The Final Time

Today I am thinking of final times...and things that come to pass.

The final time I see the first robin of the year

The final time I wait for elderberry blossoms to fruit

The final time I gather the ripened berries and sit for hours, fingers deftly removing the stems

The final time I feed wild turkeys at the state forest

The final time I carry my folding chair onto Sandwich Town Beach

The final time I sit by the summer ocean

The final time I watch for the beach plums to ripen

The final time my arms are scratched bloody while plucking them from thorny branches

The final time I turn my wild bounty into beach plum and elderberry jam

The final time I satisfyingly line a shelf with row upon row of jelly jars, like sparkling gems of ruby and amethyst

The final time I take my dog for a 5 minute walk

The final time I forage for wild mushrooms

The final time I cook for enjoyment

The final time I see the glorious colors of Autumn leaves

The final time my nose gets dusted with pollen while smelling a Casablanca lily

The final time I pinch off sprigs of curly mint growing at the bottom of my stairs and breathe in its fragrance

The final time I plant a flower

I would have made these moments more sacred had I known I was doing them for a final time.
~~~

Things I have not been able to do for years and wish I had cherished more.. things which have passed out of my life - already done for the final time:

Looking up at the sky

Walking with my head held high, in perfect posture

Breathing without having to fight for it

Feeling my body totally relax

Smiling and laughing

Eating and drinking without having to do certain maneuvers to prevent choking

Taking my dog for a walk

Driving for pleasure

Having my teeth cleaned

Being able to do anything with ease

Working in a garden

Doing anything for pleasure

Enjoying, really enjoying life

Being free of physical pain and discomfort
~~~~

I will make very special moments of what remains within my ability to do
as if doing each one for the final time.

Then and Now

Last week while a dear friend was driving me on my record third trip off Cape Cod since 2004, she mentioned finding this blog and said she couldn't believe its content. She was frankly confused. How was I able to go mushroom hunting, or even sit at my computer to write so much, for that matter? As the photographer who documented changes brought about by my cosmetic surgery for over a decade, she is one of the three people with a realistic idea of my daily existence. I told her to look at the dates on the entries... the original dates on each piece; not the date the entries were posted. Nearly everything I wrote about which involved physical activity (even minimal driving, walking, photography,) actually took place last year, when I was still able to wring the occasional "physically functional" day out of my damaged body through sheer will power.

My friend's voice broke with emotion when she said "I remember all the things you used to love doing. That is what angers me most about the way these doctors destroyed your life and left you to suffer and die in silence." We were in her car during this talk, and as usual, my head was bent down, the only position in which I am able to breathe without use of "external support" (a bamboo back scratcher pressed under my chin and jaw with a constant 2 lbs of upward pressure). The emotion in her voice made me lift my head to look at her and that is when I saw the tears on her cheek.. her face was flushed red and her expression was at once sad and angry. I reminded her that I have been anything but silent these ten years.

She agreed, I had made some waves in warning the public about the dangers of cosmetic surgery and that was something, but it certainly hasn't done me any good. I agreed this is true and reminded her that my outspokenness in this regard is most likely the very reason I have been left to suffer without help from the very surgical specialty responsible for destroying my health.

I have tried as much as possible to separate the aspect of my life I present on this blog from the devastating, life robbing experience brought about by my cosmetic surgery. In a very real sense, what you see here is.. or more accurately, was- a small fraction left in my life that had not been totally destroyed by my plastic surgery disaster, physical injury caused by the negligence, arrogance and duplicity of a medical "specialty" in need of a category all its own... one that subjects normal, healthy people to unnecessary operations.

Today there is nothing left but suffering and disability. In relating what I was still able to do even one year ago, I remind myself that I did actually live life once upon a time... a past reality so remote from my present existence that the experiences of my own life "before" might as well be those of a stranger.

Time

Time

I find myself in an incomprehensible position... a situation real enough to kill me, should I lose my balance on a fraying tightrope. Yet so surreal I sometimes think my death will be nothing more than an instantaneous vaporization of the molecules I call my body.
I am dying... we are all dying.

For most of us, living life prevails over the ever present pull of entropy.
This is as it should be. We are born to experience life to its fullest until our death. But like breathing, it is that space between the breaths which sets the tone for what follows.

I do not fear death, nor do I invite it.

I reside in a world full of high tech medical miracles and doctors who perform them. It is, therefore, inconceivable that amidst these doctors and their state-of-the-art 3D scanners capable of turning the human body with its every secret and function inside out to see how things work or might be fixed when they don't, that the simple mechanics of what is killing me remains a mystery.

I am dying in real-time,
begging at the same-time,
to be fixed, or at least, that an attempt be made,
before there is no-time.

Doctors.. made of special stuff, or so we think.
Different from us.
Different from each other.
Different.




~ Lucille Iacovelli