Angry and weeping, gory and ugly, the wound stared with a straight face, daring me to look back. My mind was racing, wandering where I kept the first aid box, what was in it and how I could nurse the wound or maybe I should take her to A & E, call someone, maybe a doctor friend, a nurse, paramedics, anyone! I didn’t want to be alone with this. I tried to tear off a piece from my garment to bind the wound, but she stayed my hands, I rushed to get the oil to pour but she refused, all the while I was not looking at the wound, I could not look, I did not want to, it was too much to ask of me and she knew it. All my efforts was not really to heal but to cover it up, because I did not want to see it. I did not want to face the ugliness of it, I did not want to understand the trauma that the tissues had suffer, I just want it to go away so I can breath, so I can be comfortable, but today is to be different, the wound must breath before any cover up.
She sat down and she made me sit down, she was in agonising pain, but she needed me to see and identify with the rawness of it all. Shivering I sat beside her, my hands stuck to my sides as I fight every impulse to do something and the few seconds felt like eternity. I dared to look at the wound, slowly my shivering stopped, I calmed down and watched the tears from the wound, I saw every tortured tissue, I heard every story it had to tell, I travelled the journey, I understood the process, I listen to the agonising and heard every note, then that which was initially ugly became a canvas of inexplicable story telling with an appreciation of the journey. The wound breath, the wound felt honoured and then I was allowed to nurse and bind it. It was not being covered up any longer but nursed back to healing and health.
The yearning was like an insatiable gapping hole, a bottomless pit, raging like a live volcano, longing to suck everything in its path to get some relief from the emptiness, but nothing could fill it, nothing could take away the sense of emptiness, every now and then, there was a short-live temporary relief as the next item lands in the hole, but no, it gets swallowed up and the yearning continues, the raging is even stronger. The dog barks and we throw a bone and the dog is distracted for a second, but the bark commences, we throw some more bones, bark gets stronger and louder, but dog does not want bone, in the same way the yearning does not want any and everything thrown at it. So I stopped and listen and allowed the yearning to rage and I did not try to calm it, I just listened and watched and empathise, I tried to understand the ‘why’, I can’t say I did, but I tried and right before my eyes the raging calmed, to be awoken another day, the effusive eruption stopped. There was peace, as the yearning stared with subdued eyes, lids starts to shut, to open another day, the yearning felt acknowledged!
Beautiful Ivory 