I woke this morning to the soft roar of rain on the leaves of the trees outside my window and the thrummimg of raindrops on my bedroom roof. When I got up and looked out, the brilliant colors shocked me awake – stunningly beautiful autumn leaves of red and deep yellow and coral-pink, drifting down, settling softly onto the grass and rain-pools on the pavement. I have come here from California where I lived on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay. There are no seasons by the Bay, just beautiful spring and summer weather all year. Now I am here in Oregon, a strange new land that astonishes me every waking moment. In the travels of my younger days, I lived on the East Coast, the Southwest and the Midwest, so I have seen colors, but never anything so breathtaking, almost heart stopping. I have seen red and gold but never, ever, pink.
This is a beautiful place, and I am surely blessed and grateful to be here. But getting here was a horror far beyond my wildest imagining. Something I never thought could happened to a strong, intelligent independent woman like me, did happen. Something that is happening to millions of older people everywhere in this country and in the world.
Scan this story from today’s news.
“Retired pilot went to the hospital. Then his life went into a tailspin. Many older people are one medical emergency away from a court-appointed guardian taking control of their lives.” – The Washington Post:
https://apple.news/AzXoOX4xdSUyivNtOcOS8TQ
If you want to hear my story, you may ask me for a link, but all you really need to know is that one day. the 2nd of May, I was suddenly physically taken from my home by a blood relative I had only met once before, flown to Washington where I was held, fed, and cared for like a animal in a kennel for 81 days. He soon returned to California, cancelled my apartment’s rental lease, and had all of my possessions hauled away by 1-800-GotJunk. Clothes, furniture, household things, books, and about 30 years of my personal journals. Everything I had in this world was gone, and he made me pay him for it, about $1,120. I pleaded with him not to do this, since my rent was already paid for the next month, but he insisted it must be done as soon as possible, and I must pay him for doing it. He convinced me to give him my car, and sold it immedistely for quick cash, at about 1/3 of its value. He said that God had told him to do these things to me.
What followed was nearly 3 months of confinement in shell-shock, confusion, disorientation, inescapable fear, helplessness and despair. I pretended a superficially cheerful personality, afraid to resist, cooperating and trying to comprehend. I had nowhere to go, and since I have a disability, pain and neuropathy in my legs, I could not run, or even walk, away. I lived in a 24 hour inescapable overwhelm of PTSD-like depressions, anxiety, and psychological trauma that I would come to call “The Terrors.”
Why it matters: Primarily because I came terrifyingly close to being trapped in a terminal-care locked nursing ward and left to die, the same place where this person sent my brother (his father) where he died 2 years ago. By the mercy of God and the enormous help of a loving niece in Portland, in late July I escaped. I have a safe place to live now, and after a painfully rocky few months, I have begun to heal and begin the work of recovering from the emotional and physical damage that this traumatic experience caused. My confidence has been shattered, and my body has been weakened and atrophied by the months of being immobilized in a small room with only a bed and a TV. I understand now what mental-health means, and I know that anyone can be seriously damaged and emotionally crippled, unable to help themselves or even to think clearly.
In my thirties I studied graduate psychology, and I have always been fascinated by how the Universe/ Spirit/ God/ the Great Consciousness uses any and all of us to bless or to challenge each other. We are thrown together in the most incredible ways, and all of it has meaning and value, though we may not see it for decades or maybe not ever. Yet all the billions of small parts fit together in an unseen symmetry and perfection that is beyond our capacity to comprehend with only a conscious, limited, mortal brain. I believe that the Greater Mind, the “still small voice within” is the potential greater self of each of us. We are more than we know, and we have all come here to learn who and what we truly are.
We are not equipped with the power to understand, in this form, and yet it is marvelous to be here in this amazing place, surrounded by so much beauty and joy and sorrow and love where every day, every moment is a potential adventure beyond imagining. And so here we are.
I can still remember a day in September when I was 18, a freshman at the University of Texas in Austin, sitting on the bank of Waller Creek. I remember lying back on the grassy riverbank looking up at the green trees and intense deep blue sky, and thinking “My God the world is so beautiful, I cannot understand why anyone would want to fight wars and scrabble for money and power when there is all this beauty for free!” And I still don’t understand why anyone could choose that instead.
I have lived almost 60 years since then, and learned from my adventures and mistakes that the dark side of humanity is also part of “the tapestry,” as they say. Just as the dark sky is necessary for us to see the stars, even though they were always there in the daylight, some darkness and pain, some tragedy, despair and loss are necessary in the world where we live in this form, in order for there to be another choice.
If everything were perfect and there were no other choices, there would be no opportunities to make mistakes and learn things “the hard way,” as my dad used to say. If we were never challenged, we would never learn and we would never grow. As far as I can tell, it looks like learning and growing are the whole reason for being here. I get it. The dark experiences are the price we pay for the opportunities to experience the joy.
This has been a crushingly devastating and almost Biblical “Job-like” experience for me, and I did not think I would live through it. But I am still here, and so are you. Whatever happens, I can care about you, and you can care about me. That’s the way it works.
Tags: Life-Passages, The Truth
More about this . . . 
Leave a comment