I have been witnessing a miracle, something simultaneously ordinary and wondrous. I don’t know if I can capture what is so special about this occurrence with words, perhaps you have to be there, but I’m going to try, because we all deserve to know such a thing remains possible no matter how poor, sick and hopeless any of us might get. I know I benefit every time I just feel what I know — because I have been exposed to this occurrence. And to think — I might have thought something else — had I had only the image in my head to go with. I hope I can express it well enough so that you know what I mean.
I have a friend, Charmoon, who has an advanced case of MS, multiple sclerosis. This disease is a progressive condition, which has taken away Charmoon’s ability to move his own limbs, and will eventually take away his life. He lives with 24-hour caretakers, whom he relies completely on. You would think he would be greatly depressed about his situation, but he isn’t. This isn’t the miracle, though it could be. I’ll get into what touches me so, later, after I’ve described circumstances most of us would fear.
This is a man who cannot move under his own power. He lives totally at the discretion of others. He eats, goes to bed, to the bathroom, answers the phone, has relationships and maintains his own small business, with the help of others. Some he pays (a small amount), and some he doesn’t. His work now primarily involves keeping this edifice of human helpers stable enough to ensure his survival. He is deeply on his own, struggling for his survival, while he is gratefully surrounded. Other able-bodied humans, prone to the distractions of their own complicated human lives, are his body. He lives marginally, constantly on the brink, he knows it, and seldom lets on.
Charmoon is living a kind of nightmarish life. He is living at the behest of some great mystery, and he is alive by virtue of the flawed hearts that keep him somehow going. Yet, he is also living gratefully. While this story isn’t about him, the miracle I am touched by, involves him, and the vulnerability of his life. With luck, it will touch you in some way similar to how it touches me.
Occasionally, Charmoon has to do— what we all have to do — pee. This sometimes happens when I am visiting with him. Then, because he needs help peeing, and I am there to witness what happens between his caretaker and him, I experience something so poignant and ordinary that it sometimes makes me cry tears that are a combination of joy and grief. The miracle takes place somewhere in the interaction of two men, who are old friends, and are now sharing their affection for each other in this extraordinary and most basic of ways.
A window opens, as Tryman, Charmoon’s old friend, prepares Charmoon, and holds the plastic pee bottle to his friend’s penis. Something along with the urine flows. It moves between them. Ostensibly, one man is caring of another. But, with these two, something more is taking place. The miracle of this moment is the open hearts, the caring that is going back and forth, the tenderness that is passing between them.
One man isn’t merely caring for another. That would be touching! Rather, what is happening here, is that both men are feeling their mortality, their shared vulnerability, their long-time mutual regard, and opening to each other. The caretaker is receiving care. The caretaken is giving, as well as receiving. Love, for each other, for this extraordinary and so basic life, for the Mystery that makes it all happen, goes back and forth. In that movement, for a brief time, each of us is woven together into a palpable something we cannot name as simply as unity, but we know we have shared something.
The peeing stops, but the flow doesn’t. Tryman covers Charmoon again, a few words are exchanged, maybe the familiarity of male humor returns, and the moment passes. But something indelible remains. Words can’t capture it, the sure camaraderie of friendship returns, but somehow, mixed in with it all, invisible as our breaths, there is something we each know joins us, though we cannot ever believe ourselves capable of swimming in that great expanse.
The ordinary resumes. The on-going and fatiguing scramble for some kind of survival goes on. Charmoon rests, or talks to another potential caregiver, or plans who he needs to make it through another day. There is no time to acknowledge the ineffable that just happened. There are too many hurdles to surmount.
We’ve wondered together whether we are somehow blessed. Being disabled, and having to rely on others the way we do, taking little for granted, we are so screwed up that we get to notice these little moments, when the world becomes something else, a place where love and resonance sometimes are evident. This realization is a great joy, which almost seems to make hell a blessed place.
Try to remember this little miracle — is this hell/heaven/or both?
All I know is that despite our differences, we are all alike, having to break to pee.
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