I so rarely get sick. I have down times and sore times, but rarely deep in bed and lost times. Somehow between Christmas and New Year’s Eve the cold that my family had turned into a deep dive into fragility for me.
While my husband and son sniffled around on a Friday evening, I realized I was hurting. It was an unfindable hurt. There was pain deep in my body in those places that don’t normally register pain. I was lost in it. The only thing I knew to do, the only thing I wanted to do was find solace. So I shuffled into my son’s room where his dad was building a MegaBlock machine and the boy was playing Minecraft. I stood at the door and pleaded, “I need someone to hold me.” It was the most pitiful stance. Lucky for me they both jumped up and came to me, arms out and held me. I crumpled into them sobbing, crying. I’m lucky. I have someone to hold me. I have this warmth, this love, this time together with these two and they will help me. I needed help.
We managed to get to the couch and the two of them sat as close to me as possible and I felt life in them and love in them that seemed missing in me.
Usually I can pull on healing energy and move it through me. It wasn’t possible this time. While I had lost all ability to access healing energy around me, I was also deeply inhabiting a place of openness. In my need, I felt the gift of the presence of my husband and my son. Just them being there was a gift. Just me being able to see and experience them was a gift. I bounced through gratitude and fear. What if I hadn’t had them. What if they weren’t there. What if I was alone and needed desperately to have someone to hold me. Who would I call? Who would I reach out to?
It’s something that sits in me. A fear, a prodding, a question. Who do we each have to call on to hold us when we most need it? But also, how to maintain that vulnerability that sees through everything else to the basic matters of love and solace?
For beautiful meditation on life and living and letting go, I absolutely recommend you read this:
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