There's nothing I like more than a challenge, so when I saw that my favorite yoga studio was doing a 30 Day Yoga Challenge (you have to do yoga every day for 30 days straight), I couldn't help myself. I love yoga. It has helped my mind, body and spirit. When you don't have "challenge" attached to an activity, it is easy to come up with excuses to miss it. So, the intrepid adventurer in me decided to take on the challenge. Normally, I ride my bike or swim a few days a week and also do a few yoga classes. But, since I started this challenge, I've only been doing yoga. I am on Day 20 now and I feel great except for the constant aching in my hips. I'm also a little more tired than usual and I'll just admit it. I might even be a little depressed. Weird. I didn't think this would happen. Apparently, we store our emotions in our hips and I may be releasing some kind of deep emotional sadness. On the other hand, I've seen the X-Rays and there is no cartilage between my hip bones. My right hip joint is so shallow that 2/3 of the joint is not covered by bone. I think this might have something to do with the aching too. So, I got a bunch of electrolyte replacement drinks and have been trying to drink a lot of water. I also got out an old folder of stuff I have written over the years. Here's one that I uncovered.
The Unbroken Circle
I sat nervously in the Emergency Room, clutching the brooch my grandmother had just given me. It was an oval shape with a terracotta background. Inside the oval was a mother holding her child in bone-white with a white edging around the perimeter of the oval. Ma, my great-grandmother, had given it to Nana, my grandmother, when Ma was dying. Nana wore it always on a chain around her neck. I could feel the roughness of the raised image in the palm of my hand. When she gave it to me, Nana hadn’t really said anything, just a simple, “I want you to have this.”
Two years earlier, I had been in an Emergency Room hoping that my father, who was fifty-two at the time, would come out and give me a big hug and tell me everything would be okay. I could not stop my mind from remembering that Friday evening when I received a phone call that he'd fallen from his horse and was in the hospital. I had such an ominous feeling. I was thankful to be able to see him and hold his hand while he was still alive, but he was unconscious and his brain was swollen. That was the last time I ever saw my Dad. Nana and I carried this sadness together. We didn’t often talk about it, but it helped to know that there was someone else who understood that deep down aching you feel in your heart when you have lost someone you truly loved.
Bopa, my grandfather, died six months after my father did. Nana and I took him to the hospital one night because he was having pains in his abdomen. He was wheeled in through the double doors and never returned. It was devastating to Nana. She always felt the doctors should have done something to save him. They said that there was a blockage in his colon and at his age an operation was too risky. It was just the two of us in the hospital that night, waiting nervously and hoping and holding hands.
Rubbing my fingers around the perimeter of the brooch she had just given me, I thought about the events of that evening. Nana had called me because she was having trouble writing her name. She was trying to sign some checks and just couldn’t seem to make the letters. She shrugged it off as getting older, but I questioned her a little more and discovered that she could no longer sketch and paint. Ivan, her favorite hummingbird, still visited the porch behind her room, but she could no longer draw his long thin beak or paint his shimmering green feathers. I suggested that we go to the Emergency Room to have her checked out.
I sat waiting, with that ominous feeling again of not knowing and hoping. When the doctors emerged from the doors, they took me aside and in their straightforward way said that her breast cancer had returned and metastasized. It was all over her brain. They told me that there were some excellent oncologists who could seek a very aggressive treatment if she wanted to pursue it.
They moved her to an upstairs room with a window and I carried our things, still clutching the brooch in my palm. I told her in the most gentle way what I knew. The doctors came in and explained her options. She sat listening quietly, just nodding her head. When we discussed the fact that she would probably only live six months to a year longer with the most aggressive treatment, she decided that it was time to say good-bye.
I walked out into the long white hallway. I don’t recall anything on the walls - the whiteness just went on and on. I put my head on the wall and cried, turning the brooch over in my hand and gently caressing the mother and child. What would I do without my grandmother? How was I going to take care of her? I was only twenty-five with no job and no money. She was there with me through all of this: when I found my father’s cheese wrapper still on the table and when I helped her pack up Bopa’s piano music and his books. Who would be there with me when I packed up her pencils and her paints and said good-bye to Ivan for her?
She went home, but needed around-the-clock care. She hated having dispassionate nurses and always wanted me to help her. Eventually, she moved into a beautiful hospice with caring nurses and fuschia flowers outside the window. But she began to lose her ability to speak. I would sit by her bed and sing to her.
One day, I had a feeling that Nana was going to die. It was strange so I decided to call the Hospice. They reported that, to the contrary, she was walking around and was very cheerful. They said that she was not sick enough to stay there any longer and that I would need to take her back to my house. Her estranged son, my Uncle, came for his only visit the next day, and she died holding his hand. He had not called, visited or offered any assistance, and I felt sad that I had not been the one holding her hand when she closed her eyes for the last time. My Uncle had not forgiven her for the years that she was not around while Bopa raised three boys on his own. Years later, however, I understood. She needed to see her son before she could say good-bye. Despite her struggles and afflictions, she always loved her children.
I now have my own children. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish they knew my father and his parents, but I know that in a way they do because I am like them. They live on in me. The experiences I shared with them make me who I am and influence my choices. When I lost my father, I knew from then on that I would appreciate each day that I awoke to see the sunrise.
It was Thursday morning. I could see the white sedan out of the corner of my right eye. I turned my head and saw my son, brown curly hair every which way, legs dangling down his navy blue carseat, grinning at me. I swerved, thinking how can I protect my baby? As if in slow motion, I heard metal hit metal, glass shatter, tires squeal. My fingers trembled on the steering wheel. My heart beat as fast as my son’s did when he was in my belly. I stopped the car. “Honey, are you okay?” I tried to breathe, and I knew then, for a moment, what Nana must have felt. “That car crashed into us,” he said. I took a breath. “Yes, my love.” “Are you okay?” “Yes, Mama,” he stated. I looked at him, brown, curly hair still every which way, legs still dangling from his navy carseat. Miraculously, he was untouched. Inches in front of him, the car was crushed, pieces of white metal jutting out reflecting the bright September sun.
I reached my fingers around his warm, sweet body. I pulled him close to me and shut my eyes. He tucked his head into my neck like he always does. I leaned my cheek against his and smelled his brown, curly hair. I let out a deep breath and looked at his twinkly eyes. “I love you,” I whispered.
