Disease is a hard word to approach. You think of maggots, mounds of bodies in black and white photographs curling at the edges. Soften the word, however, and think of brain, think of the delicate pink city up there, pulsing, pink, alive and singing at its best--tilted, bent, even
(more) dented at its worst. All you need to do is fall off your bike without a helmet or trip on the sidewalk on the way to the mailbox and you can lose your grip on the concept of toothbrush.
My sister's best friend walked in her neighborhood in Minnesota last spring when the snow was finally gone but the hard crisp air still lingered and a bicyclist coming from behind, apparently oblivious, hit her full on. Her body was grievously hurt. Her brain even more. She was in a coma for weeks, rehab for months, and is still not the same, her left arm no longer available for use. She is "with disease," the subtle kind, the not so subtle, one of the towers missing in her cerebellum, or slouched down, clipped by the tire of a boy on a bicycle.
You ask me why, in the clear light of morning, my fingers nimble on the keyboard of my laptop, I am willing to write about disease, and I can't tell you. Monday, sitting on the porch of my closest and dearest friend--view of the Sound--she said, "Notice, the bird on the wire...a blue jay, no, it's a robin." With eyes that move clearly, its shutter-blink up and down, delicate fringe eyelashes like everyone's, I saw the bird, poise for flight, then pause, then hop sideways on the wire because it could. The beautiful city of my brain is missing significant streets but I can see. I can see beauty.
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