Our friend broke her neck 8 years ago; one little dive into a swimming pool, misjudged the depth and; ping (not much of a hit she says, more the angle) and she lay at the bottom of the pool unable to move...
{I cannot continue with my story without mentioning here that our friend did not drown because there was a woman sitting on the side of the pool who had had a premonition that she would be at a scene such as this and therefore her responses were lightening-fast. She retrieved the prone body from the bottom of the pool and knew exactly how to handle her to prevent further injury... How's that for a terrible/tremendous moment in time?)
Anyway, early on in her new-capacity 'quadriplegic' body our friend learned the hard way that caregivers get burnt out fast if she says
"Can you just...." a hundred times during their shift. She actually found an article coaching paralyzed persons to find other ways to make their
Ask than to be constantly saying
can you just (do this, do that..). A hundred 'justs' are not
JUST anymore.
She got it.
She's black belt aikido, so perhaps better equipped to engage with dynamics that would whither lesser beings..;
we think so; we say, we couldn't work with just any quadriplegic... Appreciative is her default.
Nevertheless, caregiver-burnout junctions arise and I am not immune. I had one just recently but this time, it came with a big life insight that she and I then both shared; an unforgettable tender arriving.
I realized that the edge I hit sometimes whilst working with our friend for a length of days, is succinctly, the edge that is wont to wear me down me in 'normal' waking reality;
What it takes to accomplish something on the physical plane sometimes can be exasperating even infuriating; how laborious, how tedious, how long coming to fruition
stuff seems at times to be.....
THIS is
exactly the edge that comes into stark relief betimes when working with a human form that must ask for every shift and adjustment, for every measure of slight or light relief, for every nuance of stance and settle.., besides a 100 tasks that are not directly doable to the one who desires to have them done.
I am still integrating my new perception. There was an energy release for me just to make this connection, and, it must be said, a profound acknowledgment of the same from our wise friend who inhabits the body that is compelled to
Ask.
Magnificently clunky is all I can say (because bottom line is, I
do love it here...
:)
Labels: insights, paralyzed, quadriplegic, spinal injury
And that line was running through me on my first morning in England; a crisp, frosty brilliant blue morning as I shot along Farncombe's little High Street in Surrey to buy ingredients for soup at the Co-op.
