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Compassion
work the right muscles to pee. She looked so relieved when I first suggested it. Her giant blue eyes
brightened a bit, and that night she was still able to answer “Yes,” with a real voice, not that
expression that served as her voice a couple of years later—terrified, round as a saucer eyes
screaming to meet your glance. You could hear them on the back of your neck, and you knew if
you turned around you’d see her fighting that spastic mouth with a life of its own; horrible, twisted,
heart wrenching grimaces. But you turn around because you have to— how can you not? How
can you not feel compassion?
I can’t shake the memories. I thought I could lay them to rest after she lost her fight with her . . .
that mouth. But, before I could catch my breath, he stopped breathing. A baby boy with a soft
little mouth so perfectly beautiful I cried whenever he smiled in his sleep. Then, he was gone. She
had lingered for years and he never made it through his first.
All the memories. I would feel them in my throat clawing to get out. I was choking on them when
Death came yet again, but like the other times, compassion poured out of me—pure, honest
compassion. But, this time the death ripped our family apart, and I knew.
“I can’t find the cleaning spray.” I heard him calling out to me, and the grout I was cleaning for the
umpteenth time came back into focus. I’d asked him to dust when he was getting in my way by
offering to empty the dishwasher, “so you won’t hurt your back,” he’d said with so damn much
honest compassion. And I lost it—crazy screaming and crying. I lost it because I’m afraid of what
I know. If it doesn’t get fed with a little something good, compassion fights for its own survival, and
it starts to eat you up. I’m afraid, because I know if you let it, compassion can kill you.
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© 2006 Meg Fox
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