Dish Towels

Two Years Ago

On Day 15 of David’s stem cell transplant we see Dr. Chen. It is all good news: David’s white blood cell counts are 9.9, well within the reference range of 4.5 to 11. His red cell counts remain a bit low, but are holding steady. Next Tuesday David will see Jess Driscoll, the nurse practitioner, a sign that he is doing well and doesn’t require Dr. Chen’s constant attention
David moves slowly and gets tired easily, but he is able to move around the house, make himself a sandwich, go for short walks, and be home alone.

July 5, 2016

Folding clothes on my first laundry day since returning from the Northwest six days ago. The last day of my vacation I did laundry at Michelle’s and David’s house, thus avoiding the discouraging ritual of spending the first day back home doing laundry. Unpacking and resuming household duties is emotionally draining enough.

I reach to fold the ‘new’ dish towels and realize they are two years old. I bought a large package of them, and a package of dish cloths, in May, 2014, to minimize the use of paper towels in my super-clean kitchen by using a fresh cloth towel every day.

Handling the dish towels doesn’t make me cry. Reading On Loss and Living Onward does. I didn’t take it with me on my three week western jaunt. It’s on my Kindle, so that’s no excuse. I consciously didn’t read any grief books; I wanted to take a breather. Now I’m back.

Grief is a geat leveler. There is no highroad out.
Courage is a first step, but simply to bear the blow bravely is not enough. Stoicism is courageous, but it is only a halfway house on the long road. It is a shield, permissible for a short time only. In the end, one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable. Otherwise, scar tissue will seal off the wound and no growth will follow. To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable—open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering.

                             Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead