The Torture Chamber - First Night Home

Originally published in the Hidden Mountain Journal

I remember the first night I got home from the hospital. We rented a hospital bed and put it in the living room. My wife and boys got everything set up for my arrival. We decided to put my body in the living room because it is the prettiest room in the house. It has a view of our fields and the mountain behind our home. I can check out the deer and wild turkey in the early morning from the window as they wander around the old apple orchard up in the field on the left side of the house.

They even put my iMac next to my bed along with a few of my holy books. Technology and the sacred are becoming companions in this age. And for those who know how much I love baseball they hooked up the cable near my bed so I wouldn’t miss a Yankee game. Baseball in the summer is a hermitage for my soul. The set up in the living room looked even a bit idyllic. Our black lab, Jazzy, even had room to lie right next to my bed.

As I lay in the hospital and thought of home it certainly made me yearn for the cozy and the comfortable. But that first night home turned into a nightmare. An important fact — when you are wounded, the smallest adjustments of the body can instantly turn life into a first-rate torture chamber. In this case the torture chamber was supplied by the medical supply people. They made a seemingly simple mistake: They sent along the wrong hospital mattress.

That sounds like a minor issue. I mean, it was, after all, just a mattress. How could a mattress torture someone? Even on a lumpy mattress you can get a good night’s sleep. But in my circumstance it was a major issue.

The mattress was hard plastic that folded up into ridges when I lay on it. When the ambulance folks wheeled me into the house on a gurney and put me in the bed, the pain exploded in my body.

Here is the medical situation: My right back side from my backbone to the end of my hip is held together with wires, screws, pins and bolts. If you can a get a good picture of that in your mind then you can imagine I was painfully sensitive to pressure and touch. A hard plastic mattress was just the thing to grind into me! I confess, I lost it. Five minutes on that mattress and I was writhing in agony. As I lay down on the mattress on the right side of my hip, it felt like there were about 10 nine-inch nails that immediately pierced my skin and sunk all the way down to the bone to split me open again.

That is not a pretty picture. Plain and simple, it was a heavy dose of pure agony. This was really fierce pain. The pain was so immense that it was one of those times when I thought I simply was not going to make it. The pain was a chart-topper.

Simple Acts of Love Transform Crisis

Well, there I lay. I was writhing in agony on the bed. My son, Benny, and my wife, Elliesheva, were looking on with a touch of horror, fear, worry and major consternation. This was not a pleasant scene for any of us, but they mobilized and within 35 minutes figured out what to do: They found another mattress in the house that fit. They simply changed the mattress and the torture instantly stopped.

Nevertheless, let me tell you that those 35 minutes made me certain that no spy could ever survive a full-out torture assault. I know I would have given up every secret I knew to get out of my predicament. There is little room for heroics when your body is flat out feeling like you are being flayed alive. But even here there is a profound spiritual lesson. The lesson is that sometimes the simplest action or gesture in life can deliver the wounded and the hurt from their deepest travail. We ought not to forget that — it’s the lesson that teaches us everything we need to know about gratitude and love. It’s the lesson that can end nightmares. It’s a lesson about holding on and praying for hope. It is a lesson that tells us that spirituality also needs actions. Talking about heaven is interesting, but being a vehicle for the sake of Heaven is something entirely different.

While I lay moaning, my family not only had to act, but they had to call on their inner strength to get them through. Even the giver has to persevere. This was painful for them, too. But, thank God, they also knew this was only one of many challenges that lay ahead. My lying around in the middle of my family for all these months has changed everyone’s life.

My wife told me that as I was moaning, she and my son, Benny, went down our little hallway off the living room to discuss what they were going to do. As they began talking, Benny — out of nowhere — turned and hugged his mother and said to her, “Mom, no matter what happens we are all in this together. We are going to get through all of this!”

His simple act of love in the middle of a crisis, focused them and reminded them about the depth of their love and how they chose to be, act and respond in the middle of the fire. When my wife told me this little tale, I said, “My love, as far as I am concerned, if you want to know what being spiritual is all about — well, what went down between you and Benny is a clear example of what that is all about. Spirituality is grounded in the personal.” I truly believe that to be the case. We often fool ourselves, thinking that Spirit is somewhere else, in other worldly experiences, in great rushes or ecstatic visions. I think we all would be a lot better off if we refocused and understood that the Holy is in our hands and in our deeds.

The sacred is manifest when we give of our heart. When we are tender and loving to those around us, we are in the Spirit and living the Spiritual. If not through our deeds and actions, how else is the manifest beauty of the Sacred gong to make it into this world? Our hands and our heart are so to speak the way God comes into this world.

By the way, that is why I suspect King David wrote in the Psalms — the simple statement that “goodness and compassion should chase me all the days of my life.” If we hunger to live the Spiritual, we hunger to serve and to give. The deepest experience we can have in this life is the joy that fills our hearts when we love and give to others. If somehow we can remember that, we are bound to chase after the highest spiritual delight we can experience — the experience of the doing the good and living with compassion.

The Reflecting Mirror of Our Lives

Later that night after everyone had gone to sleep and as I lay comfortably in bed, I thought about a little teaching in the Talmud that says “in whatever way a person chooses, that is the way they are led” (Makkos 22:6).

It occurred to me after weathering that round of pain that we do have choices on how we walk on our path in life. Lying there I realized that while I certainly was not able to pick the road on which I am currently walking, I can choose how I want to be on that road. I can go down this road with a measure of dignity. I realized that the road we are all on is a reflecting spiritual mirror of who we are. It just takes a bit of courage to give yourself a look. But if you look, you surely are going to see where you are led.

As much as we may not like to admit it, we never really know who we are until we are tested. Life does fill us with exacting measurements of our spirit. It’s a hell of a way to discover the depth of life, but still and all when you are in the middle of it, all the choices get really simple. For me, this nothing more than a case of “to be or not to be.” For me, that is the “question.” And when faced with all this pain, I am going to try to choose to be. I am not going to be a “not be” person.