The Death card says, you thought this was an ending but it’s just a state-change. It’s fragrant, it’s a verb. Pay attention.

The tub containing my organs stayed in the fridge for quite a while, like more than a week. I figured this was fine because someone had written “50% alcohol” on the outside, which I guessed would preserve it for a good long time. Then again, I didn’t want it preserved to the point of being pickled or whatever. I wanted it buried ASAP. My kid said he would do it. I asked mostly because he had access to a post-hole digger and we all agreed it should be buried it deep so the dog or a deer or something wouldn’t dig it up. Not that I would care about it being consumed but at the same time I wanted the full effects of full-on decomposition in a spot where I could monitor progress, progress being the growth of sumac, which is what I thought maybe we should plant on top. Sumac because it’s red and it grows fast.

My kid knows a lot about plants, all of a sudden, somehow he has become this knowledgeable plant person. I asked about this a while ago, like, what’s with plants now? He’s like, well, it’s real-life Pokémon. Powers, state-changes, et cetera. This made sense and from that point on I was totally trusting of his thoughts on plants. He said sumac was perfect because it likes to take over wounded areas and fortify and heal them. Everybody says it’s invasive, but it’s not, it’s the opposite, it finds vulnerabilities and then it roots and flowers and just generally propagates in a way that’s like hey, I got you. 

Into about the second week of this uterus floating in fluid in my fridge I was like, hey, can we get this thing buried, can you come over with that post-hole digger? He says, sure. But then he shows up without the digger because he’s like, I think this would be a better ritual if we did the digging with a shovel. This was fine with me. This was a Friday night, the first truly beautiful breezy day in a damn long time.

The Death card says, do not miss big endings. Notice the colors even if the thing has made you so goddamn mad. This is perhaps the opposite of “let go and let God.” It’s like “get this thing out of the fridge and bury it deep and bring me its head a few months from now in the form of red red flowers doing their best to turn a dead thing into the next thing.”

The Hanging Man says, guess what, you were wrong. And now congratulations you can see things right.

Before the procedure I asked every woman I could find, every woman-of-a-certain-age who had gone through this same deal, I asked what they thought I should do or expect. Barb said, don’t freak out when you still have the feeling of cycles but there’s no bleeding. Susan said her recovery was the best summer of her life, because she basically sat on her deck and everyone left her alone. Carol said don’t rush it. Jan said, do not expect pain. If you expect other-than-pain you might be shocked at the power of that, at how you good you feel. They were all 1000% right. [***NOTE*** Barb and Jan are nurses. Their wisdom was hands-down the most spooky AND surprising AND accurate. I officially declare nurses to be dual citizens, of this world and of some other higher smarter one.]

This convalescence might have been the most fertile (creatively speaking, haha, do you see what I did there) and inspiring retreat of my grownup life.I call that we stop seeing things like this, medical crises, as “medical crises.” Maybe we call them writing prompts at minimum, rites of passage max. Occasions for loungewear.

The Hanging Man is about an unexpected change in perspective. Know that when you land upright you’ll see old things in a new way and that doesn’t last and it is something to be harvested. Harvest that. Get some new glasses eventually but right now harvest what it is to see things blurry and then clear.

The Strength card says you better learn how to braid and I mean now.

You are dang right we named our offices. Art jobs don’t pay much so I try to come up with benefits in the form of creative expression and decision-making and absolute reigns of power, wherever possible. 

I named mine The Box because a while back my colleagues and I came up with this thing called Box-Based Leadership. It’s how we were doing everything anyway, so I thought it would be good and also really funny to name it, to put it in writing. Box-Based Leadership has three tenets:

1. Know your capacity.
2. Strategic pursuit of pleasure.
3. Respect the cycles.

I am vaguely aware that “box” was a term for ladyparts. Tried to research that but I lost interest after about fifteen seconds because I don’t really care whether it’s vulgar. I am very much in love with my own etiology here, with the idea of Box-Based Leadership replacing the notion of “thinking outside the box.” Like, #backinthebox. Like, as a phrase people lob at each other in professional settings. What if we encouraged each other to think with our actual boxes. Our actual female feminine plumbing, cycles, imperatives, capacities. 

