the heart of it

The thing about writing the thing you know you have to write, because of the big thing that happened, is that even afterward, especially if it's a big thing, a thing that, while you are inside of it you are so busy surviving, that the idea of pulling our your journal while you are treading water seems as ludicrous as...pulling out your journal while you are treading water, even though that journal, you know, has been a life preserver many times over.

But suddenly it is after the thing, and regardless of how long it lasted—a day, a year, or two years—it doesn’t matter, because you have been suspended in the frozen dreamlike timelessness of a car accident, though the thing wasn’t a car accident, but still, it was as if we were in a car flipping slowly, roof over tire over roof, air bags deployed, seat belts straining, for days, then months , then years, everything else flying through the air, all those things--like the double decaf latte you stopped for and I stole over half and you were mad because you love that foamy first mouthful and I always do that—that latte, not seat belted, ejected like a missile into your forehead and everything else—the ancient Tums and coins and the boots I shed when I sit down--all of the detritus of our life, suddenly shrapnel, and some, buffer, and it is clear what is one and not the other—like the thoughts they say are repeats of thoughts of the same ones we’ve had the day before, and the day before that, and you know that if you ask each one, “Are you shrapnel, or soother?” you will know pretty much immediately. And unfortunately, if you are like most of us humans, most of it is shrapnel.

But I am not here to talk about the latte or the shrapnel it becomes, and I’m not sure I’m here to talk about the buffers or airbags, although I am, because people in this kind of wreck will tell you the kindnesses that emerge far outweigh the other stuff, even more than the terror who wants to claim every inch of every breathing space, that big blowhard spreading himself out at the party, but even he can’t touch the larger generosities which arrived constantly, the meals and prayers and outrageous celebrations of life and the millions of small gestures which mean everything. Don't underestimate the impact of a short email just saying "We think of you guys every day. We're holding you in our hearts." And even now, it makes me cry to name this, because I never doubted it to be absolutely true.

And then there were the other serendipities, like the Tibetan lama showing up at my doorstep to give me the Red Tara Chant one day, out of the blue. This is the chant you remember when there is nothing in your field but blood and fear, and which I pulled out of my bag the moment the hospital called to say he had a brain tumor, and I heaved and cried every line of that chant for hours because there was nothing else to do with that fear except meet it with the name of the goddess who rides it like a dragon, and I chanted for what seemed like years…until the next call came, the one where they told us, sorry they had been mistaken, no tumor, just a squiggle, just a vein in the shape of a snake, just a hiccup on the film.

Until the next call. And so we learn about saddling the dragon.