How the Healing Begins

 

    Don’t feel sorry for me because I don’t.  I frame my scars and healed bones as evidence of a life fully lived.  And there are a lot of scars and healed bones.  I have acquired them by being both a bit of a risk-taker and by doing completely ordinary things.  Once, for example, I was hit while crossing the road by a school bus on a perfect summer afternoon.  The driver said he didn’t see me, and an attorney friend said that I should let him “pay for my kids’ college.”  Other injuries were sustained falling out of things, off things, and onto things.  Temporary setbacks, all.

    My worst physical injury was from riding my bike.  It was in 2015 during a fast group ride when several riders tangled and fell in front of me.  I was the only one that didn’t get up.  My shattered arm and shoulder were, according to the surgeon who worked to put it all back together, “an unsolved orthopedic problem.”

    About a year after the surgery, I could use my arm enough to play guitar.  After eight years I can ride comfortably about 10 miles and 20 if I grit my teeth.  My legs are fine, but my arm gets tired.  It is still wonderful and magic to ride but the pain keeps me from riding regularly.

    As it so happens, my physical injury was coupled with an injury that was not physical.  It is hard to comprehend how awry my plans to ride and race in my retirement have gone and how hard it is to come to terms with my new reality.  Sometimes, when I share my story, my 30-year love affair with the machine, the years of close camaraderie, the danger, the finely honed skill of riding fast with others, how much I loved feeling strong and racing all out and hammering on the weekends and hanging with the busters with a strong coffee afterwards, and how I can’t do it anymore, I am not looking for sympathy.   Well, to be honest, maybe a little.

    What I really need to share is how much I have lost, which is something all of us experience if we live long enough.  That is what I want people to hear, and I am often discouraged by how many people, even close friends, are not able to go there.  It’s frustrating and depressing to not be heard.

    Once I shared with someone that the state of politics makes me frightened.  He thought, wrongly, that I wanted to debate politics.  No, I wanted to talk about how politics makes me feel.  Completely different topic.  It took a risk for me to raise the question and when the conversation took a left turn, it was a bit baffling. I kept trying to redirect by pointing out, “You don’t seem to be listening to what I am saying.”  But the other person was stuck in winning his part of the conversation.

    So, what do I say to people that suggest I try a recumbent?  I want to say, “I am not talking about what kind of thing I should ride.  I am talking about losing something important.”  Look, I don’t need someone to try to fix me because I know that what I have lost is gone.  What I want, and this is what I should ask for, is validation that losing something important hurts.  That is how the healing begins - by acknowledging that a life fully lived involves loss and the pain of loss.  And I am not sorry for living fully.