The Strength card says braid it all together. 

The Wheel of Fortune says you’ll stick the landing because you have to.

Back to Abby.

Abby, bangs, spring 2019. Don’t know if she likes this photo but I love it and I am the boss of this blog. 

I cannot tell you how thrilling it is, or maybe you know this, how thrilling it is to watch younger persons make decisions. They get into their twenties or thirties and they’ve had some times, some trials, and by now they’re decisive but the decisiveness is only a few layers deep. They’re out there deciding things — jobs, love, wardrobe, bangs — and when they talk about it they look at you with this seeking look. The trick is, the fun is, looking back with rock-solid reassurance which 1) reassures, 2) also says, yeah well, you don’t reeeeally know, do you. You have no pre-paved assurance that this is going to work. So you simply have to make it work. You have to make it work, and you will. This is what it was to watch Abby’s 100-drawings-a-day and then read her journalings and hand that all back to her. Not like I spoke the words “you will make all of this work,” but I mean, if you make a tarot deck out of somebody’s drawings I think that’s what you’re saying. Or, different example, maybe you entrust a younger person with the burial of an actual part of your self. Same same same. The thrill of standing back.

Burial of a part. Photo by Purple Porchlight-Video, Theatre, Creative.

The Wheel of Fortune says, congratulations, you have decided to make a thing work and that’s actually the only way to know you made the right move. Stick the landing even if the jump was not exactly how you planned. Stick it and don’t look back and guess what, it was exactly perfectly the right time, the right distance, everything.

The Hermit says know how long to soak. Then, get out.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spent like two weeks not-walking and then gone for a walk, but let me tell you, it is something. Hadn’t really walked since the surgery and then one day I decided it was time so I walked across my street which is under construction so it was like walking on muddy Mars or some shit. I kept going on sidewalks all the way to Family Dollar. Felt it everywhere. No pain, just wobbly, like basically everything connected to everything had forgotten how to make things (legs) swing forward. I was headed to Family Dollar to buy bug spray because I don’t know if you noticed but it was gnat season. On the walk back I got really sad about nothing, just this overall visceral sense of this-is-not-ok. Life per se was very ok, so on one hand this was irrational. On the other hand, my insides were only barely ready for this walk. Undissolved stitches and what have you. And the fluorescent light of Family Dollar was weird, it’s always weird, plus that distinctive plastic bag smell. I was maybe just too porous for all that right now and what was coming across as a burst of sadness was the only way the not-yet-healed parts had of shouting “sit the fuck back down.”

Possibly this is what “hysteria” has always been about, just a body trying to get something across which can show up as emotion which can look nuts unless you consider that it’s brilliant for stitches or whatever else to make themselves heard in this way. What else are they supposed to do. It felt really good to get home to that chair wearing pink-orange-crimson, with those really green trees and blue sky up above.

The Hermit says hide out for as long as you need to hide out. Don’t let things get moldy or turn to rot or whatever, but stay put and soak what you need to soak and don’t get out until everything every single part says it’s time.

The Justice card says let your gaze shift and then walk in that direction.

Honestly my idea to bury it was initially just about disliking the thought of medical waste. Planting it seemed more earthy or whatever. It was only when I got a look at it all, like when I was face-to-face with what had been my moon and clock and compass for as long as I can remember, that I realized why I’d asked to have everything they took out. It was so I could have a straight-up confrontation. I’d been mad at this stuff for a long time and now I was offended. Mad at how controlling it had been all those years, offended at how innocuous it looked now.

It’s helping to wear all this pink and orange and crimson. They seem like the colors of a compassionate person. They seem like they can help a person walk around in the world like, hey, buried uterus no longer the boss of me because you’re buried, we are good.

