JANUARY 15, 2022 – Yesterday on the snowy return drive from the hospital—blood draws and a “long shot” (actual, not figurative) injection—my wife said I must “toughen up.” I took no offense. After all, she’s my willing and able ride to treatment. For how many people in this world is “ride to [nearby world class] treatment” an unattainable privilege? Moreover, my wife is the cornerstone of my support system. If I must absorb any lesson here, it’s to respect her eminently practical and rational sensibilities.
Thus, as she navigated our car carefully through the snowstorm, which had reduced visibility to that of an economist’s most accurate prediction, I worked on . . . “toughening up.”
Just then (I imagined) I found myself at my plane crash site . . . in the heart of the Amazon. I’d survived the impact of diagnosis, but what about surviving my expedition out of the jungle? Infinite dangers lurk in the uncharted wilds ahead—heat, hunger, high-water, poisoned darts, ravenous predators, venomous snakes, disease-harboring insects . . . to scratch the surface. Speaking of “scratches,” from actual experiences in the tropics, I know that the slightest skin abrasion heals slowly, opening the expeditioner to infection—and worse. Blazing a trail indiscriminately through gympel-gympel (the “suicide plant” – code for “Covid,” for which our dear granddaughter just tested positive), for example, can terminate survival.
All dangers must now be faced with what I can draw from the plane wreckage: medical science and my support system. Also, perhaps, a piece of shorn aluminum can be redeployed as a machete. Maybe the emergency quinine pills inside the smashed-up, on-board, first-aid kit will prove essential. And I mustn’t forget the aeronautical charts, a compass, and the mantra of all things expeditionary: “know thy location” . . .
A few blocks later . . .
I’m now four days out from the wreckage, meaning four days closer to safety, I trust, but the trek won’t be straight or simple, I know. It’s a survival slog through alien challenges, not a jog in a familiar park.
Yet, I’ve already learned an object lesson in the wonders of adversity—açaí among strychnos plants; gleaming emeralds beside the poisonous snake; the crescendo of a gurgling spring as I falter with fatigue into sweltering heat; a bird-of-paradise gracing the earth next to “suicide plants”; sunbursts through openings in the rainforest canopy after an afternoon deluge—“toughening up” in response to pain and fear. These contrasts convert the passage to survival into a path to lands sublime.
Yesterday, I encountered yet more of the exalted—seraphim at the hospital; caring and encouragement and offers of help from family and friends by phone, texts, comments, email, messages—and our next-door-angels’ snow shovels along our walkways. Celestial beings in the form of my life’s people carried me upon snowy wings high above the plane wreckage, beyond the jungle, and over the distant horizon, where love and beauty reign supreme. More than once yesterday, my face was awash with the sweet rain of joy and gratitude.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
