The Desert Horned Snake

It is 10:30AM. I have just started north on 5th Street for my morning walk, and I'm surprised to hear Angela in my head, saying, "How are we feeling, dear?" I'm back in that hospital room, 12:30AM, holding Mom's hand in the darkened room. The machine is registering ventrical tachycardia, or V-tach. Again and again. V-tach kills you - it's the lower part of your heart that beats too fast, and that's what Mom's is doing, too tired to move the blood through her body. Every 3 minutes or so Angela pops into the room and asks, "How are we feeling, dear?" Finally Mom asks why she's asking so much, what's wrong. My ears perk up and I sit straighter in my chair. I'm struggling to breathe now as I continue my walk. My chest is tightening, and it feels hot on the inside, but I continue, and take purposeful steps, focusing on my breath, breathing the energy and emotions INTO my body instead of trying to forget them or push them away.

The scene shifts to the doctor and four nurses surrounding Mom. They're trying to figure out what to do next - the first med isn't working, even though they upped the dose - Mom's failing - they're going to try Lidacain. I'm not even going to try to spell it correctly. It's an old drug, a powerful drug, but it appears to be her only hope. This I know in my heart - my mom is dying, and she has a slim chance of making it through the night. "Should I call Dad?" I keep asking the nurses, as if they can give me the "right" answer. First they tell me to let him sleep, but around 1:30, they say I need to decide. I don't want to decide - I want my mom to live, and my dad to sleep. That's all. But I get scared, and I call him.

The scene shifts to his last words before he hung up - "Tell her I love her." It's now hard to see as I walk, the tears are hot and fast. The tears are here even as I type these words, the memory is in my cells, in my body, it seems, because I'm right there in that room again, and I think that this is what it's like - this powerful energy that's with us right now - the power to transform our lives and shape us into whole, empowered, aware beings, but it is an awesome feeling, to live all moments in this moment. This memory that has come, unbidden, into my consciousness; I have allowed it to come, to float, to just BE, for whatever reason, and there is a desert horned snake coiled in my stomach that raises its Satan head lazily and looks around at the scent of my fear. I watch it rise as if to strike, exposing its 1/8 inch fangs, and I am curious to see what will happen next. Will it bite me and spread its fear poison through my body? I don't run from it - I look at it, breathe it into me; I'm not afraid, I'm really not. I lie down flat in the hot desert sun and let it slither in its tight "S" pattern across my stomach and on down the hill. All is well.

It appears to me that the key to embracing and living in this new place is to walk through those doors you fear the most, to look at that which you would rather not look at, to touch and hold that which repulses you most - whether it be something about yourself, or something about someone else, or a thought, or belief, or memory, and just let yourself BE there with it, with no thoughts as to how to fix it or change it or run away from it. And once you're THERE, it passes through you like the ghosts on Harry Potter, it is exorcised from your cellular memory - it cannot stay if it is not meant to stay, and for today, and the memory of that painful night 2 months ago, I am just as glad to see that snake winding off and away from me. It is not hard to breathe anymore, and the sun is warm on my face. I continue on my walk.