In the spiritual world

Cora is getting ready to go home, most likely tomorrow. I wish I could say she is much better, but she really is not. She has developed quite a cough as a result of her heart congestion, and I would say, just overall, she is quite a distance from her best.

The reason they are letting her go is because there really aren't any new actions they can take to help her until they take a closer look at her during the heart catheterization, which is scheduled for Wednesday. Our hope continues to be that they will gain some answers to why Cora continues to struggle, why her oxygen level so rapidly desaturates, why she has the persistent cough, why her liver continues to be enlarged, and other questions. Knowing we have that procedure on the books gives me great relief. I don't know why exactly, but I suppose because it is some action; some plan. And I like plans.

As usual, we've just been trying to live life simultaneous to our hospital odyssey. We took Dom and Cosie to the fair on the Fourth and they loved it. They are more and more becoming each other's best friend and I love to watch it unfold. At the fair their favorite part was riding a tandem motorcycle with Dom on the front, and Cosie on the back. They laughed and screamed as the thing went around and around, and they acted as though they were daringly cruising the open road, tackling each loop with fearlessness and determination.

They are absolutely stronger and happier together than they are apart.

While watching the fireworks, Dominic was on Jason's shoulders and Cosette was on mine. I looked up at one point and the kids were holding hands. Just staring at the spectacle, and absent-mindedly holding onto each other for no particular reason, except maybe that their lives are better when shared.

Cora Shabora turned eight months old today. It was also, as it turns out, her 200th day spent in a hospital. The cardiac ICU nurses, angels that they are, dropped off a cupcake to celebrate.

I'm telling you, I am learning from Cora everyday. I don't think she is a Buddha or some larger than life creature. But I do think she is a little person from the spiritual world, whatever that may mean. I think she speaks, soul to soul, to everyone she meets, and it feels strange at first, but somewhat addicting, to communicate only in a language of love, and free from the crap with which we fill most our lives. Fear. Loneliness. Worry. Regret. Stress. She is a magic little baby in whose presence, these things just float away. 

I do not pretend to know why Cora drew the short straw when bodies were made and handed out. But I know that to see her life only in terms of the struggles she has faced would be to greatly miss the point.

In the spiritual world, Cora's world, I don't have to think in terms of what her life should be; I don't have to feel we were somehow robbed of a better, easier experience. I can simply believe that things are exactly as they should be. That it is only my limited pictures of what I think "okay" looks like, and my tendency toward fear, that make this experience seem, well, awful. 

There are awful aspects, of course. It's just that it's more than that. 

I never before experienced the volume of beauty that's surrounded me during the past eight months.