I Am Well!!

“You have to see Doctor Sharkis,” Ernest says, shaking me awake. “I’m worried about you. I’ve made you an appointment.”

Dr. Sharkis looks at my ears, mouth, eyes. He cups my throat. I choke. He pushes gently on my abdomen. I call out. He touches my face-cheeks. I scream. He diagnoses me with a major bacterial infection and prescribes three courses of antibiotics.

I am not going to die. I am well.

Now, Ernest and I are walking the dogs in our Pinney Village neighborhood. “We live in a forest,” I say. “Look at all the trees…the tango dancing of the limbs…the forever green-ness of the Evergreens….the crunchy of Oak leaves are under our shoes…the delicious scents tickling my nose…the soft wind on my brow…”

I am alive, living in my body, sensually, in a way I never have before. Grateful to be in my body, alive with my spirit expanded—and yet and still feeling able to leave it when that time comes.

“I think my sickness has made me Buddhistic,” I whisper to the dogs. “You know, . Detached? Enlightened?”