Breathe

Tuesday 15 September 2020

Breathe, breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care
Leave but don't leave me
Look around, choose your own ground

For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

Breathe, Pink Floyd

One thing that Shani often found difficult to do was something that we all take for granted: breathing.

On average, we manage about a billion breaths during a lifetime but how many of them do you actually notice?

Shani lived for years with only 75% of the 'normal' amount of oxygen in her blood, laughing and smiling, shouting and stropping without even realising that anything was wrong. If we suddenly had only 75% oxygen saturation we'd be struggling to breathe, and probably panicking.

So, although she didn't make a big deal about it, Shani's breaths were special.

For a couple of years of her short life, we had three large oxygen machines in our living room taking in air, filtering it and pumping pure oxygen into Shani's bedroom all night every night to guard against the possibility that she might not have enough oxygen to breathe with whilst she was asleep and unable to let us know. 

Three oxygen machines is a lot, especially for a small girl, and they came with large amounts of plastic piping that threaded around our house to get from downstairs up to her bedroom.

Every so often the oxygen company BOC would come around and check that the machines were working properly and that the tubing wasn't damaged - an important service for what was essentially life-saving technology.

Towards the time of her final surgery, it was clear that Shani was finding it more difficult to breathe. She became lethargic and wouldn't be able to move around so much: we'd have to carry her upstairs to bed and she wouldn't go far outside without her wheelchair.

Something so simple and fundamental as the way we breathe just didn't work for Shani.

Of course the way that the coronavirus attacks the respiratory system, with shortness of breath being one of the hallmark symptoms, means that hundreds of thousands of people around the world have been finding breathing difficult and even painful. 

I think it has focused a lot of minds on the breath.

And by doing so, we might come to value our breath and to realise how important valuing breath can be to our lives, our well-being and even our prayers.

Taking time to think about how it feels to breathe, 

to be mindful of the effect of a breath on your body, 

aware of every little sensation, 

the way that every part of your body reacts to the breath, can lead to great benefits: 

bringing you into the present, 

providing a better connection with your own body, 

allowing you to let go of difficult thoughts and tension, 

and helping you to live with what is happening rather than it slip away day by day.

Rabbi Rafi Zarum (from London School of Jewish Studies) recently wrote a short article on how the breath is so important to this week's Rosh Hashana service (the Jewish New Year).

One of the most important rituals on Rosh Hashana is to hear the Shofar (the ram's horn), the wake-up call to action for the year ahead. It's hearing the Shofar that is the important part - hearing not seeing or doing. And hearing the Shofar essentially means hearing the sound of a breath blown and amplified by the Shofar. It's a breath that we listen to and use to remind ourselves that in the story of Rosh Hashana, the anniversary of the creation of man, mankind was created by God literally breathing life into the first, Adam. 

And as we hear the sound of the breath from the Shofar we are reminded that we can use our own breath to reconnect with the world around us and perhaps to the Divine beyond. When prayer or life makes it impossible to hear, just pause and breathe.

May you all be blessed in the book of life for a year of health and happiness.

And when the Shofar blows, I'll be thinking of you Shani xxx

Shana Tova

Father's Day

 Sunday 21 June 2020

Today was a tough Father's Day.

I had a dream about Shani last night.

I was driving a van on my way to an outdoor swim with a friend who for some reason was sitting in the back. 

I turned round to talk to him and Shani was there as well.

It's a rare occasion that I dream about Shani and rarer still that we actually chat.
She looked like she had just got over chicken pox and for some reason she thought my mate's name was Lawrence (it wasn't).

It was lovely dream - I even had a chance for a hug.

But then I woke up and the realisation flooded in that all was an illusion.

And yet, there is something comforting in knowing that it's still possible to create new memories of Shani, even if they didn't happen in reality.

She's still there somehow, in my mind and in my dreams.

Of course, any comfort from dreaming of Shani is then replaced by new loss and grief as I realise that it's just a dream-hug, rather than the real thing, this Father's Day.