Tag / meaning

by bcmiller2014

Dr. Chris

I won’t be seeing my friend, Dr. Chris, today.  Business just got too slow and the rent too high, so he had to close his doors.  For three years I’ve seen him at least three times a week, for several hours at a time.  Technically he’s a chiropractor, but for me he’s been so much more than that.  When I first arrived in his office, referred by a friend and desperate, I could barely get myself onto one of his tables so he could work on me.  I’d had a bulging disc that I’d been working on with a physical therapist, but I thought I could heal even more if I had chiropractic help as well.  I went to someone with a good reputation.  I was interviewed by one person and treated by another.  My theory is that communication went awry because with one aggressive move, that chiropractor turned my bulging disc into a herniated one.  Once the jelly is out of the doughnut, there’s no putting it back.  I could barely walk.  Keith would take me from home to school so I could teach, and then cart me back so I could get horizontal on our firm sofa.  If I moved suddenly it would feel like someone was stabbing me in the leg with a knife.  I went, in under a second, from being able-bodied to being permanently disabled.

I wasn’t very trusting after that.  Western medicine offered me the choice of cortisone injections into my spine until the cortisone would begin to degrade my spinal tissue, or permanent medication that had a list of horrific side-effects.  I tried the cortisone twice but it hurt like hell, had minimal productive effect, and caused my heart to race for days.  I tried acupuncture.  I think it helped a bit.  I tried sound wave therapy.  I don’t know if that helped or not.  My last traditional treatment option was to fuse my discs together, and my physical therapist did not recommend it.  He said that over time the fact that two discs were in an unnatural position would affect the discs above and below causing an eventual cascading failure.  Finally a trusted friend recommended Dr. Chris.

Chris Abrahamson is a tall, fatherly Swede, and the most gentle man I have ever met.  His prices were ridiculously reasonable and I immediately felt safe with him in spite of myself, so I decided to give it a shot.  The first time on the table, I could barely tell he was doing anything.  He was touching my spine but not with a lot of pressure.  I would have thought he was a fraud except that when I got up I felt a little better.  That was the continuing trend.  I’d go.  He’d be gentle.  I wouldn’t know why but I’d feel better.  Continuing treatment is necessary for maintenance and there’s never going to be yoga, running or any high impact activity in my future, but I can get around pretty darned well these days.  He is everything a chiropractor or any kind of doctor should be.  But here’s the thing, he’s more than that.

Chris is a genuine healer.  His calming presence is soothing to everyone who has come into his office.  I’ve watched it happen.  People are full of anxiety and stress, and when they leave they are relaxed and smiling.  Personally, I have an anxiety disorder.  I can have my heart racing when I’m thinking about flowers.  Part of the reason I went to see him so often was because when I went, it calmed me, even on really hard days.  I also have a hard time expressing how I feel, and so I carry a lot of my feelings in my physical body.  It’s weird, I know, but it’s true.  There were times when no one else was there and he would lay his big open palm on my shoulder or stomach and I would start to bawl my eyes out.  It didn’t bother him.  He’d just sit on a stool at the head of my table, his hand on my shoulder, saying oh so quietly, “It’s okay.  It’s okay.”  He’d hand me Kleenex and then when I sat up he’d sit next to me and I’d finish crying on his shoulder.  He always had a twinkle in his eye and when I was depressed he could always make me laugh.

Once Keith was out of town and I was at home and accidentally grabbed the handle of a skillet that had just come out of a 450 degree oven.  I could hear my fingers sizzle.  I was in so much pain and had no idea what to do because ice made my pain go through the roof, and all I could remember were old wives tales about burns.  With my remaining functional hand I texted him at 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and he texted right back, “No ice!  Use a bowl of cool water!”  I did so and texted a couple more questions.   Then I tried to leave him alone.  Pretty soon I got an incoming text.  He was checking on me to make sure I  was okay.

When I needed emergency surgery he came and visited me in the hospital even though he hates hospitals.  He held my hand and got teary-eyed because it was right after surgery and I was a mess.  He really, truly cared about me.  It was so appropriate and so extraordinary to have a doctor as a father figure caring for my emotions as well as my body.  Maybe because it was another chiropractor who hurt me, after a while he only charged what I had on my HSA.  The way he treated me changed the way I view God because it changed the way I view men and fathers.  And I know I’m not the only one who has been utterly blessed to know this man and be helped by him.

Monetarily some may look at his life and think it small.  They would be wrong.  I have never met anyone who gave so much to so many, expecting so little in return.  This is, in my opinion, the definition of a powerful, meaningful, important life.  Without him and his generosity there would be so much more suffering in the world.

His life has become an example of true success to me.  Even if I don’t make a lot of money I want people at the end of my life to say that I made every bit of difference that I could, loving people and the creatures of the world to the best of my ability.  I may not be a healer in the traditional sense, but I can be a lover of all through my research, my art, my words, and my actions.  I will sometimes fail, but I will keep recommitting to love because those with the most beautiful lives I’ve seen, like Dr. Chris, have done the same.  Hopefully we’ll go out once in a while for tea because man, I’m going to miss that guy.

by bcmiller2014

Invisible Questions

I watch murder mysteries on
t.v.  There are so many to 
choose from. Some are even 
sweet, in their way. Many
require subtitles due to the 
accents. 

I save bugs from my class-
room, and here I am looking
at corpses. We all die, though. 
We’re all part of a storyline, full
of characters of sorts, picking
up mysteries here and there
as though they were chestnuts 
ready for baking or words to
a Christmas song. 

All our questions hide 
themselves in the sock 
drawer and make
themselves invisible in our 
daily lives, looking ordinary 
while whispering secrets just
out of reach of our ears. We 
like it that way. 

