Love as a bug….

“The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn’t pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that’s why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best of becoming more, more, and more joyful.” Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World.

I love orchids. But not in the “Master Gardener Understander of Rhizomes and Saprophytes” sense. In the “Trader Joe’s Impulse Purchase of a Delicate Flower that Quietly Hangs and Claims to Want Water Once a Week” sense. I try them in different places in my house until the blossoms fall. There were years where I was convinced that I could wait for new growth; that I could figure orchids out. The orchids laugh at me; or I imagine they do. I hate throwing them into the world outside, I hate throwing them into the garbage. I am also aware that I am likely contributing to some overall Badness when I buy mass produced Grocery Orchids. I started giving them to a friend who is married to an orchid whisperer but not every time. I have had to find peace with all of it. That I am probably a bad consumer, that I love a plant that is ridiculously finicky, and most importantly that the universe really doesn’t care a bit about my orchid issues. I am never going to be a Plant– let alone an orchid –Whisperer. But I am still drawn to them.

We can’t always change what and who we love. Despite our higher brain function, despite our reason.

And we cannot change that we lose our loves either. Or that sometimes they don’t even know or care about us. We cannot protect ourselves from any of it. 

But we have the ability to see that our love creates blinders, hides truths, and can create urges and decisions that are based in fear. Mostly the fear of losing or never getting that which we love. Our “Precious”. That ring which we only want for ourselves. 

As I round in the hospital I watch the impending death of an unvaccinated Covid patient, languishing these last days on the vent– lungs scarred and unable to receive the oxygen the machine offers. I see the elderly patient who had mostly died at home before their loving family brought them in– worried that the low blood pressure and body temperature and days of worsening mental status and weeks of decreased eating was due to an acute and reversible process. One of my favorite critical care docs would always comment that dying is not a reversible disease. But the anger and emotional outbursts, the tears and yelling, those threats and trays of cookies— all of these show up at the bedside because we as a species can love. And lose. 

I read Bishop Tutu’s quote above (I highly recommend listening to the book on @Audible) and note that he likens the Dead Sea and its inability to drain, its lack of output as a metaphor for one going dank; he sees it lacking the ability to give. But I see it as a metaphor for flow, dialogue, speech, love.  Even good and healthy flow in without flow out— can create poison. I see it as a metaphor for the kind of thought company that we keep. I see it as a metaphor for the way we are siloing ourselves. 

Giving love is our generous act. It does keep us from going dank. Our anger right now— our combative speech and distrust of our species is the opposite– and in these silos we are not giving love out at all.  And if we cannot find ways to love in these situations, the dankness worsens.

Love is the bedside care offered even when the poor choice was made that caused the catastrophe that is now intubated in the ICU. Forgiveness for sanity  is what the hospital based worker is trying to create daily. We call it “Covid support” but in truth we are wrestling with how to forgive. How to keep loving. Our knowing that vaccines would have prevented this intubation doesn’t help the clinician at the bedside. But neither do the family lectures about “choice”. We all know that families wouldn’t choose this death for these loved patients; they wouldn’t be here yelling at us and bringing us cookies; they wouldn’t be thanking us for the kleenexes. 

Forgiving the nurses’ family members who targeted her for her “belief” in the vaccine. Forgiving the tearful patient on heated high flow as he struggles with telling his children that he is unlikely to make it. Forgiving the administration that watched a bullying culture cater to moneyed surgical procedures, replacing bedside caring clinicians with people who have power but no clinical skills. Forgiveness for the friends unable to understand this inpatient world. Forgiving and loving those who were a part of our world and left. It is the work that we are left with in the hospital. The outflow. The loving. The giving. The generosity. With such low reserves.

It is also the work that we are left with in our schools and communities. We need to keep working on this loving. So on this Valentine’s Day– I am acknowledging that I wrestle constantly with all of those who I need to love better. I actively work on my outlets. Listening, flowing.

But I also have to share– that I bought another orchid in late November. I put it in a new spot next to the sink and window. It is totally in the way there, aesthetically it should be in a different space. But I watched someone else who had one rebloom and noticed the spot. Maybe I thought that I was listening to her orchid. I tried it. 

I didn’t get emotionally attached to it, because it certainly is NOT attached to me. I didn’t spend extra time talking to it, or feeding it. I took its tag as truth and I watered it once a week. The last bloom is fading, the others have already dropped. But there is this new green nub there. Something I have never seen before. This damn plant actually might bloom again. Which I know means nothing at all metaphorically. Except that it might.