Letting Go of Little Things
Tomorrow morning, a surgeon is going to cut off my little finger at the proximal joint, leaving me with 4 ⅓ fingers on my right hand.
When I walked out of a meeting for a second opinion with a UCSF surgeon, who confirmed that amputation was my last option in my battle with Dupuytren’s Contracture (a hereditary genetic disorder), I should have felt relieved. It wouldn’t be noticeable to most people, and without the finger locked onto my palm, I could regain my grip strength within a few months. I’d be two-thirds good as new!
But leaving the doctor’s office I had felt uneasy, like I was throwing a friend overboard. To my surprise, as I sat in my car, tears welled up in my eyes.
Getting older is an inexorable process of losing things. Already, I’ve lost my youthful energy, some of my eyesight and hearing, and more brain cells than I want to think about. My body continues losing muscle mass and tone despite regular exercise. I’ve also lost a couple of lymph nodes to throat cancer, my thinking and reflexes are slower, and it takes several days now to recover from a hard hike. There’s more to come, I know, in my return to dust and ashes, but you get the point.
On the plus side, along this pathway of mounting indignities, I have had the happy discovery that my sense of who or what I am continues to unfold and grow stronger. Some days I feel like a 21-year-old living in a 70 year old body! Thanks in large part to my understanding the inside-out nature of reality and Self, I have tasted the truth of who I am. I feel almost giddily grateful for all that I have and love in my life. I welcomed turning seventy last year by declaring ‘It’s never too late to start again.’
Honestly, I’ve never been more excited about my prospects.
So, I’m puzzled by my feelings around losing an almost insignificant part of my body. Something more to learn.
When I left the doctor’s office with my decision made, it occurred to me that my pinky was healthy (albeit no longer functional) and had served me faithfully all my life, and perhaps it would be fitting to ask the surgeon to save the remnants of my finger, so I could take it home and honor it in some way. I laughed out loud to myself as I imagined a group of friends gathered around a tiny coffin, some prayers and a brief eulogy, and then a burial in the backyard beneath a young redwood that grows there. My wife laughed when I told her, and suggested we have a ‘Pinky Parting Party’ at our house in a couple of weeks. Everyone would have to bring finger food, and a little thing to let go of.
I’m still smiling at the idea, but inside there’s still a sense of dread. I cannot point at or name the source of this existential queasy feeling, so I decided to write this post to see if any new understanding might emerge.
The one possibility that occurs to me is that despite my understanding of the who or what of “I am” — a spiritual being and awareness living in a physical form — somewhere in the tangled dendrites of my brain, some lesser part of me holds the belief that my body is my true identity. And with one less finger, I will be incomplete, somehow less than whole.
How could that be?
I still don’t know.
Guess I’ll have to wait until I see….