Mortality, our
insignificance, our importance,
diseases, hunger, poverty,
the sound of rain in the dining
room, all dress themselves in
everyday clothes so we pass
them by on the sidewalk, but
we watch the actors on t.v.
because we know we’re 
missing something. 

by bcmiller2014

Scrambled Eggs

Okay, I know what everyone else has figured out already. Getting upset about the seagulls wasn’t just about the seagulls. The problem is that I don’t understand what it really is about. I’m pretty darned tuned into the universe so I suppose part of it could be about hearing the earth groan all the time. It could be about all the devastation humans wreak on each other and the planet. It could be about watching my mother suffer all her life, or watching my dad give up all his dreams, or being their “all we’ve got in the world.” It could have something to do with being married to my dear husband for over 18 years and still dealing with a multitude of issues around physical intimacy. Perhaps it’s about being rejected and/or misunderstood by my in-laws, having little family of my own and feeling sort of alone. Adopted family is great, but it’s never quite the same, is it? It could be related to my desire to create, always thwarted by my need to earn a stable income and teach others how to be more creative. I’m writing a terribly depressing paper about the unseen human costs of cheap production of goods, demanded by people who expect rock bottom prices so they can take mission trips to help the poor, when the truth is, the demand for low prices is creating most of the poor, supporting slavery and child labor, and decimating the environment the most for persons of color and few economic resources. Is it about all that? I almost cried when someone let me pet their dog today. I cried at a commercial on T.V. I’m walking with a limp.

It’s not as though any of the above is new information. I think that’s why I’m confused. I’ve understood and accepted all of this and more. So why now has my body decided to grieve?

Maybe the seagulls were the last straw-the latest instance in which love has failed and suffering has won the day. It was in my face, a blatant violation of one of the factors that has allowed me to continue thinking that living on earth is something I can accomplish without being completely destroyed. My seagulls were stability. They were hope. I counted on the ritual of their lives as one of the anchors in my universe. And yes, I know seagulls don’t live as long as us and are susceptible to tragedy like everyone else. I worried about it, but to see their home destroyed so carelessly, thrown in the trash as though everything beautiful and precious to me were worthless shit to be taken away in just a matter of time. That surprised me.

We are promised nothing while we’re here. God says he’ll be with us, but I don’t understand him. Some of my friends think he’s attempting to perfect us by allowing a series of afflictions, and it’s all for our own good. Some people say he’s in control of everything, and everything happens for a purpose. To this I say, “bullshit.” I think shit just happens. I’m not interested in a God who allows birth defects so we’ll gain character. There’s got to be something I’m missing, but if God actually wants relationship with me he’s going to have to do more than meet me halfway. He’s God, after all, and I have the stature of a flea when it comes to the size of the universe. So I guess I’ll just wait here and send this invitation out into the spiritual dimension. God, I need you to show up. You owe me nothing. I’m sort of banking on the “God is love” theme being true, even though I have no idea how that actually works. Without something outside of and greater than myself to give meaning to this brief, astounding and devastating life, I’ve got nothing. I never believed in that whole idea that children give a person a sort of immortality, and I don’t even have kids. Maybe the point is in loving each other, but we’ve proven we all suck at that. I do have a lot to be grateful for. I didn’t haul my water from a dirty river today. I’m not living in a war zone. I can move around and do stuff. I need more. If you’re the one who decided I’d be a deep thinker then it’s your own damn fault. If all we have is this breath then I need you to show me what that breath is for. I’m asking for your help when I know I deserve nothing. I’m asking anyway. What the hell. It never hurts to ask, right?

by bcmiller2014

Short Life

When I’m done here I won’t have children, to continue drawing my line. I’ve never really understood the comfort in that, anyway, except some of my stuff would wait a generation or so before ending in a landfill.

We breathe in and out and carry things around feeling important and devastated and small, and then we simply leave, shifting dimensions with our carcasses left behind. Carcasses. Stuff. Anything else?  What stays, at least for a while?  If love stays, where does it go, becoming as it does, conjoined with inexpressible pain? I know of course that it fills me up from the toes. What else?  I ask because that’s what I want my life to be about while I’m here. For all my abstraction and taste for temporary things like print-making and flowers and hugs, I want to center my time around permanence. I think. 

Would collections of impermanent things become permanent over time?  Might they be embedded in the energy that is me so they remain, like navigational coordinates for future travelers?  Art decays while it is here on earth but does the creative act likewise become corrupted, or does it hover, joining with the life-bringers in a great, joyful dance we cannot see? Flowers last only days, dropping petals, browning at the edges. Everything lovely and natural and sweet like a lilac breeze (not those horrid, wide-eyed porcelain figures that bait with the subtlety of dart boards) may somehow collect itself, honey in a jar that we find on the other side. And hugs, well, those are obvious, I suppose.  Physical manifestations of affection, support, love, comfort, must somehow remain, even if they’ve leaked to somewhere we can no longer feel them from here. They carry meaning.  They carry hope. They hold every ounce of anything that ever mattered anywhere. 

I suppose those are still the things that matter to me, then. If I end this life having done nothing but loved, comforted, held, beheld, and generally spent myself on beauty, authenticity and kindness, then I will have left behind the only things that matter. I’ll do other things sometimes, God help me. I believe there is grace for that. It gets burned off as we transition from here to there. So since I have no children I’ll spend all of myself on you and me and the God who made all the good stuff, all this weird interdimensional, grounded reality and spiritual plane shit, as though he knew what he was doing when he put everything into play. Maybe each one of us is actually a note in a grand orchestral song. I think that would be fine with me.