(May 17, 2015)
I woke up this morning feeling a void in my middle of my consciousness. It isn’t a hole in the middle of my heart or my head. It feels like a hole in the middle of my entire being. Today is patient announcement day. A few lucky families will be told Yes! Your child will receive surgery. But so many families will be told Not this time. We don’t have enough time or enough resources to take care of everybody. Not everyone is healthy enough for surgery. Not everyone is a candidate to receive care.
There is a very logical way of deciding who gets surgery. The ranking system makes so much sense, but the nos are hard to digest.
Just like the days before, we travel an hour north along the coast to the hospital in Lima. We navigate our way to the hospital courtyard. We are greeted with a wave of emotions from the hundreds of faces staring back at us. Nervousness. Anxiousness. Hope. Insecurity. They all hang in the air. One by one the families are given their news. The ones selected are scheduled for their surgery day. The ones who are not are able to meet with the psychologist, the nutritionist, the speech pathologist, and the dentist to give them support. They are told we will be back in the fall.
In the midst of all the emotions, a young couple steals a kiss to celebrate the good news. A family embraces me as if I am their own. The mother receives directions about surgery while I snuggle with her three month old baby. I hope he always feels beautiful.
The day has left me cracked wide open. I’m not sure the void will ever fully heal. I’m not sure I want it too.
As the day came to an end, there were a few hours left to wander the streets of Lima. Just like I always do, I found my way to the coast. The vastness of the ocean a reminder of the possibility in the world, but today it was also a startling reminder of just how small I really am in the world. I made a last minute decision to fly. I strapped myself to a guide and I paraglided along the coast. In reality my experience last 15 minutes, but in my heart I was hanging in midair forever.
I needed the weightlessness. I needed the quiet. I needed the feeling of eternity. I needed to fly.
Today was a day filled with a million emotions. As I glided along the cliffs parallel to the Pacific Ocean, I wondering if there are a million emotions. Perhaps they are all one emotion. Perhaps they are all a form of hope: hope that their child would be select, hope that the surgery would be a success, hope that their child can live a normal life, hope that they are doing the best they can as a parent, hope that I can help, hope that I can love, and hope that we all matter in the vastness of this world.
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” ~Paolo Coehlo
Aren’t we all simply hanging on to hope? And learning to trust everything that surrounds it?
Kristy Maute 