This spring, Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski (1) led OLLI members on a journey through selected works of Emily Dickinson, the most famous American woman poet of the 19th century. Her poems were discussed and examined through the lens of her medical conditions including the influence of pain, chronic illness, and seizures on her works. The class then re-created some of their own afflictions or medical incidents using the style that felt the most cathartic to them. John wrote this prose piece in response to his experience in taking the class.
Relief
By: John Myrton Johnson
“What a relief; now I know how I’ll die.” Those were my first words, after regaining consciousness from cardiac surgery at the Cardiologie Angiologie Chirurgie Vasculaire at Hôpital Saint Luc Saint Joseph in Lyon, France, July, 2022. The attending cardiologists Dr. Thibault Perret and Dr. Sebastian Ninet spoke enough English to tell me I had a heart attack, then handed me a smartphone, where I watched a five minute Youtube graphic video, explaining the complexities of implanting stents, produced by the Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis. I didn’t have any knowledge about stents, but the video was excellent. I nodded that I understood.
When I was well enough to leave the hospital, we took a taxi to return to my river cruise ship, now nearly 250 miles down-river, near Nice, at a cost of $400, much less than booking a return flight to Arizona. When I walked into the dining room, my 23 fellow passengers greeted me with applause, and within two hours I heard over 10 stories about stents; is this what retired Americanos do, get one or more stents? This was the beginning of my education in what I came to call “Heart World,” a strange, exotic realm with its own language, concepts, humor, and eschatology.
When I returned home my PCP sent me to a rehab group, every day for 10 weeks, where I met 10 other patients who shared their diverse stories as we did our work outs on the machines. Very gradually this lessened my anxiety and fear, as I learned there are many who survive heart attacks, strokes, and related heart maladies for considerable periods of time.
My therapist was Debbie, about my age, who insisted on the diminutive, claiming a Deep South identity. She said she loved working with former military officers. Took only one session for me to realize it was not death which animated my fears and anxieties, but all that other stuff; debility, incapacitation, being a burden to my family, incontinence, immobility, being kept alive artificially, and so on. At an abstract level I knew my family genetic history was not destiny, but I couldn’t shake the realization that there were many heart-related deaths in my fam: Laban, John, Myrton, Bessie, Ralph, Floyd, Everett, Fannie, Marilyn, and so on: 12 generations of American Quakers with defective tickers! If Hollywood were to give an award for vascular dysfunction, my fam would be walking the Black Carpet in their glam to win their “Heartie.”
Buddhist Endless Knot (2)
My midlife crisis happened, inexplicably, at about the midpoint of my life, including health, personal (marital), and professional crises. I took refuge vows (3) in Karma Kagyu, in 1986, but this esoteric lineage (the Anglicans of Tibetan Buddhism) proved a bad fit for a Midwestern Quaker farm boy. I was single, and while I waited at home for my two young children to return from school, I watched Oprah Winfrey, so perhaps she and her close friends such as Maya Angelou and bell hooks (4) and Pema Chodron were my spiritual teachers and advisors. I was active with the UUs (5) during this time, and still feel spiritually close to their thinking. Eventually I found a local Zendo (6), and began practicing Zazen, which is similar to the silent meditation of the Quakers (Hicksite) back in Indiana. I advanced to the point of having a formal Zen teacher (Joshu Sasaki Roshi), but departed his tutelage in 2013 when he was defrocked. He died in 2014, at 107. In 2013 I was initiated into Soka Gakkai, the shakubuku (7) led by my wonderful daughter Kailey, and have continued NMRK (8) practice.
“Practice” is, well, practice: but practice for what? What is the point? A spiritual path provides many trails to the top of the mountain, the maps are effectively communicated in diverse media, standing ready if one is open to hear or read or experience them. In my Home today is a Quaker/Buddhist in partnership with my wife, a Mexican Catholic, and we join with our local Southern Baptists to feed the hungry and homeless. The Baptist minister once called us “Mathew 25 Buddhists.” I think the Matthew part refers to a book I once began to read, but never finished, and I never made it to Chapter 25, I just read enough to pass the midterm exam. My spiritual path(s) have prepared me for my ultimate demise, but I am feeling less relief about what will happen before that.
So here we are, down a couple of runs in the bottom of the ninth inning, showing a goose-egg and playing with a pair of twos, hoping for a Hail Mary, wanting a tie-breaker or an extra frame, before the chickens come home to roost. Bluffing is risky, even with (Wild Bill Hickock’s) dead-man’s hand. I think I’ll prepare my Last Supper, anyone interested in some Metaphor Soup?
References:
(1) Rosemarie Dombrowski, PhD, is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ, a TEDx speaker, the founding editor of rinky dink press, and the founding director of Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that facilitates self-care and healing through poetry. She's the founding editor of ISSUED: stories of service, a journal for military affiliated peoples at ASU, and the faculty editor of Grey Matter, the medical poetry journal of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. She also curates the Pharmacy of Poems in the Compassion Center at Banner-University Medical Center-Phoenix.
(2) Buddhist Endless Knot - The Endless Knot, also known as the Eternal Knot, is a prominent symbol in Tibetan Buddhism, representing the interconnectedness of all things and the continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It symbolizes Buddha's wisdom and compassion, as well as the union of wisdom and method.
(3) Refuge vows are a formal declaration of commitment to the teachings of Buddha.
(4) bell hooks was an American author who intentionally used lowercase letters for her name to shift the focus away from her personal identity and towards the content of her work.
(5) Unitarian Universalists are a secular outgrowth of American transcendentalism of the 18th century.
(6) Zendo is a zen meditation center.
(7) Soka Gakkai, is an outgrowth of Buddhism that is originally from Japan, and initiates new members in a ceremony called “shakubuku.”
(8) "NMRK" stands for "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo", a Japanese phrase used in Nichiren Buddhism. It's a sacred chant and the title of the Lotus Sutra. In English, it translates to something like "Devotion to the Mystic Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra" or "Homage to the Sublime Dharma of the Lotus Sutra".
