Waiting

Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.
- I Ching

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The slow rhythm of waiting.
- Adrian Cowell

Operation

W. E. Henley

V

You are carried in a basket,
Like a carcase from the shambles,
To the theatre, a cockpit
Where they stretch you on a table.

Then they bid you close your eyelids,
And they mask you with a napkin,
And the anæsthetic reaches
Hot and subtle through your being.

And you gasp and reel and shudder
In a rushing, swaying rapture,
While the voices at your elbow
Fade ? receding ? fainter ? farther.

Lights about you shower and tumble,
And your blood seems crystallising ?
Edged and vibrant, yet within you
Racked and hurried back and forward.

Then the lights grow fast and furious,
And you hear a noise of waters,
And you wrestle, blind and dizzy,
In an agony of effort,

Till a sudden lull accepts you,
And you sound an utter darkness . . .
And awaken . . . with a struggle . . .
On a hushed, attentive audience.


Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.
Jack Kevorkian


We're leaving soon for the hospital. T's sister 's husband is undergoing a liver transplant procedure today. He has liver cancer and has been waiting about a year for a suitable organ. He's one of the lucky ones, still very healthy, an active happy go lucky sort, in his mid '50s. Please keep B and the family in your thoughts today. Their everyday world is spinning upside down and will be very different from this day on.