Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The road back…long

Recovery. I write about it all the time, and try to figure out if I’ve recovered from the stroke or not. And some days I find lots of “un-recovered” parts of me. To day, I stopped in to see a man who was the chair of the St. Andrew’s Board while I was there. He4’s a really good guy, and we had a good talk, a sort of closure-making talk. And then tonight I watched a documentary on Netflix about a young woman, a girl really, who joined the US Army at 19 and went to Iraq, where she became a sergeant and commanded men under her.

Her name is Robynn Murray. How ironic that is. One of Beatrix’ old University friends is named Robin Murray. The most profound irony is that Robin grew up across the ally from us when we lived at 557 Waverley in Winnipeg. I remember her as an 18 year old, in a bright red suit, very pretty, a girl like the other Robynn.

Robynn is still trying to recover from Iraq, from pointing her weapon at families and stripping them of all humanity (her words) and losing her own in the process. Watching the film, entitles Poster Girl, was a glimpse into hell and the road out of it. It’s about recovery.

I don’t live in hell, but it’s just down the street, around the corner, and I have to walk past it every day. I tell others and myself that I am well, I’m fine…and from the outside, that’s how it looks. But then, I encounter my inability to concentrate for more than a few minutes on any mental work. Or I realize that I can only read for a few minutes before I have to take a break. Or that I’ve read all kinds of books recently, and can’t remember a single thing I’ve read. How do I recover from that? Maybe it’s the stroke, or maybe it’s just the aging process. I’m old, and getting older, and I can’t recover from that. I’m going to have Diego tattoo on the inside of my left arm, the phrase from the Serenity Prayer, “…the courage to accept the things I cannot change.” That’s the best I can think of to do in the way of recovery at the moment: realize where I am, and accept that.


Bad day today. Bent over to pull weeds from a flowerbed, and now my back is on fire and broken, or so it feels. Old…broken…done. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

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