Sunday, August 11, 2024

 Sunday, August 11, 2024 

 

  I started applying MakesNoClaims (Intrasound) to Elsa's lesions. The old ones looked better, but it did not prevent new breakouts. 

  I got to church early and took a short nap in the car before Mass.  Despite the short nap, I think I fell asleep during Mass anyway. I don't remember saying the Our Father.     

    I looked for Suzanne after Mass. She receives my current updates. Since I wanted to talk about a child who attends the same Mass she does and wanted to write about him in the updates, I was concerned she would recognize the family despite my never using their name. I needed assurance she could respect their privacy.  I positioned myself at the entrance to the church as people exited, looking for her. I didn't see her. I resolved to just delete her name from the email address list for the updates. I didn't think she read them anyway. If she does and misses them, she can say something to me. 

   I also approached the man I had done healing on. He suffered a concussion when the security gate protecting a soda dispenser came crashing down on his head.  I learned about a new approach to concussion recovery on an NPR talk show.   I couldn't remember which show it was when  I spoke to him and his wife.  Sadly, the wife has been very uncomfortable with me ever since I did the work with her husband.  I'm not quite sure why.  Is she always nervous with people, or is it specific to me?   Either way, my hip hurt when I walked away from that conversation. I only feel that pain when I'm scared. I didn't remember feeling fearful, but the other person did seem to be nervous around me.  I can do nothing to remedy that situation except steer clear. However, it felt right to tell them what I had heard.

    I had plans to go to the Unity Church for the crystal healing session at twelve, but that was in an hour and a half. I drove to the transfer station to dump the Bismarck nuts, then to Ace Hardware to look for a 10 gauge extension cord. Their selection was as limited as Lowes'.         

     Then, I drove to Unity Church. I caught the last few minutes of the service. Once the chairs were cleared, I laid down my yoga mat and got a small pillow for my head. 

      The last time I did the crystal healing, only ten people participated. This time, there were 20.  I was much more comfortable with one small pillow than two larger ones. The last three times I participated in the church's free healing sessions, my back hurt from lying on the hard floor. I was surprised because I loved lying on the hard cement in the driveway during Yvette's yoga classes.  At first, I thought the problem was that I was lying there longer in the healing sessions. Then, I thought it could be that I used two large pillows under my head, putting more pressure on my lower back.  Today, I used a very small pillow and had no pain. The session was very healing.  

    As I was leaving, a woman approached me to say hello. She reminded me she had attended one of Monday's Chi Qigong practice on the beach one Monday morning. Not only did I not remember her name, but I also didn't remember meeting her. Wow! this is not good. I would never have forgotten the feeling of meeting someone, even if I had forgotten where I met them. Forgetting someone's name is worse now, but I've always struggled with it. Wow! Is this a minor incident, or is there more to come? In other ways, my mind is as sharp as ever. 

   I got home in time for the fourth-grade session with M.  Shortly after the session started, the screen froze, and she exited Zoom. We had to terminate the session because there was an Internet problem at her end.  

     I had started to address an issue I had in mind. In our last session, I discovered her mind went blank when she was uncomfortable in any way. The problem in the previous session was her dress felt scratchy.  When M feels well, her memory of the story is better than mine. Today, she had no memory of the story; she couldn't even remember the definition of a word I had told her minutes before.   Her parents told me she was left back in second grade because of severe memory problems.  I saw some of that. Her father frequently tells me how much better she is doing. He speaks about her improved self-confidence.  I appreciate the benefit of improved self-confidence, but I had no idea she was so easily debilitated by even a minor discomfort. Holy Cow! I had just started to talk about it with her when our session was cut off.  

     The first question I always ask is,  is the person open to exploring the possibility of change? There's not much I can do if someone doesn't want to change or doesn't want to discuss the topic. Often, that reluctance is caused by a sense of despair or shame. They can't imagine this problem can be fixed or it is too painful to discuss. Those feelings have to be addressed first.

   After the session, I loaded the car with more clusters of Bismarck palm nuts. I put a basket of loose nuts in the car's front seat to remind me to drop off the load at the transfer station on Monday on my way home from the Chi Qigong session. I also loaded a barrel with nut-free stems to take to Darby. I thought that would take several trips, but I got all the empty stems loaded into one barrel. Darby came out to talk when she heard the familiar sound of the wheels of the trash barrel coming down the driveway. She asked me if I had caught that talk on concussion recovery. It was relevant to her because her stroke recovery was comparable.  

    I have been binge-watching Call the Midwife. There are infrequent scenes of people dying, along with many scenes of babies being born.  They leave me feeling I didn't do enough to comfort Mike during those five weeks in the hospital before he died.  I don't know if I withdrew, and so he did, or if he withdrew, and so I did, or if we bounced off each other. But I look back on it and can see all the things I didn't do that would have been comforting. While I told others to speak to him about what they did in their daily lives, I didn't do that with him. I could have told him about things I saw at the Ashram. Other than that, my days were sitting in his hospital room.  I also didn't provide a lot of physical comfort.  I didn't touch him a lot. Now, that was really weird because one of our commonalities was our mutual need for affection. I'm reframing my response, assuming I did what was suitable for the situation.  I have no choice. I'm not getting a redo. I have to forgive myself.