CHAPTER 31: What Doesn’t Kill Ya Makes Ya Stronger
October 1st, 2012
OK, so have ya done it yet? You know what? Did ya get yourself a Shifu who makes house-calls? I’m only gonna tell ya this one more time! If you don’t have a Shifu who makes house calls,
you gotta get yourself one! YOU NEVER
KNOW when you’re gonna need him! Not
only do I have one, I have the BEST!
Ask me, I’ll send you his number because there is nothing Shifu is more
devoted to than helping people, and I can attest, he’s the “genuine article”.
When I left St. Joe’s on the 22nd I
had already confirmed with Sarah that Shifu really had said he would
come to my home when I got out of the hospital to help me with my chi
treatments, and I was elated! Coming
out of the hospital on high dose corticosteroids and all the things that come
with it, makes driving “ill-advised” (DANGEROUS really). I’m worse than a blind granny on two-fer
coupon day. So, knowing that he would
still be available to me during a time that is usually so confining and
isolating, outweighed my usually obsessive apprehension about the state of my
unkempt house, or the fact that I gave up my cleaning service weeks before
going into the hospital in order to join Shaolin.
I physically cannot clean my own house due to
my illness. I know, “good excuse”, right?
I have tried again and again over the years, but since my disease became
“critical” the bacteria or fungi growing healthy people extract from the
“dirty places” in their home when they clean, well, those guys jump for joy
when they see me coming and somehow, magically take up residence in my nose or
respiratory tract, where they party like John Belushi in “Animal House”. And if you knew how embarrassed and ashamed
I am of being unable to maintain my home to my own cleanliness standards (and
don’t say “that’s ridiculous” until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes), you
would appreciate exactly how much it meant to me because for the first time in
my life I was able to push all that “NOISE” into the background, and focus on
what it meant to have this great man make
that time for me (not to mention that I live at least 40 minutes from the
Institute in “good” traffic).
On Thursday morning Sarah called me to tell me
that Shifu was coming to my home for a chi visit. I didn’t even argue because I learned from the hospital visit
that Sarah knows best. I did, however,
feel compelled to tell her that I was dead, and on bed rest, so he would have
to be able to do a chi treatment on a dead person, perhaps even in a prone,
rigimortified position. She said he had worked with worse. He arrived later that afternoon. Now, I’m not going to tell you that I let him see my house in the condition
it was in when Sarah called. That would
be a “misrepresentation”, and even if it had been “clean”, I would have run
around like a chicken with its head cut off “just making sure”. It was not clean. I did what I
felt I absolutely had to do to make sure Shifu did not stick to a table if he
put his elbows on it, or, well…I think that says it all. When he pulled into my cul-de-sac, I was
quite satisfied that he would find my house abounding in chi and would love all
my live plants and Asian art accents that screamed of a “Westerners” attempts
at Feng Shui.
I went outside to greet him and, again, I
hugged my Shifu. I just can’t help
myself; I just love that guy! He
followed me inside and I walked the 8 steps from the front door into the family
room only to realize that Shifu was still within two steps of the front door, AND he looked physically sick!!! All the
radiance that always eminates from him had sucked inside of him making him look
like a raisin. For one brief moment I
thought he was going to be ill. My mind
screamed, “Oh my God, I killed Shifu!”
Then, suddenly, he became what I can only describe as “Westerner
anxious”, something I have never seen in this calm, serene, unruffled man
before.
He walked in a small circle toward me, in the family room, and back
toward the door via the library to the left of the front door. I asked him if something was wrong and he
said, “Tamra, let’s sit down,” and he took a seat at the dining room table in
the chair nearest the window. The whole
time I felt his discomfort, and I was aware of his struggle to remain
focused. His voice was very quiet, almost
weak, and I could tell that he was trying to be sensitive to my feelings, while
I was most concerned about the visual, visceral transformation I saw happen
before my eyes within micro-seconds of entering my home. Then he began to sneeze violently. He said, “Tamra, you must make some serious
changes here right away. This house is making you sick. I am very sensitive to these things. This carpet must go right away. When you have dogs….all these things
contribute to your breathing problems and autoimmune troubles. You need hardwoods or…
“Tile,” I interrupted, “I’ve been considering
tile because we are very hard on floors and hardwoods require regular
maintenance that produces dust, fumes, and other airborne particulates that
don’t come with tile.”
“You
must do something about this right away. You let me know if you need help with
this.”
Ok, if you read “The
Worse of People” and you are now reading this, can you even believe what you
are reading? I have known this
wonderful, fascinating, selfless, devoted spiritual man since June. I have managed to attend his Tai Chi classes
for all of two months - tops. I have
come to know him from a business perspective, as I volunteer my time to the
school on a variety of business related school projects, but here he is, in my
home, offering to help me do what is necessary immediately to make my
environment less toxic for me. Where in
the West are these kinds of people? Even
among the best of us, we have “rules” about “helping” family and friends regardless
of the hardship or direness of
circumstances.
