Nine legs to stand on

a dispatch from bewilderness

I’m parked in a room where disabled people are installed at tables where we are pounding pegs in boards. In our first lives, we were a fiddler, a farmhand, an FBI agent, a dean of a college, a baker, a builder, a short order cook, and a skinny guy from Botswana with a great smile.

We whipped up soufflés and symphonies, grew stem cells, kale, or quarterbacks. A strange mix of genius, forensics, falafels, and cognitive disconnects which make us seem both very tuned-in and very tuned-out. Buddhists say to practice non-attachment. Brain injury could be defined as non-attachment. Nothing is count-on-able and nothing stays attached.

In this life, we are learning to put one foot in front of the other, one word in front of the other, one thought in front of the other so they make sense.  You can’t imagine the effort we make to stand without swaying, speak without stumbling, to walk through the door.

We consist of humans and motors – and don’t know what we are talking about.  If we talk at all. For some of us, it is 1981 and has been for 30 years. We don’t know if we ate breakfast, took our meds, took a walk, or took a nap. 

One guy was hit by a bus. One was hit by a bullet. One was taken down in Fallujah. One was “taken down” while taking down his Christmas lights. I am way more fortunate than many. I still have two legs and two arms, two hands and two feet. 

One day, I count six of us at the table, but just nine legs. Six of us should have twelve hands, but we have only ten. and a former attorney named Maggie who began each meeting by saying “grace” and ended with a gratitude prayer.  She was radiant. Yet a few months back, she died. I see her in my mind and write this to honor her.