colonoscopy tales

You begin the day before with a "clear liquid diet". That means anything liquid that isn't red or purple. Jello works. So I ate copious amounts of orange and green jello with lots of mayonnaise --which I declare a 'liquid' though most people find eating mayonnaise on jello an offense against God, Nature and the American Way. White Grape juice, tea, coffee--no dairy--ginger ale, stuff like that--chicken broth and all. This is all you can consume for 36 hours or so before and after they stick God knows what up your butt. Along with 'clear liquid' comes pills and powder.

So, first comes the stuff that empties you out. 4 pills and 14 daily dosages of constipation relief poured into 64 ounces of Gaterade.

Two of the pills and half the 64 oz. of Gaterade/Miralax (an interesting combination of 'miracle' and 'ex-lax'--which in some situations, I suppose, is a miracle in itself) consumed in 4 8oz glasses every 15 minutes. The instructions from the Dr. say, in understatement, "be near a bathroom".

You just ingested enough stuff to make half the Republicans in Congress seem like regular human beings and the advice is: "be near a bathroom".

So that's what you do. You think of Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls and any other falls you can think of and that's what it is like for an hour or so.

Then, limp and empty, you continue your clear liquid diet and eventually, fall asleep 'near a bathroom'....Where does all this stuff come from anyway? Am I passing DNA and bone marrow? Lordy....

The next morning at 5 a.m. I take the other two pills and drink the rest of the goop--which doesn't taste foul at all--and spend two hours reading on the toilet thinking of rain storms, oil leaks, vital organs passing out of me.

At the hospital you get neat little socks and a gown you know will be pulled up to reveal your never-mind and lots of cheerful people, including the guy who is going to knock you out who looks like a college tailback and has on a bandanna around his head and a six o'clock shadow at 7 a.m. He tells you he'll knock you out and bring you back with no problem and in between unspeakable things will be inserted where the sun don't shine and most likely all those friendly people will be making fun of your posterior parts.

Finally they wheel you into the room and you look around for the suction tubes and horrible instruments of torture and the handsome young man with the bandanna says "You're going to sleep...." and in retrospect you know you were asleep before he said "now". And the next thing you know he is saying, "You should be awake now" and you are and they are wheeling you out of the room where they have invaded your parts in ways you can't understand and really don't want to know about--much like a 'date rape' of a kind--and you are back in your little cubical and the nurses are encouraging you to fart and fart and fart.

"Passing air" is what most of them say, but I had a wonderful, great-aunt kind of woman, black and blunt, who felt my stomach and said, "fart for all you are worth to get that air they let in out...."

And I did, for half an hour. During which time they brought Bern back to sit with me. Farting outrageously--I did 'rip' some, let me tell you!--is alright when given permission among strangers, but breaking air like that in front of your wife is embarrassing, even after almost 40 years of marriage....I faked a cough the first couple of times (a time-trued strategy)...till she looked at me and rolled her eyes.

Being given permission to fart at will is a teenager's wet-dream of reality. My black nurse kept encouraging me and came over to pat my belly--"got rid of those twins" she said.

The Dr. came--a good guy who had peered up my butt while I was unconscious (but he pretended we hadn't been that intimate) who told me he had cut a pollop out of me somewhere inside and that he'd let me know what that meant and on and on and then 4 more hours of jello and ginger ale and then I had a hamburger and some cottage cheese and peaches to make it seem ok to eat meat so soon after being probed in places that should be oh so private....Like that.

The Robin Saga continued

While I was away in Ireland, the mother robin came back. (I've written several posts about the robins' nest on our front porch and when I left, I thought they were gone.)

The female came back while I was gone and since I've been back she has been on the nest almost constantly. We haven't seen the male at all. I am far beyond understanding what's going on. I should Google "nesting habits + robins + my front porch" and see what shows up.

But she is there, stoic and still. I've tried making eye contact and think I have (It's a bird, for goodness sakes, who can tell???) and she doesn't fly.

Remember, when we thought they were gone I looked in the nest and found it empty. There is no way to check now...plus, Papa Robin hasn't come back.

