brave heart

There are a lot of not-so-great parts about getting through a breakup, but one of the toppers has got to be Valentine's Day--especially when said break up is in such close proximity to said "holiday." Everywhere I turn are looming towers of bad milk chocolate in pink cellophane and ubiquitous reminders to remember my sweetie February 14. Ouch. But lest this entry become just another lament on love or diatribe on commercialism, I want to talk about the real issue at hand, or rather, at heart.

Last Sunday I attended an ebullient and gracious religious service during which a congregant got up to share a rather personal valentine's story. He is a family practice physician, and despite the insurance against disease one might guess would come with that line of work, this was the one-year anniversary of his open heart surgery. His talk was accompanied by a slide show with video of his own heart in the operating room, projected in images 5' x 4' on the wall of the sanctuary. He warned us when to close our eyes. I've never been one to look at such things on TV, but the sheer intimacy and courage of such an offering drew me in to watch. I could hear the 7-year old girl sitting next to me, "Yewwww, that's disgusting!" My contorted face echoed her sentiments in silent agreement, but I could not not watch. (Ok, I scrunched up my eyes and closed one in a couple of parts.)

The point of the story-- and the graphic accompaniment --was that in his career as a doctor, he had never successfully resuscitated a patient when applying defibrillation more than 3 times. During his surgery, after the implant was established, the surgeon applied the paddles directly to his heart to prompt the familiar "thum-thump" that would carry the body and the person back into life. The video showed the excruciating suspense of one.. two... three... four... five... six tries. On the sixth, it worked. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, even though the happy ending was standing before us in flesh and (full-on pumping) blood.

Our speaker didn't have to say it: What if the surgeon had given up at the 5th try? In his unsentimental, but transparent account, the man conveyed the almost indescribable gift of appreciating, literally, a second chance at life. This radical experience for which I was an intimate participant truly brought the point home for me. The heart and its vulnerability is magical in myriad ways, and unquestionably a brilliant work of divine design. Being exposed like this invited me to never see this organ the same way again. Watching the grisly images of this fist-sized, miracle mass of muscle--center of our being and energetic seat of love--graphically reminded me of the immensity of life contained in its 11 ounces.

Can we survive a broken heart? Definitely. Then there is rest, and recovery, and healing to be done. Then, what will we do with it? Will we give up on the 5th try? Is it too scary, too fragile to take it back out there? (Well, ummm, YES!) But if we don't, what's the point--isn't that just another kind of death? Most of us would certainly rather not have the pain that's packaged with loving a friend, a child, a parent, a mate. But just like the heart is built to pump 5000 quarts of life-juice each day, we humans are built to love--despite the risks and the breaks and the gluing it back together--because there is also joy to be received, and given, again.

So happy v-day everybody. Brave hearts, all.

p.s. And if you're struggling with the recoverty part, check out this article on Death Bear, the break-up aftercare crusader.