Chapter 13 With So Little Accomplished
I am still wondering what happened. I have asked Magnolia several times and some of what she says helps. Some of what she says, though, just feels like too big a mountain to climb at this point. What with the Covid-19 pandemic and people in panicked hysteria, schools closing, stores closing, businesses closing, grocery shelves emptied, and people afraid to get sick or get near each other, it is like no other time I have experienced.Perhaps it would be a perfect time to die, a lovely time to exit. But I feel like I’ve only just begun. And, according to Elliot, my life really only began in 2016, making me, at 57, a very old toddler.
Sometimes toddlers die, don’t they? Toddler death is nothing to mention lightly. I’m only saying that, like a toddler who could barely have accomplished anything, I feel that I’ve had so little success at performing to my highest potential.
Back in 2008 when the aliens visited me in the middle of the night and spoke their strange language in my bedroom when I was completing my early morning meditation, I was petrified. I remember kind of whimpering to God to protect me. I didn’t know what they wanted or what was going to happen to me. I just felt sure that their intensely focused language was directed piercingly to me. Fortunately my cries of distress to God helped and they let me be. Alan Steinfeld said they “upgraded my computer” and that was all they needed to do with me. He said their intervention surely must have caused my life to change. They never intended to kill me. They meant me no harm. Perhaps that was the operating system update that caused the marriage to crumble and the new life with Rick to manifest.
Based on what Elliot said, though, my life wasn’t even in process then. Who knows what was actually going on between1962 and 2016 when my life actually began? But here it is 2020 and I thought I was dying. I mean, I couldn’t breathe. Yogis like me know that breath is critical to life and I couldn’t access mine. I suppose one needn’t be.a yogi to understand this biological fact and I don’t know why my breath diminished, but it just drained out of me leaving me consciously aware that I could not get any and quickly arriving at the conclusion that I must be dying.
This time I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t whimper. I just said to myself that this was going to be the way my life was going to end… sitting on the cover of my toilet seat lid in the middle of the night unable to draw in my own breath to regain my sense of actual aliveness. God was taking me now, like this.
I guess I surrendered. I really can’t say much about what happened after those thoughts and after that act of intention to find my breath. The next thing I felt was a sensation of pressure on my face. Something was pressing into the side of my face. It was hard. It felt like my skull was being smashed into something hard, the pressure was so intense. Then I felt warm hands holding me. I heard Rick’s voice saying something. What was he saying? I could barely hear him. Was he speaking to me? Why did my face hurt? Was I pressing my own skull into something hard or was something hard pressing into me? Then he was trying to force me to get up. I think he wanted me to get up. Where was I? I couldn’t figure it out. Then I felt the bathtub against the corner of my eyebrow smashing into my skull. I must be on the floor. I felt like I had been sleeping there for at least a little while, but he said he heard the thump when I hit the floor and it woke him from a deep sleep.
So I wasn’t dead. But I couldn’t move or maybe I didn’t want to move. It felt like too much effort. I didn’t have the energy to lift myself. Still he insisted on my getting up and walking to the bed. Oh. Dear. I didn’t know if I could walk that distance. It must have been almost 10 steps between the shower and the side of my bed. He supported me and we made it. He sat me down. I drank some water. I remember asking for a drink. Somehow that night I knew to bring a glass of water to my bedside. I don’t often do it.
He made me lay down and he got into his side of the bed and held me, rubbed my back and then my head. It felt so good when he rubbed my head. The top of my head is so sensitive that I usually hate it to be touched. Now, though, the soft weight of his heavy hands felt so comforting. I fell asleep.
When I awoke the next morning I felt relatively fine. Today was a big day. We were starting our Continuing Education Class and we had 9 students. We were co-teaching with Fernando and he had just come in on a flight from Puerto Rico. We picked him up at 10:15 the night before and this was going to be a big day. Not a great time to die, I guess. I had barely begun living and I had accomplished so little up until now. What a tragedy it would be to die today.
Naturally over the course of this day I reflected upon what had happened to me. I didn’t understand why I’d had that event. I felt like it must have been some kind of neurological event: a stroke or a mini-stroke. I’ve been consumed with brain science the past few months in the process of exploring what would be my PhD topic. But I awoke with only the mildest of headaches and a sense of stiffness in my neck and thoracic spine and there was the tender spot over the corner of my right eye. There was no slurred speech, no paralysis, no brain fog or confusion.
I know what a concussion feels like - I’ve had one or two in my lifetime. But I had none of the symptoms or residual effects of a T.I.A. Or stroke. Then I flashed on the image of my mother cleaning the blood of her youngest son from the floor in his bathroom where he died, face down I suspect, after using heroin, passing out and laying there for several days before he was discovered.
In my recent period of SILENCE I had exposed a sense of loss and grief that was hidden under my surface. I knew that I had grief to resolve around my last divorce and I knew that I had grief to resolve around Daniel’s death. I wondered if somehow this episode of passing out in my bathroom was a message from my youngest brother. Magnolia says it is. Magnolia is usually correct. I don’t understand it yet, but I trust in time I will. For now I am glad that my headache has subsided and my spine is free. I’m out of the physical pain at least.