Contra Naturam

In the TV/Movie version of life we get pummeled by thugs in a back alley, wake up in a trash bin or even take a few bullets to the kishkas. The next scene finds us in a hospital bed connected to I.V. drips, monitors and blipping screens. When told about a friend in need we tear ourselves loose from such incidentals, leap out of bed, check the deserted hallway and sneak out into the traffic of life to set world right.

In real life we stay put with catheter, bedpan and 4 A.M. nurses waking us up to take vital signs. Our mouths are parched. The nurses are chatting in the hall and where is that ice pack we requested three hours ago?

I prefer the movie version even if they have to send to Vienna for the specialist who, alone, has an experimental procedure which has only been tested on caterpillars in Madagascar ...  but just may work.

In fact recovery and rehabilitation are a gravelly road with potholes, speed bumps and cul de sacs. Peggy is being urged to walk through the hurt, to stretch her quads, pump those ankles and raise her knee. All of it is Contra Naturam. It’s like asking a person to walk through the nettles and brambles instead of the comfort path. If it is a movie it’s a foreign art-house film without sub-titles. It drags. It’s tedious, even punishing. All of it adds up to a happy ending but it feels like the first part of The Agony and the Ecstasy or the last half of Crime and Punishment.

In the exercise room there are about 24 folks in varying stages of disrepair, a dozen physical therapists and two service dogs. Lila and Otis. Vanity but not dignity has been parked outside. These are faces of lives lived yet with daily epiphanies still to come.  Everyone has a story. All are bent by the weather of years, roads traveled with travail. And all are levelled by their experience, brought to their knees regardless of their previous station.

The last movie Peggy and I saw before her accident was Hannah Arendt. Rather than banality of evil this is the banality of retrieval. Everyone is trying to retrieve what was, for decades, taken for granted…ambulation.

My role is to bear witness and find the point between being empathetic or pushing her to tough it out, between Dr. Schweitzer and Dr. Mengele. It is against my nature but this is my turn at Contra Naturam.