My friend, Sunny, texted me yesterday and asked how my hip surgery was going. I said I was amazed by how fast the healing has been, how I’m walking with one crutch and should be off it in a few days.
Then I went to the grocery store for the first time by myself, and after carrying ten bags of groceries up my stairs, one at a time due to my crutch, I amended my answer.
“Actually, I was being overenthusiastic. I think I have another week or two on this crutch.”
My physical therapist came over today and said, ‘You’re doing great! You should be off that crutch in three weeks.”
Sigh.
It’s been 22 days since my hip replacement surgery, and the hardest part is slowing down. I want to be healed. I want to dance, to stretch, to slide into bed without tweaking pain, to sleep on any side I choose. I want to jump into the ocean and then slide into a hot bubble bath. I’m not allowed to submerge into water for three more weeks. That’s hard for mermaids. (I have always told my kids I’m part mermaid, and I have to soak my tail every night or I get irritable.)
But every day I can do something new, gently undulate my hips, slow, careful hip circles, yesterday I even pushed into a downward dog yoga pose, and as I softly lowered my heels and felt the backs of my legs stretch, it felt so luscious I moaned out loud.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years of deeply grieving, it’s that healing can’t be rushed. The broken heart heals in its own time, the shattered pieces slowly mending themselves in new and different ways. The world looks different through the jagged edges of my grief. The searing love of all I have lost feels like a storm so fierce I can not even open my eyes: Kim, my father, my marriage, my Mother’s mind… there are some storms we can not weather.
It’s wild and windy outside my window right now, and a small white butterfly just fluttered by like a joyous summertime snowflake. It seems impossible that something so fragile and light can exist, and yet it does, reminding me that life is fragile, and beautiful, and miraculous. I’m not sure my heart will ever heal, but I will watch the butterfly and see if I can learn how to exist in a world that often seems too brutal.
Healing my hips requires time and care. I have to move slowly, gently, with patience. I have to move in certain ways several times a day, and every day my strength improves and I can move a little more.
Maybe that’s the way it is with a broken heart too: moving slowly, tenderly, with deep steady breathing, and spending time each day moving my heart, and by moving I mean noticing all the miracles around me, allowing the love to cup my sadness and hold it gently.