With Shifu, there are no rules when it comes to
helping people; there is only need, fulfillment of need, and the humble joy he
gets from having helped, and he has never made any bones about the fact that
that is what he came to the United
State to do… to help people better their physical and spiritual health and
well-being so that they might live more fulfilling lives. In my mind, that is what defines
“humanity”. I don’t think a lot of
Westerners truly get the concept of
“helping”. We cannot simplify it the
way that it truly is meant to be. Even
when we do give, very few of us can give in that oh so humble way that truly expects
nothing in return, and never wants to be revealed.
(I am so sorry, Shifu, for having revealed you
in this way, and I struggled with the decision to do so for a week. But, “DIARY” readers have to know
this about you, because it is just one of the many things that define you and Shaolin philosophy and one of the
many things that make you extraordinary).
I told Shifu that I knew the carpeting had to
go, but there were other priorities that demanded our immediate attention,
forcing the carpet removal and flooring replacement to have wait for a few more
months. But there was one thing
I knew I could do right away, and
that was to get an industrial style HEPA air purifier that would decontaminate
the main living space of my home. It
had been a point of contention between my husband and me for years. I determined then and there to end that
argument tomorrow. I knew exactly where
I was buying it, and exactly which one I was going to be bringing home.
Over a period of about 10 minutes, Shifu seemed to
recover, but the vibrancy and radiance that always flows so freely from him
seemed to tuck up deep inside him like a closely guarded aura, rather than
radiating sunrays. He walked through
the room slowly and into the kitchen, where he chose a tiny space facing a very
well lit (artificial sun-light) plant stand filled with plants and cuttings,
adjacent to the kitchen window and dining table. The space wasn’t more than 3’x 4’, but this is where he felt
comfortable, and this is where he taught me Tai Gong.
For the 25-30 minute treatment/lesson, all my
anxiety and pain fell away. I was still
very sick. I still had a plastic
appliance (tampanade) in my left nostril that hurt like the dickens all of the time. I still had black circles under my eyes that
made me look eerily like “The Corpse
Bride”, but I wasn’t that any more. My energy was free of it. I was cleansed of the shadow that followed
me, relaxed, and just entirely lightened.
To grab one brief moment of relief during a period of, what seems like
an endless assault, is nothing short of breathtaking; delivering nothing less
than hope to a situation that constantly tries to out-shout positive attitude
by screaming, “I’m a hopeless situation and I got you in my sights girl!”
Shifu told me to practice this exercise as often as possible, sitting or standing. He said it would open the energy channels, so that the mind could channel the body’s natural healing energy to the places it knows need healing. He told me that it would also help lower the blood pressure, which my doctors have determined is essential to ensuring this does not result in an embolism. When Shifu left, I was so sad to see him go. I wanted to keep him, but I also was saddened by the fact that my home (the place he traveled to in order to help me get well) had sickened him. I will never forget that experience visually, viscerally, experientially, nor in my heart. I realized, if my house was that toxic to Shifu and his focused, ever-present, seemingly limitless chi and spirit, I now understood why it so hard for me to “chi”.
So. Saturday I dragged my husband to the air
purifier store and laid out that $900.00 for the industrial grade HEPA air
purifier capable of efficiently and effectively filtering a large, open living
space. I had broken the news to him
gently earlier in the day when I realized my son was not going to awaken in
time to drive me there as we’d planned, but I had not prepared him for the cost
, because….well, there was no preparing a man who hated spending $20.00 on a
“special” furnace filter monthly for “THE COST”. This brand of HEPA air purifier never goes on sale , so the choice of where to buy it really
comes down to customer service ratings/experience. Having bought my two HEPA vacuum’s from this store since moving
to Georgia, I had a relationship with them that I was sure of and trusted
in. In fact, while he couldn’t discount
the cost of the purifier, he did throw in a couple boxes of expensive vacuum
bags and filters, so, I was quite happy.
I did, however, have to use a wheelbarrow to get my husband’s lower jaw
off the floor where it had dropped to the ground like a toon’s when he saw the
cash register say $900.00 and some odd cents..
We came home, still suffering “sticker shock”, he put on
my Rolls Royce’s wheels, plugged her in, and she purred like a kitten,
absorbing all those toxins like they were yesterday’s fuzzy refrigerator
left-overs gone rotten. My husband’s
still adjusting to this 2’x3’ $900.00 box of silent, air filtration wizardy and
lights, that you can’t even park in the driveway and shout out, “LOOK WHAT ZOG
GOT!”, but, God love him, he’s trying, and he never loses his sense of humor.
No comments:
Post a Comment