The Justice card says, operate as if you are a person who wears color because of things you can’t see yet, but they’re there, they’re in motion.

The Chariot says, guess what, you are actually driving this thing.

All this past winter, every time I went into any thrift store, I bought pink and orange everything. None of it was like what I usually wear or could picture myself ever wearing. It all had to be these particular shades, specifically a hot salmon and a warm toasty non-neon orange. Anything in those those colors, I bought. I also a dyed a few things I already had, summer things that were brown, I dyed them crimson or salmon or plum. There was no plan to wear any of it, I just liked how it looked in my closet alongside so much fancy black which is generally my work wardrobe. This new section of the closet just cracked me up.

I didn’t know what it was for until this whole medical event started happening and I was like, oh, of course, I can’t sit around the house in fancy black work clothes! I guess I’ve been building a recovery wardrobe! This excited me beyond belief: 1) that some part of my brain knew I was about to need healing attire, and 2) that this would not be some ordinary convalescence but rather a daily fashion party. One thing I learned was that pink and orange are right next to each other on the color wheel. Guess what’s complementary to that? Directly opposite the pink-orange section of the wheel? Blue and green. Which makes my flouncy getups directly complimentary to my backyard, which is where I spent a lot and I mean a lot of recovery time. 

It was stunning how easy it was to just sit there. I am sure it had something to do with the fact of the complimentary colors. I could be still forever, those days, because that’s not really what was happening, what was happening was some invisible sealing and shifting and some invisible swirling of a salmon/plum combo which is clearly in some kind of communication with the trees and the sky. You would see this if you were driving by. It just really feels like the trees and the sky are excited to have new outfits to pop against.

The Chariot says to look for unlike forces, like keep your eyes really open for them, and assign yourself the role of yoking them together. Not forcefully but over time with some goal in mind. Assign yourself the role and then take it seriously like do not for a second question that you’re supposed to be in this particular driver’s seat and supposed to be nuancing the shit out of a couple things that would otherwise have gone in different, opposing, nonproductive directions. Keep your core engaged and let the forces pull or balk or whatever until things start making sense, which they will.

The Lovers say, take a breath of good air, then keep giving and receiving and just keep doing this.

There was this one sleepover in his dorm room during our dating time when we looked at each other, we both remember this, and he put his hand on my abdomen or else it was already there, and there was this look, a silent knowing shared between us that was like ye shall birth from here. That few seconds lasted forever and ever. Then boom here we are at fifty and he’s driving me to the hospital for this procedure which is the very end of whatever that dorm room moment was. We didn’t even have to talk about it, like “remember that moment,” it was already hanging around like big sweet cobweb making the day oddly and perfectly romantic. That feeling lasted up until evening when my roommate started crying out to be cleaned up. Apparently she’d soiled herself. The room was really small. Not sure if I stated that before. Every time staff came in to check her vitals, or mine, everybody had to move, somehow also including me, like I had to get smaller in my bed, condense the items on my bedside tray, things like that. Anyway. Personally I was not experiencing the odor (which could be my years of decongestant nasal spray, maybe an early sign of dementia, not sure, I just know I generally can’t smell things anymore which was useful in this case). But my vision is fine and I know when my husband’s face shifts from 100% I-am-with-you to 90% I-am-with-you/10% do-you-smell-that.

By now it’s been a long day, I’m pretty doped up, and there’s literal foulness in the air, but he is ready and willing to spend the night in the nonreclining chair in this room if it’s what I want. He says it and also I can see that he means it. But really, just getting to this point was more than enough. At this point, we are talking multiple lifetimes of more-than-enough. I was like, please go home. Get some sleep. There might be Vicks in the the medicine cupboard, maybe put some up your nose. I love you I love you I will see you in the morning.

The surgery wasn’t the very end; this was the very end. Coming up. Photo by Purple Porchlight Video/Theatre/Creative.

