Inside
NCR
The day after he had performed
quadruple bypass surgery on my heart, Dr. James Miller said it was his
experience that “a lot more than plumbing happens when I do one of
these.” Something deeper often goes on, what he termed “a life
altering” experience.
I had the good fortune to have a surgeon who took elaborate
amounts of time for conversations that wandered over a broad landscape, often
far from the immediate matters at hand. We talked religion and history,
families and philosophy, politics and even a little golf.
During one of those conversations we were talking about how such
an event simultaneously shrinks one’s entire universe to, say, the 6-inch
space between the edge of the bed and the chair that is that morning’s
goal, yet expands that universe to thoughts well beyond the mundane, beyond
what one perceives as the most pressing issues of the day. The world shrinks to
the size of the chamber that holds that mysterious muscle that in turn holds
the secret to the leap from now to an instant from now; yet the mind, and, dare
I say, the heart, are opened to new ways of imagining our common humanity and
to the ache of the barriers we put up between us. Intriguing paradoxes that I
would have some time to ponder in the weeks ahead kept bumping to the surface
of things.
I have been lucky. I’ve never
had a heart attack, although six years ago I had angioplasty, and my heart has
not been damaged. After the surgery last month, I was told, “This should
take you far down the road.” Recovery was surprisingly quick. So I came to
view my time away from work and the regular routines as a kind of forced
retreat. I was glad for the time, because something deeper than plumbing had
happened.
Something deeper, in fact, had begun before the surgery when
friends began sending messages of concern and promises of prayers, and
afterwards when so many of you sent notes and cards that certainly eased the
healing.
A few nights before I went into the hospital, my wife, Sally,
gathered some friends for a bit of prayer, and a priest friend came and
anointed me. I was apprehensive, but a sense of being supported by prayer -- a
sense that I might have spoken about before but understood now in a vital, new
way -- brought a certain calm.
The mornings post-surgery were at
first a bit awkward, as time seemed to spread out before me like a spill on
linoleum. I defined that time at first mostly by what I did not have to do:
immediately get the headlines, jump into The New York Times, check the
op-ed pages of several papers; look at e-mail; write an Inside NCR column;
write an editorial; check on the progress of the lead story and this
week’s front page; attend meetings, return phone calls; grab a plane, read
the latest batch of sex abuse stories. (I was excused from all that, thanks to
wonderful colleagues, led by Managing Editor Patricia Morrison.)
But not doing things did not give the day any form or shape. I was
nudged toward prayer and found great help in the work of Fr. Ed Hayes, a local
treasure but known far beyond for his distinguished work in the area with such
books as Prayers for the Domestic Church, and Pray All Ways.
One of his prayers, for Monday morning, contains lines that will
remain special to me for a long, long time:
This day will hold much for me,
And so that I may not miss
its hidden message,
Your living word to me,
I now enter the cave of my
heart
And, there, pray to You in stillness.
Quiet of body and peaceful of
spirit,
I rest in you.
The issue of time would press in on
me in a way it never has before. One of the life-altering aspects of the
surgery was smacking head-on into the realization of what’s important: the
next heartbeat, the next breath, family, friends, essential beliefs, work that
is meaningful and fulfilling. The rest is pretty much gravy.
How, then, to fill the time? Better yet, how not to waste it?
The night I came home I was under the lingering effects of
anesthesia and the very active effects of pain medication. I was dozing in and
out of a light sleep but woke up at one point to catch a segment of Bill
Moyers’ “NOW,” which my wife and son James were watching. Moyers
was interviewing poet Naomi Shihab Nye, and he took out of his wallet a small
reproduction of one of her works, “The Art of Disappearing,” that he
said was important to him in his recuperation from open-heart surgery some
years ago. Ms. Nye read the poem on the show. The next day my wife went out and
purchased a collection, Words Under the Words, containing the poem. I
share it here with the permission of the publisher, Far Corner Books of
Portland, Ore:
When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.
When
they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before
answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a
poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they
say We should get together
say why?
It’s not that you don’t
love them anymore.
You’re trying to remember something
too important
to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a
new project.
It will never be finished.
When someone recognizes you
in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you
haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start
singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around
feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide
what to do with your time.
It is very good to be back in the newsroom.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 22,
2002
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