Musing

today’s Musing written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park

0C/31F (high 6C), as we walked the ridge path, the only sounds were paws and feet crunching a fresh layer of snow that fell overnight, white coated branches and tall grass sooth the unsettled mind in pre-dawn light

strong wind of change; change of season, change of weather - walking Lake Waterton’s edge, town mostly deserted for winter – wind, without regard for us or that fat bighorn sheep (full curl) sitting on someone’s sidewalk – wind kept blowing hard, immenseness of it so daunting, scenery so beautiful, so perfect, so inviting to us, to stay in the sunshine taking it all in just a little while longer; with Gusta & PB in tow I went to Lethbridge yesterday for a meeting, to do some market research, to get away from reality for a little while; we took the long long long way back via Pincher Creek, via Waterton and via the Longview highway

return to city busy, complexity, impersonality of a health care system which, in the midst of science, equipment and organization seems to have lost its human empathy – a place of being reduced to numbers, patients referenced by ailment or the bed occupied rather than being called by name; ‘he’s not my patient’, she said; then told her colleague, ‘someone’s here to see your guy in 9, the one who moved from 5; he has congestive heart failure; the neutrality of hearing it described as ‘its not as bad as it sounds’; well, it is – and we know what it means; asleep he seems so frail, his breathing jerky, body trembling – awake, his demeanor slightly cranky (a good sign), he’s doing a little better, expected to leave CCU for the regular heart ward (I wonder if that means staff there have regular hearts?) in the next day or two, they say he’s doing well, but that is what they say, don’t they?; I read him some of the responses readers have sent . . to you all, a big smile and a thank you from Hubert, a.ka. the guy in 9

fragile balance, in nature, in our lives – of the mind, of the body - the margin between healthy life and inevitable decline is not very wide; a momentary lapse behind the wheel, the subtleties of the body’s complex systems managed by medication and machines, the mental state and resolve of the guy in 9; each holds life in the balance

Mark Kolke
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