Undone

Every morning I am reminded of the general irrelevance of my personal desires when I go downstairs, coffee in hand, and survey the night’s devastation of my flowers by a couple of furry little bunnies. Rows of beheaded stems greet me, and scattered, half-chewed foliage, and tattered petals on the ground. Rather than resort to harsher measures, I have been systematically replacing the devoured flowers with different types of plants in an effort to zero in on the ones the rabbits deem inedible. Marigolds are consistently recommended, and I could see they were not preferred, but even they eventually fell victim to the voracious little beasts.I thought I had a fighting chance with geraniums, and this morning these too had been destroyed. Now I am down to trusty salvia and lavender, but I half expect to find them in a broken heap tomorrow.All I wanted was a border of colorful flowers along the stones by the entrance to our house. What I have gotten instead are unwanted lessons about nature, survival, persistence and loss. I find myself thinking of Sysiphus, condemned to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain, from which it would rollback down of its own weight. “Happiness and the absurd,” wrote Camus, “are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.” Remember that.

Meanwhile I have been spending time in Orange County lately to help my elderly mother through accumulating difficulties. A quick distillation of the latest story ist his: Following surgery to mend her broken arm, she was discharged with a metal insert in place to connect the separate pieces, the arm carefully cradled in a wrapped plaster splint and sling to heal. At some point, however, she removed that gosh-darn splint all on her own, and when she went back to the orthopedic surgeon for a follow-up look yesterday, he discovered that the repair had not held through all her motions, and the arm was broken again. He did not recommend subjecting her to the ordeal of surgery a second time. Her arm will heal in its own way, but she will not be able to extend it fully. At nearly 90, she can probably handle this limitation more easily than another operation.

Besides, outcomes are questionable when, as the doctor put it, “The patient is noncompliant.”

Given benefit of hindsight, I suppose there are dozens of things that might have been done differently to avoid being at this disappointing junction. If I were inclined to feel combative, I could find blame, point fingers and direct anger at inattentive caregivers or doctors without foresight or the exasperating behavior of a befuddled old woman. And if I were feeling analytical, I might even springboard into a discussion of our irrational health care system, and the ethics of choices, and the whole inescapable business of growing old.But I am not inclined to rail at the universe. Things come undone. People become as fragile as flowers. And even as the rock rolls right back down the hill, we have those purposeful periods, as Sysyphus did, when we think we know what we need to do and even imagine it might work. Diligence and good intentions count. We make meaning, and we keep at it, and that’s wonderful, as long as we can also accept absurdity.

So I gather up the fragments in the garden and tend to the survivors. I figure that life’s bumps and bangs can yield few gifts more valuable than patience and compassion. A sense of humor comes in handy too. Embrace fragility. (But not too hard.) Loss and breakage are inevitable.