I suppose we all face the dilemma eventually. The world is full of sorrows. None of us, not really, know how to deal with loss and grief. No one ever taught how to repair something that gets shattered.
In the well-known lyrics of the Al Green song, one made popular by the Bee Gees in the early 1970’s, the question is poignantly asked, “How can you mend a broken heart, how can you stop the rain from falling down, how do you stop the sun from shining, what makes the world go round?”
When my older sister called, desperately ill, shortly after her sixty-eighth birthday, she sounded as if she stood at death’s door, her voice so frail and wounded that I wondered if she would recover. We talked then, long and with delicate boundaries, about being broken hearted, deeply hurt, and gravely disappointed.
She told me that she had been researching Broken Heart Syndrome, a real condition wherein hormones released due to intense emotional upset impact the physical heart and can even cause death. The symptoms mimic a heart attack and an EKG shows a problem but when tests are run there are no blockages in the arteries. It shows, instead, a heart squeezing disfunction pattern and an enlarged left ventricle. Symptoms include the typical shortness of breath and intense chest pain of heart attack victims, which is what my sister had been suffering for days.
Broken heart syndrome, according to the internet, went undiagnosed until Japanese researchers discovered the condition in 1990. They called it “takotsubo cardiomyopathy” after the Japanese term “tako stsubo,” which refers to a fishing pot for trapping octopus that is shaped like the bulging heart that occurs during the condition. Most people who suffer from Broken Heart Syndrome do not have a history of heart disease and it is most common in post-menopausal women.
Because we come from a family with a history of heart disease (our paternal grandmother died at age 63, one son at 16, another in his early 40’s, and our father had open-heart surgery three times before he died at 66 from esophageal and pancreatic cancer) my older sister and I discussed the gravity of her situation. She had recently had tests to check her heart and everything appeared to be fine. How then, we wondered, could she mend her broken heart?
As I pondered my sister’s issues, more of my own began to surface and I began to experience tightness in my chest, as well as radiating pain, numbness and tingling down my right arm and into my two middle fingers. I began to deepen my prayer work and meditation time, as well as see my chiropractor and massage therapist, and consult my acupuncturist. An ancient Tibetan nun advised me to “burn sage, my dear,” and then added, “Sage the source, not the pain.” Where was my brokenness coming from? How could I mend my broken heart?
My older sister’s condition improved slowly and she regained enough strength to travel to France with a friend, where they visited the Young Living Lavender Farm and holy sites attributed to Mary Magdalene. As she continued her pursuit of holiness (wholeness), I did the same, and we talked often to share ideas and give one another support. In addition, at our request, our situations were taken into the prayer cycle of a small group of monks who work on behalf of all of humanity, each, in turn, assisting with the brokenness of our beleaguered World. With time, and devotion, my sister began to heal. And I, in turn, followed suit.
During one of my own meditations, the image of the “fishing pot for tapping octopus” rose up in my mind and I saw it then shattered on the hard ground. I saw myself trying to pick up the pieces and put them back together again, a daunting task. I asked, “Can you mend a broken heart?” And to my shocked surprise, the answer was “No.” But then the guidance continued, “If you have a broken heart, throw it away. Then, grow a new heart.”
~LJ