Mint Tea and Melancholy---that's Me

-----------------OK, I know they are not for me but I can enjoy them until "The Doll Party", can't I?

On Sat., the 31st, the big day of giving out the beautiful dolls to the AIDS Orphans will finally be here. I expect that the good people who made/sent them and I are more excited than the children, who really do not have an understanding of what a lovely surprise is coming their way.

The sodas and the treats have been ordered, the music for the party has been arranged, the dolls have been lined up ready for distribution according to age. All is in order, except me! Yikes, of all times, my body and heart are ailing since yesterday.

Occasionally my “tummy” gives me a bit of trouble, reminding me that I am ever so human and since Wed. that has been the case. It hasn’t stopped me from two very full days of work, but, today,(my day off) should be a day of rest. Mint tea has been the only thing to cross my lips for the last 24 hrs. O, how I yearn for a can of old fashioned Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and some saltines!

Yesterday, I arrived in the Pediatric Ward to find a baby struggling to breathe, lungs full to the brim and semi-conscious. There was a suction machine but since it is apparently as old as I am (and, may I say—not in anywhere as good shape), I worked to make it useable, in an attempt to suction some of the secretions from this little one, but was unsuccessful. Off to the Theatre (surgery) I go, begging for assistance, which eventually arrived.

After much ado, I was able to suction Baby Dika’s nose and mouth, then following with some postural drainage, I repositioned her. The nursing students always seem surprised to see me simply sitting, touching a child while quietly in prayer, but yesterday was more astonishing than usual. There must have been six or seven students observing every move I made, from my frenetic efforts to suction her, to giving postural drainage, to the reverence of silent prayer, yet I was unable to tell from the look on their faces which activity they found most unusual.

While in prayer, I had a knowing that this little one was close to being in the heavens with her Creator and nothing I could do or try to do would keep her in her body. Initially within this awareness was a sense of void, a giant hole filled with nothing –the utter cold and empty death-dark of it. But then, I got “out of the way “, out of the way of a Greater Plan beyond my understanding. When I did that, I was instantly filled with a swirling sense of God’s Presence; in this child, in the students, even within myself.

I saw/felt the life energy of her body emanating from her, or was it my energy force melding with hers? I didn’t know, I still don’t. It was one of those moments in life you can’t explain, you can only experience. It was a gift, a moment of knowing the “Oneness”, the interconnectedness of all life .

I left to attend a meeting with Waltraud about the future of Baby Daniel, the 7 mo. old featured in a previous Blog entitled “Love is Love, that’s all.” The good news is that miraculously Daniel is HIV neg., the bad news is that weighing less than 10 lbs. , some intervention is necessary if he is to make it. Options were considered and Ithen trudged thru the pouring rain (plastic shoes are made for this country), only to find that Baby Dika had died only moments before my return.

My eyes filled with tears, I hugged the parents as they stood stoically watching their baby being wrapped in burial rags..It seems so cold, so primitive this wrapping of the body, but it makes sense here in a country where embalming is rare and burial is on the family property usually within 24 hrs. of the death

*Tears have taught me a tremendous amount, and I know now that they come bearing important gifts.. There has emerged a half-baked spiritual myth that invalidates sadness, claiming it is beneath us, if we are walking the path to true enlightenment.
.But surely one of the most powerful lines in the scriptures is one of the simplest; “Jesus wept” There is nothing unenlightened about crying over the tragedy of human suffering ;perhaps what is neurotic is how infrequently we do. There is an old Buddhist story about a monk who stood crying by the grave of his master. A traveler came by and saw his tears. “Why would you cry? I thought you ere enlightened!”. The monk replied, ---------------------------“Because I am sad.”----------------------

Today I cry because I am sad, today I drink mint tea for my tummy ache, today I am melancholy. Tomorrow I will celebrate the African-American children who had a tea party to make dolls for the AIDS Orphans in Uganda. I will dance and laugh and take scads of photos .I will” Celebrate the Journey” and anticipate your sharing the joy with me next time.

------------------------------------------Marie----------------------------------
*From Marianne Williamson’s “Everyday Grace”
.

-------Florida, the daughter of Maria Goretti had first pickins of the dolls

--------Opening the boxes of dolls was Christmas for me. Soon, I get to share them!