Tree/Surgery
June 23, 2000
The Tree

If I were to study a tree
I would say it's like my Mom.
There are troubles like dead branches,
but it always keeps growing.
A tree always sways with the wind
showing its many leaves,
like my Mom shows hope.
I believe in this hope.


Flowers in Delight

Watch a flower in the day,
Watch it lean or even sway,
Its colors so bright
Like dancing in delight
Watch it sway in the shimmering moonlight.
Its reaching hand
petals land
on the hand of deep compassion.

Lucia Jean Wylie-Kellermann

Most of you will have read the last update sent by Lydia Irene who finds my own missives unduly ambiguous or even bleak and so set the record straight with her personal testimony and take. Only fair to begin this follow-up with recent poetry by ten-year-old Lucy. The first of these was written while Jeanie was in the second of three back-to-back seizures Wednesday morning June 14. Lucy "wanted to be supportive but not have to watch." And she couldn't think of another way to be "useful." While others held Jeanie, administered emergency measures, or dialed doctors, she made for the upstairs porch to contemplate what was right before her eyes. (She does know she can rise to the necessary and has proven so to herself). Lucy has begun her sessions with the IHM therapist friend on our block. She now takes along her "poetry and dream journal." Albeit in ways different from Lydia, she is coping and then some.
Jeanie's third seizure took place with her mom in the backseat en route to the hospital as I drove outrageously illegal speeds, harboring hopes of being spotted and accompanied by the cops. No such luck. EMS had arrived after Jeanie was up and talking. Their choice of hospitals was narrowly complicating, so we waved them off and set out for the small place north of town where our doctors are connected. As the endless string of judgement calls go, this one was wrong, but not disastrous. After a day in ER, including a CAT scan showing ventricles once again enlarged, she was moved back downtown for next morning surgery. I didn't think we'd submit to another cutting intervention, but the shunt draining excess fluid into her belly was clogged and misplaced. I couldn't imagine watching Jeanie seizure continuously, never mind the great decline. We signed off. Then in the OR prep room, the anesthesiologist asked if this was the "first revision of the shunt," an ominous question with serial import new to us. When does the point come where we wave off the endless cutting?
Meanwhile, Jeanie bounces back yet again, lush and verdant. Willful, wise, and wonderful. She's home now a week and plotting the summer. Even though it overlaps with our community camping time up north, she is stubbornly set on attending the Witness events at General Convention in Denver. I can't decide whether to wince or smile, but I make reservations in the air and on the ground. Who can say what summer holds? I'm beyond second guessing this woman and her hope. Yesterday she vigiled downtown with the fasters against Gary Graham's execution. Today she journals about the about "another eventful day at the cabin." Here the girls rehearse loudly their parts for Music Man (Lucy belting out her Winthrop song with a thplattering lithp). The place has gone feral, the grass a sea of daisies (gift of a broken mower). Beneath the moon they close hands tight, but come the sun there is the dance, its sway of our delight.

Love in poems and prayers, Bill