TO BE OR NOT TO BE

 

For  real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present. 

---Bessell Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

 

DREAM: “I’m Running Away.” (January 23, 2019. Thirty years and four months after my memory returned.)

I’m running across a field, trying to get away. I get on a tractor, but it sinks in the mud. I think, 'I’ve waited five years after my case so I could come out of hiding and everyone had  forgotten about me.' It seems they haven’t.

I have always believed the mafia kept track of me over the years and checked in with me on various occasions to remind me to keep my mouth shut. I write about this in my book. The fact that this dream came to me when I was eighty years old tells me that my unconscious still had this idea on its mind. Although all of the underworld criminals in my book are deceased, there is still an aspect of my PTSD that keeps me unsure if I am really safe.

Here is another dream that makes this point.

 

DREAM: “Be University” (October 12, 1990. One year and one month after my memory returned)

I am in a house preparing for a party when a man arrives in a car. He comes in and I am leery of him but say, “Can I help you?” He says, “Yes,” and reaches out his hand to shake mine. 

He tells me his name and asks if I remember he had been to visit me before regarding “Be University.” He meant “be” as in “To be,” representing life and all the things that have to do with living. I say something about getting the gist of it. I wake up and my heart is pounding.

In this instance I am asked if I want to live (to be) or die (not to be). In other words, keep my mouth shut if I want “to be.” 

 

CAR CRASH CONVERSION

Summers were always a time to work and save money for college. The American Baptist Assembly Conference Center in Green Lake, Wisconsin, hired me in 1957,  to work in the dining room for three months during the summer. 

Surrounded by 1,100 acres of sprawling lawns, cottonwood trees and manicured flower beds, the center was located on the shores of Green Lake. As president of the Baptist Youth Fellowship at Hampton Hills Church in Denver, I qualified for the job. In addition to being a waitress, there were many activities to keep the teen staff busy during off hours, like choir practice, prayer groups, and putting on plays and musicals.

Ten teenagers were hired from the Denver area, and two women from local churches volunteered to drive us for the two day trip. The first night to be spent in Omaha, Nebraska.

 As we approached Grand Island, Nebraska, Jayne, the woman driving the first car decided to hurry on ahead. She left our car in the dust, rattling our driver who became anxious and upset. She vocalizing her insecurity and concern: “Why has she gone off and left us? How will we find her? What if we can’t get back together?"

As we came to an intersection where two state roads merged, our driver missed a stop sign, and our vehicle rammed head on into an oncoming car. My head smashed into the windshield, and my knee into a knob on the glove compartment. In those days there were no seat belts, and I was sitting in the “death seat,” reading a book.

In a daze I opened the door and started to walk down the highway. A traffic jam ensued. Several heavily bearded men appeared. One man grabbed me, turned me around, and escorted me back to the car where I fainted to the ground. I later learned that Grand Island was celebrating the town's centennial, thus the bearded men.

On waking up, the ambulance had arrived and a paramedic was kneeling beside me, while friends hovered near by.

“What is your religion?” the female paramedic asked. 

“Catholic,” I replied.

 Outraged, my friend, Sue, interjected, “No you’re not.  You’re Baptist!”

 “I am?” 

 Sue explained the situation, but the Catholics became my healers. They had the best hospital.

I was the only one injured. Everyone else, except or driver, Susan, continued on in a rental car. Susan felt she should stay with me, keep in touch with my parents, and supervise interaction with the doctors. 

In the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital, several nuns surrounded me, cloaked in their black habits. After removing my outer clothing, my knee length latex girdle was revealed. The startled nuns had never seen one. I explained the curious garment.

“You’re too young!” exclaimed one nun. 

 The wound was scrunched up at the knee because of the tight girdle. When I winced as they began cleaning it, they explained there was gravel in the gash and I had lost flesh.

 “We’re going to have to take this off,” said one nun, as she began to pull the stretch material. When this proved too difficult without hurting the wound, they cut off the offending girdle. After dressing the injury, I was wheeled to a room where I immediately fell asleep, exhausted.

 I was startled awake at six in the morning when a priest, dressed in a black robe and speaking in Latin, walked by swinging a ball emitting smoke. For a minute I though I had been kidnapped by a satanic cult. A nun arrived and explained morning prayer called “matins.”

My sore body made it difficult to move. I still remember the pain. Hitting the dashboard was the cause. The gash on my knee was missing so much flesh, my body was given the job of filling in the gash. Because I was reading a book and didn’t see what was coming, I was saved from more serious damage because my body was relaxed. 

I stayed in the hospital for a week. The doctors were cute, so what else was there to do but flirt? I had taken my ukulele and it now came in handy. I serenaded the doctors, much to the enjoyment of all, and I became a favorite patient.When released, I presented the doctor with a bouquet of parsley taken off my lunch plate, and wrapped it with ribbon from a flower arrangement. He pinned it to his lapel.

 I returned home in a wheelchair via the train and spent the summer sitting by the kidney shaped swimming pool my father had built. I enjoyed knitting and reading books. My head bruise bled into the fall before it cleared up during college. I did miss Green Lake and spending the summer with friends, but one good thing happened: I changed my learned negative attitude toward Catholics.

Onward and upward.