Crossposted at ePluribus Media. In light of the pieces by Maccabee and ClammyC, both of which concern the rising drumbeat toward another planned and illegal war with Iran, please keep the ending of this piece in mind. Thank you.
With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity1
When Wifey was fifteen, she and Mumsie took a trip to Europe with Mumsie's friend K and her daughter G. Mumsie was very no-nonsense and very organized, but the nailbiting trips by bus were hard for her. K was good at keeping her calm and helping her through the challenges of high-speed, narrow-pass breakneck bus travel.
It was a reciprocal relationship.
K wanted to see everything all at once in the brief time they had at each stop. Normally quite capable and organized in her own right, the excitement of the vacation and the opportunity to see so many different sights had scattered her focus. Mumsie came in handy here, having already organized and planned each and every detail of what they would do at each stop in order to maximize their time. K recounted her memories of that trip, now over thirty five years gone, when she and I had an opportunity to talk a few months ago.
A connecting principle,
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible.
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincible.
During the intervening time between then and now, the two families drifted apart, as friends and families often do. But, just as the moon in her phases will wax and wane, so too do the relationships of a lifetime. Some wax full and resplendent, blooming into fields of forever friendship and creating rock-solid extrafamilial relationships, while others wane and fall by the wayside, relegated to the dusty back shelves of long-forgotten photo albums. Some, however, the the lunar or seasonal cycle: they burst forth into bloom in the springtime of life, maturing into solid relationships, then experience a colorful, reminiscent descent into dormancy as life winters different changes and challenges, only to bloom anew once again as the cycle repeats itself later in life.
Such was Mumsie's relationship with K.
Fast-forward from the European trip of thirty-odd years ago to early 2007. Mumsie had entered an adult day health facility -- essentially, a form of adult day-care. Shortly afterward, K also began to attend the same facility, two and sometimes three days a week. K didn't suffer from Alzheimers' Disease, which was steadily progressing in Mumsie, but her own medical issues left her needing the services offered at the facility.
Mumsie had a little trouble placing K, that was ok. K reminisced and Mumsie occassionally caught a stray spark of recognition and recollection -- enough that they could both muddle through and share their mutual memories, rekindling the friendship of old almost as if it had never been on hiatus.
A star fall, a phone call,
It joins all,
Synchronicity.
As the next few weeks and months passed, each woman's illness brought new complications and placed different demands on them. In Mumsie's case, the progression of her Alzheimer's generated changes in her behaviour that made identification of new issues more difficult. It became harder to diagnose new issues and to distinguish between illness, injury and simple progression of the disease. In order to ensure that nothing more serious was overlooked, Mumsie often had to go to the local ER in order to determine what had changed and whether it required treatment.
If you act, as you think,
The missing link,
Synchronicity.
The last few times that Mumsie had gone to the ER prior to her entry into a nursing home in May, an interesting series of coincidences began to occur. While I sat with Mumsie in the ER on the first of these occassions, I was surprised to see K wheeled in from the ambulance entrance. She was overjoyed when she saw and recognized Mumsie and I; she didn't feel so alone in her experience.
We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity.
The next two times I had to take Mumsie to the ER, K was also being taken in -- they appeared to be on the same schedule. K joked about it, saying that the adult day health facility would begin to think that she and Mumsie were starting their own club. That was reference that got Mumsie chuckling -- she often ran several clubs and organizations, like church groups and charities, in her younger days.
A star fall, a phone call,
It joins all,
Synchronicity.
Just before Mumsie entered the nursing home, she had a week long stay at a hospital for a series of tests when her condition changed unexpectedly. On the first night, walking her along the hallway to help her get some exercise, I noted a familiar face being wheeled past on a stretcher...
K was admitted that evening, and also stayed for the better part of the week for tests.
She and Mumsie were glad to have each other, and took turns wobbling over to each other's room in order to get both exercise and a friendly visit as much as possible.
Fast forward again, now, to last week.
Mumsie had recently been sent to another hospital for some tests to determine whether her sudden deterioration was due to the progression of her disease or to some other factor. It was a different hospital than usual -- her nursing home had a house doctor, and the hospital was where he was based in order to ensure consistency of care. Mumsie's been back at the nursing home for a couple weeks by the time last week rolled around, and has been making good progress. She'll never get back to where she was before the drop that led her to the hospital, but she's doing surprisingly well considering the prognosis at the time.
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity.
We didn't have the heart to tell her that her friend died last week, and that Wifey and I attended the wake last Wednesday.
To be honest, it wasn't simply because we didn't want to upset Mumsie.
We were a tad hesitant to trigger whatever it was that had appeared to keep them so closely synchronize over the past few months.
...did I mention that, at the wake, Wifey noticed that K was laying in state in the very same room where Wifey's dad had been waked when she was only 13?
Life -- and death, and dying -- are strange; an interwoven tapestry of events, causes and effects that may not directly impact each other in ways that we can readily identify, but affecting us all nonetheless.
I think it's worth keeping that in mind as we review the various events going on locally, nationally and globally in the world today.
Many miles away
There's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake2
1. Excerpts from Sting & The Police, Synchronicity I.
2. Excerpt from Sting & The Police, Synchronicity II.