It has been years since I watched her Ted Talk. Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who had a stroke, and recovered enough to describe it. It was my good fortune to see it again, and to follow her journey through the quieting of her left hemisphere from a ruptured blood clot the size of a golf ball. The experience does
not easily succumb to words and sentences, and yet that is how we humans have evolved to communicate. Jill compared herself to a genie being released from a bottle, whose energy and connection to everything around her expanded like air, music, light, or love. She no longer felt autonomous, or singular. What a miracle that would be.
I went to visit a woman who recently
had a stroke. As it happened she was finishing a walk in the courtyard with a physical therapist. We sat down and I asked how she is doing. She struggled to find words to express herself. But her eyes were alive with feeling. We talked some, until a topic became a dead end from forgotten names. I had brought my guitar, and she was eager to hear music. I was amazed at how the lyrics spilled out of her from songs I wrote decades ago. Probably she has not listened to them since her children were
young.
It was as if we were dancing with our voices, me leading, but her following. In that moment she was not a forgetful elder, but my friend.
Part way through a second verse I had a tickle in my throat and had to pause to cough into my elbow.
It was an interruption, something I would feel chagrined about while playing in front of a crowd. But I was safe in her presence, knowing that she was incapable of judging me.
Then it was time for me to leave. We walked slowly towards a door leading into the building. But it needed a code punched into the keypad, and we could not open it. We sauntered to a different
door, one leading into the dining room but no one was eating just then. It seemed like a metaphor for how she is trapped in a body that does not serve her as faithfully as it once did. Someone eventually noticed us, and let me in. My friend chose to remain in the courtyard for awhile, though I hoped she wasn't suddenly lonely. I drove home as if I am a separate person from her, one who can still navigate roads and decisions.
But what if we really are connected? What will it be like when we both escape this bottle called earthly existence? Will dementia, mistakes, and isolation lose their grip on us?
What a miracle that would be.