Hope, fear, and courage

[violet@online.np1.com]

Emmy wrote:
>       Yes, I agree. There's nothing depressing about Kate's music.
>It gets very melancholic at times, in certain songs bittersweet, but
>there's always hope at the end of the line, and faith in better things
>to come.. To my ears the most hopegiving song has to be
>Te Heart'.. 'Without the pain, there'd be no learning, without the
>hurt we'd never change'... Those really are words of wisdom.


"Constellation of the Heart" is a fabulous song!  The song, saying to
look inward and take a chance at trusting where your heart leads you,
is so positive and joyous.  Kate repeats a theme that she's covered
many times:  "But I'm scared!"..."Well, do it anyway, girl!"  I get
the same pep talk from "Walk Straight Down the Middle":  He thought he
was gonna die, but he didn't/She thought she just couldn't cope, but
she did/We thought it would be so hard, but it wasn't/(It wasn't easy,
though!).  I can hear Kate yelling "Do it, do it, do it!  You're
stronger than you think!"  Do any of you have stories about this
coming true in your lives?  I do...

People with weak tummies, turn back now, as a rather gruesome story
follows.  (I'm hoping that some of you can make it past the words to
hear the message.  True, some details may not be absolutely necessary
for you to know, but my words come as they will, and I don't choose to
censor.  I hope you understand.)

I have a terrible phobia of holes.  In people.  Holes in people.
Un-NATURAL holes in people, for any smart alecks out there. ;)
Supporting the belief that all phobias can be traced to incidents in
childhood, I trace mine back to the time a friend was trying to climb
a tree, stepped up onto one of the iron rods supporting said tree, and
slid off, gouging a rather huge, well,...[ahem!] "chunk", out of the
back of her thigh.  It was horrifying.  Her parents weren't home at
the time and we were only about 7 or 8, and she was screaming for me
to do something.  I didn't know WHAT to do.  I ran home and dragged
(literally DRAGGED) my mom to the friend's house.  A major trauma of
this event for me was that when I was sent back out into the yard by
my mother to get the piece of flesh (my mom being from a family of
doctors, she knew it might have been possible to re-attach it), it was
nowhere to be found.  But the girl's two doberman's were sitting right
there, and well, you get the gist.  An added shock was that after this
the girl's parents told her she was not allowed to play with me
anymore.  They hadn't been very fond of me to begin with because I'm
white (sad but true -- racism cuts both ways), but I still never got
over the cruelty and injustice of their dictate.

Fast forward 20 years, and my father was in the hospital with cancer.
He had had a stroke, and wasn't doing well at all.  He had been
operated on, and had many stitches (staples) all over his abdomen.  A
section of the stitches came open, leaving a deep wound that had to be
cleaned regularly.  (This was just exactly the very thing I had been
deathly afraid of for years, having for a long time experienced
recurring nightmares about people I loved developing holes in their
heads and bodies.)  I felt that the nurses were not dressing the wound
often enough, so I took it on myself to do it.  The love I felt for my
father at that time was overwhelming.  Because of the stroke, he was
very childlike, after having been very domineering all of my life.  He
was so helpless, so innocent all of a sudden.  At this time, the end
of his life, I was able to see him as being purely good.  I needed
that.  I would visit him several times a day, and the nurses always
told me that he had been saying "Where's my daughter?"  And he would
call me "Dr. Bosshart" which was his last name and had been my maiden
name.  He was always so very happy to see me.  After a time, he
wouldn't allow the nurses to touch him at all, so they had no choice
but to show me, against all policies, how to care for him myself.  The
whole point of this is that I was able to clean his wound, not a
pretty sight, without the slightest flinch.  I was able to rise up
over my feelings of disgust and work from a place of love and courage.
I don't know how I did it, only that every time in my life when I have
been confronted by something I've been afraid of, I have found courage
I didn't know I had.  During my hospital visits , even my ex-husband,
who was a police officer and had seen many horrid accidents, couldn't
stay in the room while I was taking care of my dad.  But I was able to
do it.

My father died in November of 1988.  Almost a year later, TSW was
released.  Every night of the month of November that year, 1989, I
went outside, looked up at the sky, and played "Rocket's Tail", always
imagining that I could see Daddy blazing across the sky out of the
corner of my eye.  I would stand there, laughing and crying like an
idiot.  Daddy is with me everywhere I go now.  I don't have to travel
miles to see him.  So many of Kate's songs now remind me of him, and I
still go out every November at least once, and look for my Rocket's
Tail, and it always shows up right on time.

With all the courage in the world and with Kate too,
Violet (&Daddy)  :)
xoxox

       "She thought she just couldn't cope, but she did." -- Kate,
with love