Monday, March 29, 2004
angel
I have a coworker who is a truly remarkable and very tiny Buddhist woman from Taiwan. Her life seems to be entirely based upon the self-less concept of 'dharma', her sense of duty to serve the needs of others with little regard her own desires.
She once shared with me a profound piece of wisdom.
As I recall the incident, it happened several years ago we were working in our classroom for children with multiple significant severe and profound disabilities.
One of our students, a 20 year-old man named Michael, had a particulary violent seizure. This was no cause for alarm because it was a weekly occurence. Both myself and my staff have received lots of training on seizures and we were very familiar with Michael's patterns of seizure activity.
A really good grand-mal seizure apparently causes the body to expend in three to five minutes just about the same amount of energy you would burn if you ran a marathon.
Following the seizure, Michael was passed out dead asleep to the world. As some of you may be aware, a common side-effect of an intense electromagnetic brain storm, is that the muscles controlling both the bladder and the intestines relax, causing the contents of both to be voided.
My Buddhist coworker and I were lifting his 125+ pound or so very much asleep and so completly dead weight body out of the pool of his own waste in his wheelchair (and surrounding puddle on the floor) so that we could clean him and change his clothes. Remember, she is a very tiny woman, so guess who was doing most of the lifting. We were quite literally up to our elbows in it.
She turned to me and said, "Our students are angels, sent to test our compassion."
Yes.
Her words frequently come back to me when I look at The Boy.
I look at The Boy and see an angel.
Not the Biblical heralding with a trumpet to bring you either bad or good news from God type of angel. Not the cute cherubic critter with wings type of angel. Not the conspiracy alien nut "Ezekial saw the wheel and it was a UFO from another planet" type of angel.
But an angel none the less.
An angel in the perfect dependence, perfect innocence, perfect beauty, perfect love, perfect purity of soul type of way.
I am truly blessed.
I am also truly shocked to find myself writing such sappy sentimental crap. Holy fuck, when did I start to turn into a goddamned Hallmark card?
All I can say in my defense is that my meager words are inadequate to describe The Boy.
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She once shared with me a profound piece of wisdom.
As I recall the incident, it happened several years ago we were working in our classroom for children with multiple significant severe and profound disabilities.
One of our students, a 20 year-old man named Michael, had a particulary violent seizure. This was no cause for alarm because it was a weekly occurence. Both myself and my staff have received lots of training on seizures and we were very familiar with Michael's patterns of seizure activity.
A really good grand-mal seizure apparently causes the body to expend in three to five minutes just about the same amount of energy you would burn if you ran a marathon.
Following the seizure, Michael was passed out dead asleep to the world. As some of you may be aware, a common side-effect of an intense electromagnetic brain storm, is that the muscles controlling both the bladder and the intestines relax, causing the contents of both to be voided.
My Buddhist coworker and I were lifting his 125+ pound or so very much asleep and so completly dead weight body out of the pool of his own waste in his wheelchair (and surrounding puddle on the floor) so that we could clean him and change his clothes. Remember, she is a very tiny woman, so guess who was doing most of the lifting. We were quite literally up to our elbows in it.
She turned to me and said, "Our students are angels, sent to test our compassion."
Yes.
Her words frequently come back to me when I look at The Boy.
I look at The Boy and see an angel.
Not the Biblical heralding with a trumpet to bring you either bad or good news from God type of angel. Not the cute cherubic critter with wings type of angel. Not the conspiracy alien nut "Ezekial saw the wheel and it was a UFO from another planet" type of angel.
But an angel none the less.
An angel in the perfect dependence, perfect innocence, perfect beauty, perfect love, perfect purity of soul type of way.
I am truly blessed.
I am also truly shocked to find myself writing such sappy sentimental crap. Holy fuck, when did I start to turn into a goddamned Hallmark card?
All I can say in my defense is that my meager words are inadequate to describe The Boy.
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