Mystery

Spring and the Corona Luna

Saturday gratefuls: Nurse Michele from Mt. Evan’s Hospice and Home Health Care. A night without leaking for Kate!!! A new protocol for her feeding tube. Masks. Personas. No, masks, soft cloth masks. No, it’s all masks. Even our body. Mystery. The peaks of the mountains. Cirrus clouds racing high above them. Lodgepoles with hoarfrost. Woolly’s on Zoom.

Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Talk about mysteries. How does this really work? I mean, seeing old friends, family members who are far away. Maine, Saudi Arabia, Singapore. Shorewood. Anoka County. Downtown Minneapolis. While up here on Shadow Mountain. Talking to them. They hear me and respond. I see facial expressions, room settings. All on zoom settings. Wow.

The O.E.D. Mystery. Definition #1: hidden from human knowledge or understanding; impossible or difficult to explain, solve, discover; obscure origin, nature, or purpose.

A psychonaut. This friend. He’s done psychedelics. He’s done ayahuasca, the shaman’s drug from the rain forest. Living in mystery, living into mystery, life’s mystery. What’s behind door number 3? Is there a wizard in oz or just a traveling salesman pulling levers and pushing buttons? He’s stayed level, working, drawing, imagining. Pushing himself, his art, his words as he ages. A beautiful thing to see. Inspirational.

Speaking of beautiful things. Michele, the Mt. Evan’s home health care nurse came yesterday. She showed us how to clean Kate’s tube feeding site with warm, soapy water and sterile pads. How to apply a zinc oxide cream below the disc. How to cut a gauze bandage to fit under the disc and one to fit over it. Since that time, around 11 yesterday, Kate’s been leak free. Hallelujah. Really.

A guy I knew at CBE, Howard, had a brain hemorrhage this week. And, died. Echoes of mom, that week in October. I spoke with him at Purim, the last time I was at CBE. Nothing apparently wrong then. No TIA evidence. Just normal Howard, talking about his wife’s leukemia and their tennis doubles. They played competitively even though she was in treatment. The cancer took her a while ago. It’s not only Covid-19 out there. It’s cancer and brain bleeds and feeding tubes, too.

My point here is not a gloomy one. It’s just that life, and death, goes on unrelated to the viral victory march. And will continue.