The Lovers are a guide to let a partnership make what it wants to make, hold what need to be held, drop what should be dropped. When one of you needs to step out for air, do that, then come back better at love, better at everything.

The High Priest is backup to the High Priestess. Actually they back each other up, depending on the day.

It took surprisingly little effort to acquire everything they removed. It took exactly one phone call to the right nurse. I was like, hey, do you think there’s any way I can have it? She’s like, have what? I’m like, my uterus. I would like my uterus after it’s removed and whatever else they take out. She said she’d do some research and call me back. Turns out it was no problem. The procedure was on a Monday, and on the Thursday after that I got a phone call with instructions to come to the main entrance and ask to be escorted to Histology. The instructions themselves felt very exciting. My mom, who had come to town to help take care of me for the week, dropped me off at the entrance. I exited the car and shuffled to the front desk, and was like, I am here to pick up a specimen. The concierge or whatever is the proper term for a hospital front desk, she started walking briskly in the direction of Histology. I was like oh wow I’m sorry, I just had the surgery on Monday, can we slow down? I can’t walk that fast yet. No problem, she says. She asks, do you do this often? I ask, do what? She goes, pick up specimens, for people. OH, I said, oh, no, this is my specimen, I am picking up my uterus. It was removed on Monday. She’s like, oh, sure. Wow. I guess it’s been with you a long time, I guess it’s yours. People ask for tumors and things all the time. Here is Histology. Best wishes for whatever your plans are!

The High Priest is about the rules. The High Priest says, know the rules, and follow them so deeply that you get the results you want. Do the homework and then get what you want.

The Emperor says: Place matters. You are never not in a place and you should probably always do something about it.

I had no intention of sleeping during the night I stayed in the hospital and that is exactly how it went down. The procedure took a few hours and then I got moved to a shared room, shared with a woman who kept crying out, like all night long, for help. I don’t think she understood that I was just another patient on the other side of the curtain. But there was no real way to convey that so I just rolled with it and pushed my own call button every time she hollered. “She’s asking for someone to turn her.” “She’s asking for someone to clean her up.”

The nurses were apologetic but it was really no problem. I was awake, I was not going to miss a minute of this. On my shoulders I had this hot-pad of weighted beads, keeping air from getting trapped up in there, or at least mentally that’s what I pictured and boom as a result there was none of the referred shoulder pain I’d heard about. On my calves were these wrap-around gauntlet things, pulsing all night long with air up and down, maybe to keep blood clots from forming or maybe just to entertain me. Either way they worked. They were spectacular. It was not a night to be missed.

Honestly I love medical attention. There is nothing better than having your vitals checked every two hours, like, every two hours being reminded that on a basic human level you are vital. Plus the feeling of being helpful to a roommate, not that she knew that that’s what was happening.

In the morning I detached the leg things and walked over to the shared sink and put on some eyeliner because it does indeed make a difference, for me, in making the new day official. Roommate could see me and was like, please change the channel? This was a challenge but I found the remote and the classic cartoon station she wanted and then I went back to my bed. We were both in a place where you’re supposed to get taken care of and I was part of that place for her and it all worked out fine.

The Emperor says location matters and if you find yourself called to be part of making a place a capital-P Place, do it. Do this whether it makes sense or not. Use your hands and just use everything to make the place what you need it to be and also what the other person needs. At times you find yourself sharing a tiny room with some other person who literally cannot figure out what’s behind the curtain.

Update on Abby: At this point, as I’m writing this, she has begun her new job. She fills the reception area of a waiting room where people arrive nervous and hopeful and either ready or not-at-all ready to have needles stuck in them by a licensed acupuncturist. The license doesn’t matter if you’re scared. Abby’s way of saying “hello, welcome” fills up the room and makes everybody, like everybody, feel like it’s going to be so very ok. What she drew, above, the drawing I decided was The Emperor, is how she fills the space. Like the easiest and most elegant thing, but big enough to bleed off the page, out through the lobby, hopefully trailing out a little bit with you when you leave. It’s how to do it.