pain
The aftermath of a painful day is like the calm after a storm. An evening of sleep was a respite to the aching battle of the day before. The intensity of the discomfort was not recognized in its midst, but rather plowed under as the day’s agenda unfolded. Pain relievers delivered a slight reprieve from the aching intensity while allowing for clouded focus on tasks at hand. Today there is relief and a desire to bask in the ache free afterglow by perching quietly in the embrace of the trusted recliner. Thankful for the release from the jail of discomfort, this detainee chooses not to discard those things that provide the greatest resource against recapture. This freedom fighter chooses to engage his routine of exercise and attention to physical activity that challenges, maintains and builds stamina. With a grateful heart this graced soul rises to the challenge in another gifted day and anticipates the new blessings that unfold. Today is yet to be discovered.
Krakow’s ancient center was beautiful in the morning light. The streets were clean and pristine even after the crowds of the evening before. Although I was there for a graduate course at Penn, there was ample time scheduled for visiting noted sites of interest. The twelfth century cathedral was modestly preserved and the home parish of Pope John Paul II, was one among those several places checked off the visiting list. That morning, we boarded the bus for the twenty minute ride to Auschwitz, the famed Nazi Concentration camp on the outskirts of town. As we entered the walled brick edifice I felt strangely uneasy. To be in a place where such evil to one’s own had taken place was incomprehensibly sad. The tour started in one of the several brick buildings still standing. As we moved to another building the symbols worn by the captives in the camp were hanging on the wall just inside the door. As I turned to the right I saw the piles of human hair, remnants of people past whose lives had been taken without regard for the soul who lived therein. I was overtaken with grief as I excused myself and left the room to exit and sit in the open air on the steps outside the building. I lowered my head in prayer as I pleaded for God to help me understand how such atrocities could have happened. The capacity of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man was exacerbated as the group assembled again outside the cellar that was once a gas chamber and adjacent ovens to incinerate human remains. The next stop was the fields of Birkenau, now barren after once having been covered with wooden barracks in which thousands of Jews, homosexuals, and others deemed undesirable and expendable by the Nazi regime were dubiously housed like livestock. That day I was only a vicarious witness to a site where unspeakable pain and suffering was endured for the sake of ideology the empowered self imposed upon those they judged inferior. The pain and agony suffered there by the innocent can only be imagined today. We now live in a different era, but we must never forget that it is the same world of human demagogues that have within their unrestrained quest for power the capacity for massive human destruction. Each day presents us with choices that either enhance or diminish the human experience. May you and I embrace and learn life enhancing actions as we live each day with a thankful heart for those enhancing opportunities.
Yesterday, the sun shone brightly on the fields and forest canopy. Birds flittered carefree from limb to grassy patch to barnyard perch. Gracie, the Golden Retriever pup assumed the role of harvester as she pranced proudly across the lawn with a fresh pair in her jaws. Agnes, the barnyard Pyrenees lopped proudly through her grassy kingdom, plopping abruptly in the shade beneath the white oak tree. Today, the clouds have insinuated themselves between our stretch of earth and the brightly shinning sun giving light to the autumn hues. The rain has pounded down to temporarily soak the thirsty soil as birds and other animals have secured their waiting position. Soon the storm will pass and sun will once again rein with its radiant shower of warmth. Sometimes the storms of disease symptoms appear and drive away the glow of pain tolerant, agile and precise movements. Like the passing storms, experience gives evidence that these sometimes testy symptoms are only temporary visitors to the landscape of otherwise healthy living. I have learned to never take for granted neither the bright sunny day nor the symptom absent moment on the journey. Clouds and rain are a part of earth’s natural replenishing design; neither is the whole of earth’s experience. Fortunately, for most that experience PD symptom expression, those symptoms are not the total of our lives. Maintaining a healthy perspective embraces the reality of the sun and the rain as a part of the life giving cycle. Living well with chronic disease embraces the presence and absence of symptoms, neither defining nor limiting one’s person-hood. Thankfulness for the moments of sunshine gives substance that endures the passing storm.