An earnest if not perfect letter to the doctors on the Pulmonary team, and the staff (nurses and everybody else) on 9 East.

(Written in hospital, so a bit on the reflective rather than chipper side.)

 

How is it that I thank you?

I am — forever in your debt.

I am indebted.  grateful.  without words.

I will never forget,  could never,  never will  —

Things move so quickly here.  Momentum keeps.  This science, this practice, this art, is one of saving.

We are each other’s purpose for a time.  What we do.  The one small task, followed by another.  And it goes unspoken (the quiet and implicit truth): you are keeping me alive.

Not to sound too serious.

Not to sound too plain.

After all, complexity and laughter are inevitable in a situation such as this.  You have to laugh – at the stubbornness of veins, or quirks in the line, the body’s ignorance, and what is obvious gone unseen, at organic chemistry (in its entirety), simplicity undone, and the insignificance of logic, when the logos becomes clear, or when the illness is too great, or when it is a child who is sick.

Too many words already.

But you must know, I see you from one to another count — each measurement, each loss, each gain — each point of consequence, in days that are full of consequence.

I do not count myself among you, but know, but see – that this is practicality, this is kindness, this is faith.  What by nature I have never been – exact and faithful, obedient to any end — you are to me.

And I cannot believe that all of you are here, at work and working to preserve we who may or may not have the substance, at times the strength, to make it good.

But that is the beauty of it.

Needless to say, I have had some time to read, and in reading Cry, The Beloved Country – late last night), came upon something significant to what it is that I am stumbling to say:

“Beyond and behind[…”]  (Shannon wrote about this: “Beyond and behind.  You do not look here.  But tend the present.  You do not separate out the weed and thorn and vine, but see how they have grown together.  

            Try to give the green leaf space to unfold to take the sun, despite its company, its root all within ground entwined with the other, that will overtake it if left to thrive.  

            Give up the metaphor.  I am a girl (a child yet a woman) who would snuff out and separate herself from the weed that seems to grow with her.

For you I would, but can’t.  I know this, how they do grow together.)”   

You are letting me rest.  You are helping me fight what it is that I need to fight, and cannot, not as I would have liked to, not on my own.

 

Thank you,

Shannon Powers.