Best Day of My Life

My sister, Deb, is someone I look up to. I was born in July of 1968 and she was born less than 15 months later. Yet in many ways she is more mature than I am. She was able to learn that Santa Claus isn't real before me. She was able to tie her shoes before me. She had her first car long before I had mine and she followed the prescription for being a productive citizen – producing two beautiful children – where I have not even gotten married yet.

She has always followed her heart and she struck out across the globe, touring countries in South America, Europe and eventually living on a beach in the Virgin Islands for a few years, experiencing the richness of other cultures; actually immersing herself in them. She held jobs – one was at a local newspaper – and socialized in the Caribbean like a pro.

I actually got up the courage to visit her there once, and she showed me what she had learned. On the way to her house from the St. Croix Airport, while she drove on the left side of the road, she explained how things worked there. Before we reached our destination we stopped at a roadside stand and purchased two sugar cane beverages.

Under the pink and golden sunset we sat and talked on her front porch as the waves rolled in and out so close to her house that they announced every coming and going with an ocean voice that couldn't help but be acknowledged. It was so nice to see my “little” sister owning her choices (no matter what the family opinion was) and sitting pretty with her dog and her profound confidence in herself.

I made many mistakes while I was there. Once, I poured out some glasses of water that were on the front steps and she admonished me that on an island ALL sweet water (water that wasn't brackish or salty) was a treasure to be maintained and collected. I couldn't fight back. I understood immediately that we were in the center of a great ocean of beautiful, but undrinkable water. The daily rain filled the cisterns, but what was used must be used with great conservancy and care. Lesson learned.

Eventually Deb moved back to the States and took up residence in Maine, where I have always lived. She immediately obtained an apartment and got a good job. She could be well-established no matter where she was and I was always proud of her for that and a bit envious that I was so lacking in that regard. I have my talents but taking care of myself has not – until recent years – been one of them.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Deb began to have aches and pains. She could not sit comfortably. She said that muscle tightness began to spread throughout her entire body – like having her shoulders in a vise. The sly and destructive specter of Fibromyalgia had begun sinking its way into her body.

She moved around and successfully got other apartments concomitant with her employment but her symptoms got worse. She explained that this tightness in her muscles would not go away. It engaged them and would not release. It gripped her muscles with an increasing intensity to the point of being unbearable. She moved to a temporary house on Old Orchard Beach, with her island dog, Sampson. But all the while she devolved into greater and greater levels of pain, depression and feelings of powerlessness.

There was little help from the medical establishment. And her direct family didn't understand what was happening, and that ignorance offered her even less support. She was prescribed muscle relaxants, and pain management medication. But, traditional medicine was obviously not the key to unlocking this physical hell.

Eventually she moved back to Portland, to my Munjoy Hill neighborhood. I lived on Walnut Street and she on Congress Street. Frequently she would stop in and visit me. She seemed downcast about her health problems, but always hopeful. I wished that I could help, but nothing I said seemed to.

She kept her sense of humor though. I remember on one particularly cold night she showed up to hang out for a while, dressed appropriately for the weather (as only she knows how). I said, “Cold enough for you Deb?”

And she just replied back, “Nah...It's just good sleeping weather!”

I also visited her often in her Congress Street, third floor apartment, which was always nice and clean. She has always had an eye for a sparse but well-appointed living space. Her taste in furniture and her choice of surroundings showed and still shows a desire for high quality and low quantity. Simple living, while deriving the comfort needed, was obvious and second nature. STILL, she remained in pain. And it was a mysterious pain that gave no mercy and offered no alternatives. It would keep her up at night, leaving her to spend her days groggy, trying to desperately to deconstruct its purpose and how she might find relief.

Every time I saw her, I would go home and pray that she would find the answer to the hell she was being subjected to. It seemed unfair that she would have to put up with such torment, when all she wanted to do was live her life and offer positive contributions to the society.

Deb has a big heart. She feels for those who are suffering and she has always done REAL work to alleviate that suffering, as best she can. Even in her worst hours she would often be concerned for others who had a harder life than she did. To speak of her efforts today, after all of this came and went, would show that she has never turned away from reaching out. She is more able than ever to give of her experience and to feel empathy for those who suffer. But she didn't know that she would be in a better place when she lived on Congress Street.

The days passed. Then the weeks and months passed. Deb's energy ran low. And she fell to a point where sometimes she would have to crawl from one place in her apartment to the other, because the pain was so great. No position, standing of sitting offered relief. And day after day she would wake to the same reality: pain and despair.

I saw little of this, since we did not see each other as often as we wanted. I had a job at a local bank and it took most of my energy just to get through each day. Thankfully, I was able to come home each night and release any built-up tension. I would have a few beers or hang out with my roommate watching Star Trek episodes. I could release my mind from the pressures of work and the problems that were always accumulating there.

Deb was not so lucky. The more she tried to open the pressure valve, the more she was beaten down by a condition she had no way to defeat.

Then, suddenly, one cold spring afternoon, she arrived at my front door. When I walked over to open it, I almost didn't recognize her. It seemed that she'd grown 6 inches. I let her in and immediately I saw that she had a glow around her face. It was like looking at Moses after he had spoken to God. I tried to speak but she shut me up as soon as I spoke.

“I cured it,” she said. “I'm not in pain anymore!”

It took a second for me to adjust my thoughts to what she was saying. “What do you mean? What's going on?”

“I found the answer. My pain was real and the symptoms were physical, but I discovered a way to beat them with my mind.”

Understandably, perhaps, we made our way into the living room and both needed to sit down.

Deb explained to me that her pain had kept getting worse and worse. She was seeing osteopaths, physical therapists, massage therapists and an occupational therapist, without any measurable amount of relief.

Finally, the occupational therapist – a very forward-thinking and remarkable man named, Craig Williamson – explained the likely origin behind the psychosomatic connection with this kind of pain. He recommended a method of back pain relief that had proven effective to chronic pain sufferers, called Healing Back Pain, by Dr. John E. Sarno. She told me that since nothing else seemed to work, she decided to “brainwash” herself into believing that method was GOING TO WORK… And it did!

After she had described the way she had conquered a demon who had tortured her for years, we both wept. And we stood up and held each other tightly.

I had never consciously thought about what a drag my sister's pain had been on me. But in the back of my mind was her struggle...always. And other people who have sick or suffering family members know exactly what I'm talking about.

We go on about our lives, but a rusty anchor holds us down. Consciously and unconsciously I could not be whole if my sister was crawling around on the floor in pain, unable to sleep or even sit. No amount of pay from my job; no amount of weekend relaxation in my personal life could remove that constant weight on my psyche. It sounds selfish to relate, but her liberation also liberated me.

And she definitely had freed herself. It wasn't easy for me to understand. And she will always live with the risk of it falling back into those black waters of uncertainty. But NOW she has a way to fight against what threatened to destroy her health and her life. Her inspiration easily passed on to me. And I never have forgotten it. No amount of time can lessen the impact that that day on me, standing in my living room, holding a person who had triumphed over the subtlest of adversaries.

The sun brightened for me that day. The breeze grew warmer. The horizons expanded and a feeling of hope like no other I have yet experienced passed over me.

I thank Deb for once again being ahead of the curve.

I thank her for sharing her answer and thereby giving me an answer. It is one that I use now every day as I struggle with a different kind of torment. There is no way I can repay her, but she would never require that anyway.

To those out there who are suffering, learn that YOU have the key inside you. Break the lock, open the prison door and let yourself be free if you can. Your source of freedom might not be exactly like Deb's, but I have faith that there is a source for you.

[Please feel free to leave comments. Or tell us about your own story of liberation.]