What was since a romantic and wondrous story has turned strange and not a little dark. What happened to her mate? Why did she come back? Does she now have eggs?--even without Google it seems late in the season to me....Is she sitting on an empty nest, trying as a bird might, to 'will into being' eggs and chicks?

Since I never notice her away from the nest I am worried that she is wasting away....a romantic story turned to drama and tragedy. How would her story translate into human events? How often have I sought to nurture an illusion into life? How many of us humans have lived in 'what might have been' and missed 'what is occurring'?

How will the Robin Saga turn out?

Stay tuned....I certainly will let you know....

I feel better now

After posting that and asking to do a new post, my familiar page came up. I feel so much better now, typing on a page I recognize.

Nobody likes 'change'--that's my theory. Some people try to remain open to the possibility of change but even those people, like me, are freaked out by going to blogger.com and finding a different looking page.

I went to Ireland to lead a Making a Difference Workshop. I've been a leader of those workshops for over 15 years now. The workshops are based on a series of distinctions and centering prayer. One distinction we have--though it isn't in the outline of the ws--is the distinction between "change" and "transformation".

Change is arduous, frustrating and, by in large, impossible (the more things 'change' the more they stay the same and all that.) Transformation is effortless, enlivening and a product of possibility.

Change is about 'doing' and 'having'. Transformation is about 'being' and creating.

I am a devotee of Transformation, and, like most people, I abhor 'change'...even in the form of a different looking blog page....

Long time gone

I haven't written here for a long time. Hope someone is out there reading, in spite of the absence.

I was in Ireland for 10 days and then had a colonostomy (which doesn't look right, but my spell check gives no real options for) and then went to Baltimore to visit grandchildren.

So I haven't been sitting around avoiding writing this stuff--I just haven't had the time or access to my computer.

(I have a new computer. My friend who helped me pick it out asked me if I wanted a laptop.

"No", I said.

"But you could carry it around," he said, "why don't you want one."

"Because I could carry it around," I told him.

I get really annoyed with people who always have their computer with them. Like sitting on the floor in airports plugged into the one outlet on the wall beneath the window. I think people should spend their time in airports reflecting on their mortality, reading trashy novels and watching other people, wondering if they'll be your seatmate. I also avoid any coffee shop that encourages the use of laptops. Jesus, eat a pastry or read a paper! I was even on the plane, sitting near a guy who still had his laptop on as we were taxiing to the runway, in spite of all the warnings. I was about the attack him like a shoe bomber when a cabin steward scolded him--at least as much as any Aer Lingus employee can scold anyone. The Irish are, actually, rather irrepressibly polite.

So I don't want a computer I can carry around. I prefer to be tethered to it, limited to a certain room for computer use, just as we have certain rooms for expelling bodily wastes.

I do have a wireless keyboard. My friend told me I could hold it on my lap if I wanted to--which I would never do and promised him I wouldn't.

I've been gone so long the page for writing this blog looks different than it did a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to post this so I can see if it still works, but I'll be back to write about various other stuff.

Alas, the dream and romance sometimes goes awry

The robins have abandoned their nest on our front porch.

I haven't seen the female for two days. Bern tells me she saw the male in the yard yesterday but he isn't standing guard any more. Tomorrow, if she's not back, I'm going to take out the ladder and look in the nest. I haven't done it yet because I still hope she'll return. There are certainly no baby robins and I want to see if there were any eggs.

I wonder what happened. Did something happen to her? Did she realize her eggs, if there are any, weren't going to hatch? I have no idea about the nesting habits of robins, but something happened, something went wrong. I know just this week she was stoically on her nest and he was guarding it from the tree nearest the porch. He even buzzed me, about a yard above my head one day this week--a warning because I was looking at the nest and Mama bird too long.

I really was rooting for them. I was terrified that babies would be born and fall out onto our porch. I'd already planned to put cushions on the floor of the porch to protect them when they fell. I was already looking forward to the little noises the chicks would make and watching them be fed and waiting until they began to fly.

I don't think that will happen now and it crushes me. Something so hopeful that didn't come to fruition. How much hope we put into HOPE and the truth is this: lots of hopeful, romantic, lovely things end like this.

Something to ponder under your personal Castor oil tree--before Yahweh sends the worm to kill it and you have to wonder and ponder in the heat of the sun: how and when and why did hopeful things come to naught in your life?

