and I found us on Tuesday, one day after the tracheostomy procedure, at the above passage.  Even though I'd obviously read it before, this time it startled me and stuck to my ribs, due to the again coincidental and downright spot-on description of where I now find myself to be, and where Sage has probably been, in these last 28 days.
There are moments now in which the prevailing sensation is just that one of which Bill Bryson writes. Moments of beyond caring how you sound, smell, feel or look, to yourself or anyone else. All you can do is push, struggle and then realize somehow miraculously that there is a change in scenery, that something might be different now. Some vague deep internal knowledge floats up to you and has you, directs you to be keeping on, only keeping on, not stopping, not stopping at all for anything. Survival instinct? Stubborness? Love? Whatever it is, it's there, as much of the gene code as anything else inside. Because you realize - even with the sweetness of a pause for breath and a look around - that this is only the beginning of the trail, just a fraction and cut of what you will traverse before it's done. Because there is nothing else to do than just this.
I don't like running at all, at least not long distances. Marathons are inspiring to me as long as someone else is doing them. But it seems as though this particular path is a marathon of sorts. You start out with a lot of adrenaline and a yes! okay! I can do this! sort of spirit, for after all, you have trained for this; life itself has been the taskmaster for this one.
And then you enter those middle miles.
It seems the pace, the view, the energy required is quite different from that which came before. Difficult. Laborious. Questioning. Elusive. Shaded. Without an end. What's called for - to offset the incredibly tempting urge to take just a small little pause, congratulate oneself on the job done thus far, maybe even relax the pace and urgency of moving forward - is a steady, steadfast, faithful pace. Zoning in to the breath, the heartbeat and the mettle of one's own mind. It seems like you almost start to run against yourself; that is, fundamentally, the test of this stretch of road.
I think that's where I am right now. I realized it yesterday when I watched Sage get up out of bed for the first time in what seemed like a very long time. Head off the pillows, body no longer resting on the bed but rather held up against the weight of gravity. She was vertical, feet dangling off the edge of the bed, torso upright.
Wow wow wow oh wow oh dear, oh Sage. Oh dear Sage.
Such an effort to hold that moment in her body. The struggle, the ridiculously impossible effort to keep the head straight. Pain, pain, effort and pain, watching her hold the pain and effort and frustration through that silent crying of the trach collar.
It hits me low and deep; it's a punch to my whole system. Seeing her in this moment and struggle to be upright for a few minutes, well it cuts me with how really very sick she was and what exactly her body was subjected to over these days and nights and medications and pokes and numbers and thrumming of machines. A particular thought I had not really entertained this whole time; I had circled it but would not give it license at all, of Sage being so sick that....... Even now,  I won't do it, not right now.
It's the middle miles, the directive of them, and being that's where I am, I figure it could be wise to listen.
Don't question myself too much. Just keep going. Don't look behind. Don't focus so far out front. Stay right here, completely. Accept the pain, the moment, the grace of all of this which is too much to comprehend. Just let it be, and be with it.

This is part of what Sage shows me these days, profoundly and with such resoluteness.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold hands. Keep moving forward.