Appreciating Life Through a Different Lens

by Nancy Gertz, Health and well-being coach

For Banford Senior Community soniaf@banfordliving.com

My sister, typically ebullient and charismatic, our unofficial stand-up comic, adrenaline-seeking emergency medicine nurse, and world-traveling art photographer, sat at a family meal in the budding month of April shivering with the onset of what we thought would be a passing “bug.” This bug turned out to be a monster beast: herpes encephalitis, a potentially fatal infection of the brain. Nobody could explain why my sister became one of approximately 200,000 cases to be diagnosed that year, with the best possible outcome being mild irreversible brain damage.

Beyond any patient’s struggle looms the collateral damage. I was selecting a bag of shrimp at Trader Joe’s when my cell phone rang with a too-calm voice asking if I was “next of kin.” Without warning (as if that would have helped!) I was hijacked, plucked directly from the frozen food bin straight to the frigid confines of the intensive care unit. Lives interrupted, never to be the same.

What followed was a brutal boot camp of life training, and I was a naïve recruit. After all, we never do expect lifeas- we-know-it to change in a thin splice of moments, even though we are reminded of this reality time after time. Loss of loved ones, job changes, financial crises, leaving our homes, and difficult diagnoses, like this one, are just the beginning of a long list of paths to inner frenzy. What can we do to protect and strengthen ourselves, knowing these events can unravel us?

Nine years after her last hospital stay, my sister and I are taking a walk in the woods on an unseasonably warm winter morning, blue skies above, crisp paths underfoot. The reservoir off to the right is a dark gray, and I am imagining the lily pads that will soon dance along its smooth surface. The sun is at a low angle, throwing shadows on my sister’s face as she mechanically lifts her feet to avoid tripping on thick roots. She is visiting me because her spirits are languishing. Since she no longer works, it has been hard to find her purpose in life. We are still in the aftermath, still seeking a new normal, still searching for ways to appreciate life through a different lens.

The camera bounces at her side as we navigate paths strewn with fallen branches, stones and rocks that have been dislocated by seasonal shifting. Winter has been mild, but everything is affected one way or another. I watch as she studies the ground, peers into emptied-out stumps, and gets personal with the emerald green moss growing on the barren tree trunk. She bends down slowly and deliberately, adjusts the focus on the lens, and zooms up close to the smallest of images.

Quietly I celebrate how differently we move through this shared experience. I come to the woods often as a way of being good to myself; here I build and replenish my internal stores. Stepping onto the path, the details of my life are lifted away as my attention is drawn to the expansiveness of nature. In my mind’s eye, I zoom out, and intentionally I expand my curiosity about everything I see, hear, feel and smell. Under the trees I am part of a larger whole, and like all things around me I feel strong, adaptive and resilient. I make a conscious effort to inhale the beauty so I can keep it with me, pass it along to others. Leaving these woods, I am more hopeful, graced by a higher power, physically enlivened, and more capable of addressing what seem like smaller personal challenges, even when they are big monster beasts.

While my mind’s eye is zooming out, my sister’s is zooming in. She chooses to adjust her lens to something much smaller; she squints to see micro images that only she knows are there. After a series of shots, we press our shoulders together to shadow the screen, and in the silence of the sleepy woods we review her cache. I can’t believe what I see: two trunks merged in an unintended embrace, a decaying stump that mirrors a fish with gills, the bark that is crumbling but still begging to hold onto its source. My sister has captured the majesty in the smallness of things; she narrows her lens to see a bigger world. Inside, a quiet prayer rises in me that she is on her own path, getting closer to appreciating her life through her own new lens, however narrowed or expansive it is. Sometimes, in order to find strength and revive our resilience during trying times, it helps to zoom out and look at the full scope of our lives. At other times we can choose to zoom in and focus on the smallest of images, thoughts or memories. With an adjusted lens, we can find perspective in a mere dimple in the cheek of someone we love.

“An illness or injury can alter the way we see the world. With this different lens, sometimes we discover a new type of mystery and magic.”