I'm reminded of sitting by my mother's hospital bed when I was 25, praying in hope for her to wake up and live. And she didn't. And that was that.

It seems to me that hope is a vain and fragile thing, something as ephemeral as a feather, as light and fleeting as a breath, as difficult to hold on to as that dream you had a few nights ago that faded into nothingness when you woke up, as hard as you tried to keep it near.

And there is this: Hope and dream and romance are the meat and drink of our souls. We are waiting for the meal we imagined and longed for and thought we might have. And often it disappoints and fails us. Just like that.

But what else is there to feed us but Hope?

When we cease to cling to Hope, all is vanity and the world implodes and our lives are meaningless.

So, even as the robins leave, I cling to Hope. It is the only thing that keeps me above the waters of despair. Some would call it madness or self-deception. But without Hope, what is there?

***

MILLERS

There was a Nancy cartoon in my youth. Do you remember it--Nancy and Sluggo? If you remember you are 'of an age', if not, still this will make sense.

Nancy and Sluggo are outside in the snow. Sluggo says he loves winter because there are no bugs. "No gnats, no flies, no bees, no mosquitoes" he says.

Then the snow slips of the roof above him and he is covered.

"And no Sluggo," Nancy says....

I am afraid of the little moths we grew up calling 'millers'. They're the little brown ones, not the big ones, not the white Mayflies, not the Luna moths, none of those. I don't know their real name but I was taught to call them Millers. They flit and swoop and dive at your face if you are sitting in light. And they scare me so much I'll go inside.

I don't know why, they just do.

I should ponder that fear, wonder about it, and ponder the other things that frighten me.

Knowing what frightens you and, in some way, 'why', is a cool breeze on a hot day, a calming silence, something profound.

Ponder this: what frightens you...and why....

waiting up....

Tonight I was out on our deck, watching the heat lightening from the north, hoping that's moving south and the heat will break.

A few nights ago, I was out on our deck, in much milder temperatures, waiting for my son to come home.

I was never able to sleep before my daughter and son came home from wherever they were. They owe me hundreds of hours of sleep over their lives--though I'm not sure how you pay sleep back....

And my son was out and I was waiting for him to come home.

He isn't 17. In fact, he is 34 (only a year older than Jesus when our Savior died...) and has taken care of himself for a decade or more now. But I was still waiting up for him to come home.

He had taken a train from DC, passing his family in Baltimore, to come to CT for the wake of one of his best friends. My son has had several good friends die already. I'm 28 years older than he is and have had fewer friends die. Perhaps he just has more friends, but I don't think it is an 'average' kind of thing.

I remember when a friend of his committed suicide. He flew to the West Coast from Williamsburg VA on St. Patrick's day, took a taxi to the Golden Gate and jumped off. A dramatic statement if there ever was one. Josh and some of his friends, coming home from their colleges, were at our house getting ready for the wake. There were all these young men--gifted and skilled--who couldn't remember how to tie their ties and hardly knew how to button their shirts. They were like people in walking comas. It was too young to stare into the very face of Death. It stunned them.

Josh arrived in his lawyer suit and dropped off his bags. Another good friend had picked him up in Southport and drove him to Cheshire. He dropped the bags on the floor, went to the bathroom and headed back to his friend's car.

Since we knew his friend over the years--he was even in England with us when we visited Josh there the year after college--we were going to the wake. Josh said, "I'll pretend not to know you," and winked. This new death had regressed him--and all of those 30-something people who were at the wake. Josh was the best dressed--still wearing his Baltimore lawyer outfit--but they were all much younger again, staring Death in the face.

When we got there and were in line to speak to the parents and wife and such, with photo boards everywhere and a slide show running on a TV, Bern suddenly couldn't do it. We didn't know his parents much at all, but we'd known their son and wanted to tell them how much we liked him and how much we'd miss him and how terribly sorry we were...all of that. But Bern broke down and had to leave. I asked her later what had caused it and she didn't answer, knowing I knew--that could have been our son, our Josh, our Bonny Bobby Shaftoe in that urn. It is hard, hard for us all to stare into the Face of Death--especially about young men in their 30's.

