survival.

"Our real journey in this life is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never is it more necessary for us to respond to that action." Thomas Merton.

Last Friday, I spent most of the afternoon sitting with a woman in her kitchen. She was only 7 years older than me but she looked as old as the hills. Confined to her apartment because of a weak heart and a severe pulmonary disorder, she was also hooked up to an oxygen feed...........a long tube attached to a tank that was hooked under her nose providing constant air. A year ago, her whole respiratory and circulatory systems seized. She was told by the ER doctor when she finally made her way to the hospital after a couple of months of denial and coping with symptoms that would've left most of us on the side of the road, that she wouldn't make it through the day. She was told she was dying and they couldn't save what was left of her lungs. They were too damaged. She'd be dead by dinner so she better make arrangements for her family to join her there so they could say goodbye.

Can you imagine? How appalling is that?

The lack of empathy and complete absence of any form of proper bedside manner by the attending respiratory specialist left her with bitter determination to prove him wrong. This feisty woman told him too in big florid language while laying on a gurney, hooked up to machinery. Every day that she was hospitalized, she reminded him that she had more living to do and she wasn't ready to die.

A year later, she lives the fullest extent as she can given her confinement and her serious health issues. Last winter, she was not allowed to leave her apartment at all because she wouldn't be able to handle the cold air. So, from the day she arrived home last October until March 14th, she remained cloistered and dependent on her family to run errands. Her family doctor was a phone call away and made sure that her prescriptions were covered and delivered. She has never seen the specialist again and has no intention to.

Her life sentence is just that. During our conversation, she openly expressed her anger and grief over her loss of independence, but she was also quick to throw in the dark humour only someone who's struggled even on her good days. This is a woman whose hard life has been one huge struggle.........poverty and abuse as a child living in a distant rural area, minimal educaton because she was forced to go to work at age 14 to help pay the bills and her father's drinking habit, an abusive marriage. As a mother of 4 young children she found the strength to leave the violence behind and go out on her own. She single handedly raised 4 children, all of whom completed school..........2 who went onto post high school training. They all work now and have families of their own. She did this working two minimum wage jobs....."stealing from Peter to pay Paul.........and sometimes putting the two of them off for a month and hoping somehow the bills would get paid...."

There was never time to look beyond the day she was living. The future is a luxury when one is trying to find a way to get through another day. Ironically, most of us are trying to LEARN how to do this..........to live in the moment and embrace the moment etc, and for someone living the suffering, this is reality, not something to learn from some Budhist flavoured how to book. And it's because she has weathered many storms she's able to cope with the drastic changes to her lifestyle. Now, recognizing that she needed to mourn her old life and move on, this scrappy determined woman redefined her perception of independence. It's all a state of mind.

Last March 14th, when the weather was warm enough, she extended the tube length of her oxygen lifeline so it was long enough to leave her apartment, in order to walk down a small flight of stairs and out the back door to the outdoors, in order to walk down another flight of stairs to the laundry room, in order to visit her neighbours, to get her mail, and to greet her grandchildren at the front door when they come to spend the weekend with their grandma.

How has she been able to do this? Where does she get this positive outlook? I asked her many questions along these lines...............her answer?? In a nutshell........The act of loving and the feeling of belonging play a major role as does her attitude and decision not to fight destiny.........just go with it. This woman's journey is internal which is a much longer and broader journey than any external one. Independence is a state of mind. You can be completely dependent on others for your well being, but if you can maintain some level of empowerment, the feeling of independence continues to be reinforced. It's all in how you view life looking from the outside in. Oh, and humour......and lots of it.

I don't know if I could be so optimistic and brave to face mortality head on. I don't know if I could live with such confinement without succumbing to depression. Where does one find such faith and hope in the face of having no real control over the future?