The Pittsburgh Press (January 8, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
The ill wind
By Florence Fisher Parry
Spare me, please, the company of him who has never had a sick day in his life. I can imagine no one less desirable. He is bound to be an irritant to the sensibilities, having none of his own (for who, pray, can have sensibilities who has never known pain?).
He is selfish, for how else could he have spared himself the physical penalties which come from extending one’s self into the needs of others at one’s own expense?
He is smug, for he feels a superiority to weaker flesh.
Worst of all he is hearty; and if there is anyone more exhausting and boring than a hearty person, it has not been my bad fortune to have encountered him.
Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that Heaven remains a pallid prospect to the most of us because its promises are too pearly. Fancy an existence without collision, uncertainty, suspense; without a tear or heartache, those tender sisters of mercy! Without remorse and forgiveness; without the fitful fevers and cozy exhaustions that are the very essence of illness!
I am well. I could turn the world over; then in an instant I am laid low by an invisible foe in shape of a germ, or a false step which unbalances that delicate coordination which sustains equilibrium. I am reduced to helplessness and pain.
Then only can I evaluate the goodness and mercy of those about me, the kindness of strangers, the miracle of medicine, the sweetness of that final capitulation. SLEEP! Then only can I appreciate the prodigal abundance that was mine to enjoy in health; the beautiful outdoors, the sweet appeasement of hunger and thirst, the converse with friends, the happy confusion of family reunion, the zest for reading and music, the INTEREST IN LIFE!
Recapture
Now it is said that illness is an inexcusable waste, our greatest extravagance, and indeed this was my sentiment when, at the most unreasonable time, I was laid low and raged through a low-grade pneumonia.
But I have had time – lots of time! – to shift my opinion of sickness, and am prepared to acknowledge myself in its debt.
It has been my custom over many years, as my faithfuls among Press readers have come to know, to take a leave of absence from this column for the two weeks before Christmas, the better to discharge the responsibilities which descend upon me at that time in another field.
No sooner, this Christmas-tide, did I shift the burden, as it were, than I took to bed, where I am still ensconced – until it will take a derrick to effect the transfer from pillow to post, so reconciled have I become to a slow convalescence. I find myself approaching with deep reluctance the day when I may resume my full quota of health and all its baleful burdens.
For the first time I know what is meant by enjoying poor health. It’s swell!
For the first time in years, Christmas has been Christmas! I had time to see my family, hear them buzzing around me, examine the tree, smell the savors of the kitchen and the lovely aroma of ironing and pine. I was spared the awful necessity of jumping up and facing the world all coiffed and complexion-dressed. I could turn to the inside pages of The Press, I could hear a daytime radio program. I could read a novel – not a MUST novel but a racing good novel (it was “Wild Calendar,” and a peach of a Main Street photograph-phonograph record, by the way).
I looked at – I mean LOOKED AT, inscription, verse, picture and all – on all my Christmas cards. I even started to send some of my own. I was waited on hand and foot. I didn’t have to answer the telephone – let it ring, let it ring!
More than all else, I could lie long hours, the hands of the clock on the mantel seemingly stopped, while the dusk gathered, and the darkness, and think long thoughts and court long memories.
I could reach into the future, too, and make long neglected decisions and provisions. I could listen to music far into the night, knowing that time had stopped for a while and lost seconds were not of the essence after all!
Discovery
I could face a few things I had had to turn away from, driven as I had been by the urgency of health and work. I could even remember the war, that incredible dream, the nightmare, that brace of suspenseful years when the ring of the doorbell rooted my feet on the stair, when sleep was a drug only, a desperate respite from fear…
I had time to reach to the bottom of my heart and discover there strange new nooks and crannies… What a discovery indeed, the hidden knowledge – at last uncovered – that I had lost the power to be unhappy ever again! The war had passed us by … by some luck, some undeserved freakish luck it had but brushed our hearts, stopping them in their beat only for an instant now and then, then passing on and stopping at some other heart… why? … why? …
I knew now that I was to be thankful all my life, grateful all my years, never able to be unhappy again because of the odd accident that my son had lived, had lived, was whole, was happy, had not had to die…
It takes time to come upon such discoveries, they do not expose themselves to you when you are caught up and busy and cramming life with cluttered urgencies.
It takes time to be sick, but it’s worth it, it’s worth it.
Testaments take time…