Loss

Last Wednesday morning at Johns Hopkins, two specialist surgeons, an anesthesiologist and their OR team shockingly lost a patient: Carol Youmans, debilitated by the tumor eating at her, had not the strength to respond to their frantic attempts to resuscitate and bring her through.  They were, I am sure, stunned by their failure. The rest of us, stunned by a Big Bang of loss.

The citizens of Annapolis (more than the transient bedroom-community residents, legislative part-timers, yachting weekenders) lost a fellow-citizen; a friendly acquaintance; a caring, engaged member of the community; that helpful gal who ran the print shop for years; who had a smile and kind word for everyone.

Friends and fellow plein air painters at Vermont’s Greater Barton Arts Center lost a co-founder and painting coach.  The Colonial Players of Annapolis lost a gifted actor, director, producer, a loyal collaborator who worked ceaselessly over the last 40 seasons of success.  Her passion was theatre; her web handle: “theatreslave.”

Long-time friends, classmates, travel companions up and down the East Coast lost a dear soul who cared deeply, who was always ready to listen.  Empathy and love oozed from every pore.

Her brother lost a younger sister.  He the dutiful, responsible, serious first born; she five years junior, emotional, eager to please, wearing heart on sleeve.  She called him “dearheart” despite his incessant teasing in their childhood; despite now separated by a continent and seeing each other only infrequently. The statistics say I should have gone first.  So long as I am alive they, the younger women in my life, are OK, aren't they?  Her loss also a loss of that innocent assumption; stats are not lives.  The circle of seven cousins broken again; now we are five.

Adrien and Edward lost an older sister, one with whom they had grown very close, especially after Carol lost Jack and the three began to summer together there in Barton in heart of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Working together to bring a dream of a Barton Arts Community into reality. Adrien’s stunning loss came on her way north to be caregiver next week when Carol was expected home from Hopkins. 

And for son Will and his Lisa, for daughter Alice and her Paul and their families the greatest loss, the devastating loss of that reliable, nurturing presence, that loving mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. This unexpected, unbearable loss -- but the loss that must be borne.  Her love animated them; that love endures.

So, at an instant in time and space, a Wednesday morning in a Baltimore OR, a Big Bang of Loss exploded into a mini-Universe of losses shared out in greater or lesser degrees to hundreds of us.

So much loss. Too much lost.

Posting Little; Has The World Become Too Much?

The frequency of my posts to Northwest Ruminations has slowed; six so far this year but mainly innocuous stuff – a word game, a photo collection, a winter poem, an accolade to a tire company. “Why is that?” as Rachel Maddow might ask? Why do I find it hard to address consequential matters, personal or civic?

Am I jaded?  Perhaps I am grown old.  Actually, jaded and aged are connected for jaded is to have seen too much, to be over-exposed; emotions blunted by repetition, too much become too familiar.

And my world is becoming too much.  Of my six spheres of connection (i.e., self, mate, clan, tribe, world, and spirit) half are barely bearable.

1. My self is getting more tippy, though I still ski, crew, sculpt; am still curious and concerned.
2. My stable mate still centers my life.
3. My clan is a mixed bag of busy and well and unwell.  A sister will undergo major, scary surgery Wednesday in far-off Annapolis while I wrestle here at home with tribal discord.  I worry at what kind of world my grandchildren and great-grandchildren are about to encounter.
4. Our tribe is fraught, more fraught than since 1968.  The board over which I supposedly preside is in turmoil; I stand accused by one provocateur of the arrogance of unconscious white privilege and of being overtly prejudiced.  My community is soiled by homeless encampments but unwilling to pay the price of cleansing, healing and prevention.  My nation is polarized, and the center fails.  My party has come to believe that “progressive” means catering to popular delusions about free health care and free university educations, about the ease of taxing wealth, about abolishing private health insurance; promising that anyone wanting one could have a federal job; prating about abolishing the electoral college or re-packing the Supreme Court – promises from the left as empty and demagogic as those from the right made by He-who-shall-not-be-named.  I watch my tribe with “the enormous condescension” of a jaded dilettante. Thanks be for my friends, a healthy and steady source of sanity and support.
5. The greater world?  Already too, too much and becoming more so day by day: democratic republicanism under siege; crude nationalism on the rise; autocrats abounding; the EU coming undone.  An arms race looms.  Nukes proliferate. Climate promises catastrophe -- and delivers. Species go extinct. While we of the west dither. 

Perhaps that is why it’s been hard to blog, to confront provocative thought.  I must gird myself; I must un-jade.  As Berne’ Brown urges, I must begin to “dare greatly” in my little voice of Northwest Ruminations

      6. In the sixth sphere, the sphere of the spirit, I am at ease though increasingly fatalistic. Ven, que  sera; I am ready.