Waiting

9 a.m.  I am waiting for a return phone call from the transplant center.  I have two goals.  I want to tell them I have a second potential donor.  I want to ask them if any problems have developed.  I think I shouldn't tell them that Laurie has been given the impression that there may be a problem with the cross-match.  Right speech - what is yours to say?  What might be helpful to say, what could do harm?

This is part of the larger waiting, waiting for them to finish their tests and the whole thing to be scheduled.  Suddenly I will get a call, and then I'll be sorry I didn't find a new bathrobe to wear in the hospital.  Then I'll wait for the actual day of surgery.  Then wait for the graft (the kidney) to take.  Numbers will come in each day in the hospital room, magic numbers from blood draws that tell them something.  Waiting to get through convalescence, to be normal.  That would be the normal I remember from about 2002 when the really big UTI stealthily slipped into my kidneys from motel hot tubs on the trip west.

Just writing about it has increased my anxiety. All that was future-think.  It involves wishing.  Craving, desire.  It seems like a primal desire, to continue to live, to have health and energy.  But there are old Zen stories that talk about masters who are not afraid to die.  There is an emphasis in Zen and other religious traditions of monks relinquishing everything, going out with their begging bowls and accepting with gratitude whatever people give them.  It is a small lesson in accepting whatever life gives us.

Life = karma.  The future that is even now being generated.  It is much bigger than me or anything and everything I did in the past.  

9 p.m.  No call.
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The image:  Sheba on her chair in the living room, where she sleeps most of every day, setting an example of restfulness for us.