Midnight Chaos
Agitated thought drifted through my dreams. Like tendrils of rising mist creeping through a landscape cloying unease displaced a healing rest. Not again but too late, I surfaced to consciousness another peaceful bliss broken. Did I dare open my eyes and look at the clock?
Too common this middle-of-the night rousing, becoming an unwelcome routine; one minute fast asleep and comfortable the next awake and restless. Too few hours of slumber before an insipid wakefulness boded for a wearisome day. The body aches and gnawing thoughts barred the gateway back. How I longed to melt back into the arms of Morpheus.
Broken sleep wasn’t the only chaos churning. I didn’t understand what was going on, recent Western Hemisphere weather spewing into the Zeitgeist tumultuous fall energy. Everywhere I turned someone near or far dealing with personal turbulence, living with uncommon chaos.
It’s Hurricane Season
The collective anxiety was captured in a concluding remark to a small group of colleagues after listening to and participating in a litany of woes. My dinner-meeting comment to fellow volunteers serving on the executive board for a business, educational institution: “Well, it is hurricane season,” seemed to reflect our reality both personal and collective.
There was an out-of-control energy blowing through our lives that seemed to mirror the September 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria. Monster winds wielding paths of tumult through the Caribbean Islands, Florida and Puerto Rico to name a few had brought residents to their knees shell-shocked and not knowing what to do. At our business meeting we felt similar effects.
The sudden resignation of our long-term Executive Administrator, the only paid position and reason for our gathering, was the tip of the iceberg.
“Mum broke her arm last week,” was part of the pre-amble catch-up as Jill* filled me in on her aging mother’s recent fall.
Wrapped up the same week with my mother’s hip replacement I hadn’t heard the news.
“We waited three days before they scheduled surgery.”
Jill explained a difficult situation with her trademark calm. The dark shadows under her eyes belied exhaustion of juggling work in Toronto and ministering post-op to her mother in Barrie. Tonight was the first in a week where she left her mother alone and hoped she would manage with one able arm.
“She was managing well when I left,” seemed more introspective and self-assuring than a concluding remark to the group.
But I wondered, too, how well Jill was managing her stressors. In her Toronto apartment at the end of the evening waited another recovering invalid. Prior to her mother’s accident her partner suffered herniated neck discs requiring a hospital visit. Unable to work he bided his time at home until his life returned to pain-free normalcy.
My first thought was fire to the frying pan, but I kept the sentiment in check and said nothing as Jill turned to ask about my mother. I was sizzling in my stew of stress, running at full tilt while supporting Mum before and after her hip replacement.
“Well, the surgeon doesn’t waste words but, he said the surgery was a success.”
I remembered holding my breath weeks before at a pre-op appointment when he laboured towards his decision to operate. What chance, I thought, for an eighty-seven-year old with a heart condition? But with such a bad hip her next recourse was a wheelchair. Observing her when she walked my husband, not unkindly, referred to her as “Peter Pan’s” peg-legged Captain Hook. She would rather, however, have walked the plank on the operating table than never again tend her garden. Here was her chance to regain mobility. In slow, measured style the surgeon delivered his verdict. His low-key demeanor stifled an impulse to grab and kiss him as he agreed to the surgery.
A week after the operation I shared the news.
“She is doing great for her age,” I said to Jill and the others, “but it’s a challenge.”
Mum had done well. Up in three days the pain meds eased movement but the side effects precluded a comfortable balance as they left her unwell. Recovery would be long.
“The surgeon can only replace the hip but everything else is up to you.” Keeping the hip-joint lubricated through movement being the ingredient to long-term success.
Just when it seemed we were ready to move to the business discussion Pamla,* the group’s President, ventured: “I didn’t want to alarm you guys because this meeting is important but I almost couldn’t make it.”
She had our attention.
After months of hospital visits Pamla’s mother passed away in the spring. It had been an intense period. Throughout Pamla’s strength anchored the family but like jet-lag settling after a long journey she was now feeling the after-effects. Sadness overtook at unexpected times; often at work she escaped to the relative privacy of her car as tears came unbidden.
“What now?” I thought. Hasn’t she endured enough?
“My Dad, too, is not doing well; he passed out yesterday. Thank God my son was home and called 911.”
With the cause of his collapse uncertain the hospital admitted him. He would need to undergo more tests.
Things were topsy-turvy, jittery even. No wonder the sense of unease permeating my prior night’s sleep.
Changing Landscape
It would take time to even out. Just like the purpose for our meeting. It wasn’t catastrophic our Executive Administrator gave notice. She had every right to pursue her goals. Her needs had changed and, truthfully, so had ours–the landscape was shifting. But her resignation was one more disturbance in a tumultuous time.
On the way home in my car that night I wondered aloud, “What, dear Lord, is happening? What are you trying to show me?”
It occurred to me an underlying spiritual principle was at play but I couldn’t figure it out. Chaos loomed around me.
To be continued (refer next post).
Is there a chaotic energy astir in the Western Hemisphere? Can you name places of chaos in your life that show unusual amounts of energy?
*Not her real name.