I waited up and Josh came home much earlier than he would have at 17. Three friends came with him and stood on our front porch with him and had a beer. Josh had played pool with his friend's 10 year old son, probably back at the parents' house. He talked about that.

I talked with them for a while, but our dog was making a fuss and I knew he's stop if I came inside, so I did that. And sat on the deck with the dog for a while and then went to bed.

Waiting up for children is just something a father does. Josh has three daughters--all of whom will be lovely and bright and much wooed. He'll learn. Maybe that's how he'll pay me back the lost sleep--with his own for Morgan and Emma and Tegan.

And may he and Cathy, his wife, the mother of my grandchildren, be as lucky as we have been and only have to deal with the deaths of your children's friends.

Staring into the Face of Death is a profound and transforming thing.

I am sorry my son has done it as much as he has.

I am thankful I've been spared much of that--besides parents and in-laws who died in the scheme of things.

Somehow, the death of the young is so much harder to manage, reconcile, include in a World View, understand, deal with.

34. He died at 34. When I was 34 I'd been married over a decade, my children were 6 and 3. I was in my prime, full of hope and expected joy.

I WILL miss him, though I hadn't seen him since the baptism of Josh and Cathy's twins 3 1/2 years ago. I remember his smile, his sweet good humor...and I think that 'was him', not just what he put on for the father of his friend. And I weep for his friends--especially Josh, of course--for having to stare into the Face of Death and having to have a father waiting up for them to come home....

A poem

I don't think of myself as a poet--much less a good poet--but I do write them from time to time.

It's quite odd what prompts a poem. For this one it was a phrase that came to my mind a week or so ago and I wondered how to make it part of something I wrote. Here is the phrase: "It was not so much what they didn't say, as how they chose not to say it."

That phrase has haunted me somehow. So I wrote this poem so I could use it.

A fiat--this, like all poetry, all fiction, is NOT TRUE. It never really happened. And there were things in my memory that prompted the setting and the characters and the story. This is a narrative poem, a poem with a story. I call it,


WHAT'S UNSPOKEN

Love is like that, from time to time, I suppose.
The unspoken part is what I mean.

A lunch with my friend and parishioner,
to talk about the marriage
collapsing around him.

How complicated to be both a friend and a priest.

We ate at a place near the church.
They do the best fried calamari
I've ever eaten
in a restaurant not near the coast.

So I had that with a salad and blue cheese on the side.
He had the Sole Florentine.

We both had three glasses of Pino Grigio.

He told me how profoundly
he loved his wife.
His eyes were glazed with wine and passion.

"I'd do anything," he told me,
a piece of whitefish on his chin,
"anything to have her back."
And I believed him.

A good meal is an odd confessional,
though we were in one of the booths
against the wall,
with photos of city landmarks
on the wall.

Sealed as I was,
I could not tell him it was
the self-same booth where
his wife had told me,
a week before,
the same things in the same way.
Longing to have him back.
Loving him greatly.

I told him exactly what I had told her,
seven days before:
"Speak it aloud. Tell of your love...."

We left after coffee.
It was a deja vu
of my lunch with her, down to the instistance
that he pay, just as she had.

The same words were spoken exactly:
"For your ear, Padre."

Both of them said precisely that,
being friends deep enough to call me "Padre",
a sort of in-joke of good friends.

Credit Card and signature exchanged,
We stepped into the September sun
and literally, literally,
bumped into his wife
and her friend from work
coming for a late lunch.

We all knew each other.
I embraced the two women
in a priestly way,
he shook their hands.

I'd seen them both
in a place of longing and hope.

I thought of breaking my vow of silence,
of telling them each what the other felt.
And I could not,
though perhaps I should have.

They were polite and cool--
I longed for them to fall
into each other's arms,
weeping and speaking the Truth.

But Truth was not spoken.
Instead, they smiled awkwardly,
were distant,
agreed without details
'to get together'
and moved away,
one full and both hungry.

Sometimes love is like that, I suppose.

It was not so much
what they didn't say
as how they chose
not to say it.

(Sorry I posted an unfinished version earlier. Too may keys on the keyboard that do things mysterious to me....)