I sometimes feel like 'a poor, flickering flame that, at any instant, may be snuffed out' - Bill Longon coping with chronic pain
THROUGH THE spring and summer of 1994 God visited me with the most undeserved blessing; a succession of seven major heart attacks in six months, culminating in a heart transplant that autumn.
I was then 62 and had lived a much-travelled, adventurous and somewhat hedonistic life. I really needed, as the old people in the Munster glen where I grew up would say, to have something "put a stop to my gallop" . . . put some manners on me.
This the undeserved blessing did. The transplant was a total success, thanks to God and Maurice Neligan; but that, of itself, is not the blessing.
The blessing is that, through the 14 years since then, I have lived through a minefield of other health hazards: an aneurism repair, two hernia operations, a gallstones operation and the removal of cataracts.
From all these vicissitudes I have recovered. Osteoporosis and chronic arthritis are the ailments that have, quite literally, "put a stop to my gallop".
Coming to terms with my pain and, for the past four years, living in a wheelchair, has restored my old faith, deepened it, and brought me to an autumnal feeling of detachment and peace.
I have become hyper-conscious of the race against remaining time and acknowledge the intimations that I am nearing the end of my life.
I am fragile and vulnerable, my immune system "banked down" by daily doses of immuno-suppressant drugs. These and steroids, painkillers and other diverse medications, totalling 28 separate "pieces" per day.
I feel like a poor, flickering flame that, at any instant, may be snuffed out, yet miraculously by God's grace, continues to burn on. These past 14 years of my life have been permeated by the ineffable sweetness of this undeserved blessing; a gift I shall cherish to the end of my days.
I have come to a wonderful country of peace and contentment where the cost of entry is coming to terms with my pain and renouncing the stupid little conceits with which we tend to clutter our lives.
This is the country Thomas Merton saw as being beyond all horizons - "whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere".
For me, confined as I am to my wheelchair, it is a country, fortunately, not to be found by travelling, but like the hummingbird, standing still. Beyond this wonderful place there are no directions left for me in which to travel.
I am, as we all are, alone with my pain. In the land of pain, comparisons are not valid. Your pain and mine are very different.
We must handle them in our different ways. We must come to terms with our pain and let it enhance rather than ruin our lives.
For myself, I have found that you can never beat pain. It will always be the winner. So, I decided that some compromise was necessary. I decided to establish a good relationship with my pain. Pain had come into my house as an uninvited and unwanted guest.
I had a choice to make. Fight it, or befriend it! So, I talked to my pain. I said, "I will not, cannot fight you. You are too strong and I am too old and too weak. So, I will just let you wash over me. Let you teach me something.
"Something beautiful and worthwhile. How about humility? Teach me humility."
And that, for me, has worked. In the context of humility I often think of my old people again. They had a very stoical attitude to pain. They had to.
Seventy years ago painkillers were few. The old would say with wonderful resignation, "Sure we'll offer it up!" For my sins of omission and commission, I can but do the same.
When my pain is very severe I combat it by reciting some of the lovely poems I remember. There is Merton's Storm At Night, which ends:
The mind fights homeward to the beach,
Works loose, half dead, from the huge seas,
And lets its poor mute mask be lifted to the light:
So sleep can leak away and leave
The water-dazzled eyes to wake and wonder.
For morning works a miracle of sun and silence,
And light drowns in the trees.
Reciting that, quietly, to myself, in the long reaches of a night without sleep can alleviate almost any pain. But, when pain threatens to engulf, coming on, wave after wave, there is, best of all, Brownings poem - Prospice - which begins:
Fear Death? . . . to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place.
I was asked recently, what I would most miss leaving behind. Well, I would miss my family and just a few really good friends. And, I would miss the view from my kitchen table, where I sit for my various meals.
That long, uninterrupted vista down my back garden; looking across Scotsman's Bay to the Baily lighthouse. Sixteen years ago I lived in that lighthouse, for over a year while writing my history of Irish lighthouses - Bright Light, White Water.
I often go into the darkened kitchen late at night and look out across the bay to where the Baily light revolves in its bath of mercury with relentless regularity every 20 seconds. It never ceases to move me, when I remember . . .
Every day now I sit and write the memoir of my country childhood The Lamp and The Lullaby, which will be published in the spring of next year.
And, every night I pray that my little flickering flame of life will not gutter out just yet. For, as Dylan Thomas has the Rev Eli Jenkins say at the end of Under Milk Wood:
Whether we last the night or no, I'm sure is always touch and go.
Fourteen years ago my cardiologist told me that I would have about seven years to live on my transplanted heart. He was working on an actuarial basis - taking my age and general health into consideration. I have lived for just twice that time-span.
God's actuary had other plans. With God's grace I shall see the publication of my book in the spring. And after that? Who knows?
Perhaps another book or two.
• If you have had a health experience - good or bad - that you would like to talk about, contact: healthsupplement@irish-times.ie