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excerpts Gifts from the Broken Jar |
PJ Long, a psychotherapist and college instructor, was brain-injured in an equestrian accident that left her a stranger to herself. She could not drive a car, prepare a meal, or carry on a conversation. But when PJ began to write, pen and ink acted as needle and thread, mending her torn mind and stitching together a new life.
Gifts from the Broken Jar contains entries from PJ's journals and e-mails to her long-time friend Christin. These excerpts are drawn from several entries.
Today I bought blueberry jam for Gretchen, my sweet young newly-married neighbor. When I brought her some last summer we talked about my children and the children she was planning to have, about gardens and frogs and sunsets.
Then I fell off the horse, and in October Gretchen's malignant brain tumor was diagnosed. She had her surgeries and the radiation, and when she lost her lovely hair we created some silk wraps for her head. I sewed little caps, copying an old Tibetan beanie from my cedar chest.
We still talk about her primroses, my lilacs, and the goslings that are grown up now down in the swamp. We talk about her dog and my children, about the watercolor-painted skies. But everything is different now, more precious.
~~~~~~~
The other day, the children were working on a new puzzle. They get these "top secret mysteries" in the mail every couple of months. And the first thing they have to do in solving the mystery is to put together a jigsaw puzzle so they can find out what the mystery is about. Once the puzzle is together, they can read about the case, meet the characters, get the “lay of the land,” and figure out how to go about finding clues.
Last week while they were putting the puzzle together they decided to try a new way of doing it. They started to work from the middle, because they wanted the added challenge of leaving the border till last.
That’s how my recovery feels. Occasionally pieces fall into place, but there’s no border or framework to guide me.
~~~~~~~
In the late winter, I realized
that very little of my former life was available to me. I couldn't re-enter my
work, committees, or the brainy relationships and activities that had been so
much a part of me. I was looking out the window, thinking that my gardens were
inviting me back to them, brain injury or not, and it was sustaining to look
forward to doing something so familiar that I could do it and feel like my
"real" self.
I
hadn’t done any of the autumn clean-up or springtime preparation, though, and
became overwhelmed by the amount of work that the gardens needed, compounded by
my lack of physical energy. Often I would go out with my weeding bucket,
clippers, tools, and good intentions. After what seemed like a forever of
working, but was in fact only a few minutes, I’d realize that I was too tired
and would just sit there. Unable to do much thinking, I began to do some pretty
profound looking. One day, it occurred to me that I was seeing images I’d
never seen before, because I’d never been still long enough.
I’ve begun to see beautiful pictures, the kind you see in those luxurious coffee-table books. So now, instead of going to the garden with a bucket full of tools, I take just one (usually clippers for deadheading) and I take my camera. I’m making cards from the photographs. I want to ask my friends to send them to people who are lonely, hurt, sick, forgotten, or weary with the world. It really matters. It makes a difference, seeing that you are being held in someone's thoughts.
I like the way photographing my flowers actually makes me slow down even more. Sometimes I have to wait a very long time for a certain picture because a tiny breeze has moved things out of focus or a bug landed in the wrong place or a cloud just passed over the sun and now I have to wait for the light rays to be just right again.
The healing does continue no matter what, and I don’t have to hurry up with
anything. I’ve
come a long way in terms of grieving the loss and accepting this brain injury.
But I’d really like to build a more solid self-awareness and sense of
competence. It seems like there are still many unknowns—too many holes and
question marks when I look in the mirror.
Yesterday
I was thinking about how I don’t really care for those instant, tidy gardens
that look as if they were plopped down by machines instead of growing up from
the earth. I’d rather see the young plants and saplings, even if they look too
small at first, knowing that they’ll be well-rooted over time.
So often, people seem to be merely skimming the surface of life, impatiently speeding along. Yet if we slow down, go a little deeper, we tap into those wellsprings that have endured for centuries. Out of patience and faith, we grow much stronger. That’s what I like to remind myself these days. “You don’t have to hurry up with anything” is great advice for both healing and landscaping.
~~~~~~~