Stillness

Robin and I have been solo since Sunday with no family visiting. At first this seemed like it might be a "bad" thing. As often happens in life, it has carried its own blessings. For a few days this week it's just been Robin and I. Our usual routine is to keep the door to her hospital room closed. From inside the room we see so little of the outside world that we could be on a satellite in orbit.

I've spent days telling everyone who enters the room that Robin is a nurse. Last night Robin and her friend Connie explained that this is a sure fired way to keep nurses away because they will assume Robin knows what to do by herself. I suspect this is not entirely true having seen (during this visit) some nurses who have offered wonderful, attentive care and spiritual guidance which seemed "wise beyond their years". Again, as often happens in life "good" or "bad" is relative, I think the awareness that Robin is a nurse changes the experience but also enables us to receive different gifts. For instance, if the staff helped Robin get washed up each day then where would that leave me? For now I view myself as Robin's nurse when it comes to everything except giving her medication.

Each day we seem to spend more time together quietly. The television plays less but we don't feel the need to fill the stillness with talk. More often the time is filled with gentle rubbing of Robin's head, feet or arms. About half the day Robin is sleeping. She doesn't eat much. She tries to eat but food it usually comes right back up. During our trips to New York she had maintained a weight of about 120lbs, but now she's dropped to 109.

Today I took the opportunity to read her passages from the book "Tao of Pooh". We first read the book twenty years ago, but its lessons reverberate more soundly now. The book notes that the author of the oldest existing book of Taoism is Lao-tse. He views Earth as a reflection of heaven, run by the same laws. These laws influence everything from the movement of planets, to the interactions of animals in the forests and in the streams. According to Lao-tse, the further man interferes with the balance established by the natural laws, the more man retreats from harmony in this world. Lao-tse saw the world not as a place of traps, but as a teacher of valuable lessons. If its lessons were learned and its laws followed, then all would go well.

The basic Taoism described in the book "is simply a particular way of appreciating, learning from, and working with whatever happens in everyday life. From the Taoist point of view, the natural result of this harmonious way of living is happiness." "Tao doesn't force or interfere with things [or events] but lets them work in their own way, to produce results naturally. Then whatever needs to be done is done."

These sentiments seem to be reflected in Robin's view that "everything will work out fine, everything will work out as it is supposed to". Somehow I feel that "The Way" of Taoism also reverberates in the words of the serenity prayer. The serenity prayer has greater significance to me these days not because I've been carrying a copy in my wallet, but because now I find myself pulling it out and reading it aloud to no one but me.