SILENT WARRIOR

Unseen in the background, fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing glove.

P.G. Wodehouse

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New Zealand – December 2011

 

Dear Yogi,

     I’m a firm believer in fate. In something bigger than ourselves that guides our lives to meet certain people at certain times, forging experiences to lead us to our destiny. I believe with all my heart; we were destined to meet. To become such an intricate part of each other’s being that we could perceive life no other way.

     How is it, a childless 46-year-old woman from New Zealand could meet and come to love so deeply an 11-year-old boy from a small fishing village in Bali? I can’t logically explain fate or destiny, but I can explain the journey that led me to you.

     When my life fell apart — newly separated, depressed, and post-menopausal at age 30, I had no inkling of the incredible voyage of discovery to come.

     My diagnosis of premature ovarian failure (POF) at 29, just one year earlier, was a shock, to say the least. You may wonder what the big deal is — it’s only menopause, a natural part of a woman’s bodily changes. And yes, that’s true, but not when it happens 20 years earlier than it should. It is very much a life-changer on many levels.

     Premature menopause was my catalyst. Death, growth, and transformation are the journey I took to you. Let’s begin…

 

The tourniquet tightened around my upper arm. I flinched slightly as the sting of the needle entered the crease of my left elbow where my most prominent vein lay. While my blood was being drawn, I wondered how many others would sit in this chair today, in a quest to solve the mysteries of their body. Three vials of dark ruby liquid later and, with a wad of cotton wool taped into the crook of my arm, I was back in reception to wait… wait… wait. Alone, and the odd one out amidst women in various stages of pregnancy scattered around the waiting room, I reached for an outdated magazine from the pile perched on the glass and chrome coffee table, thinking, ‘Damn you, Luke McAlister, I’m here because of you, while you’re at home playing happy families. You bastard, I curse the day you walked back into my life.’

     Snapping to attention as my name was called, I followed the nurse down a long corridor, passing closed doors to hidden rooms on either side, until we arrived at the consulting room of the specialist gynaecologist I was there to see.

     I lowered myself into the chair opposite him. The knots in my stomach tightened as my heart increased its anxious beat in my chest. I held my breath. The moment of truth had arrived.