After a thirteen-hour sleep from Tuesday to Wednesday, I followed that up with a two-hour daytime nap and then another ten hours of slumber last night. Part of it is jet lag and part a head cold. Whatever the causes, I’ve been good at accepting the current whims of the body.

Lydia and were talking yesterday on the long and wide couch in their TV room. She gave up consciousness first and I could feel the pull to join her. Even though the voice implored me to stay awake, the intensity was less than the day before. My eyelids closed and so did my awareness of the Nukerke world.

A few lifetimes later, someone’s hand was on my shoulder and “Bruce” floated in. I raised my head to see a woman leaning over me. Who was this spirit? Was it my mom? Was it Jody?

It was Sabrine. She and I had become good friends when we went to Senegal together last Christmas. I smiled … on the outside and all through me. I brought myself up to vertical and then to my feet. We hugged – the gentle prolonged way.

Sabrine and I walked to the dining room table to join Lydia, Georgette and Marie-Paule. Lydia said that I looked so “cute” sleeping away on the couch. I was too dozey to argue, and anyways I’m totally willing to be a cute 70-year-old.

I sat across from Sabrine and tried to stay with her. She talked about a current challenge in her life, and so deserved to have my full attention. Alas, that was not what she received. I tried so hard to concentrate but I was fading in and out. Other conversations were wafting over the table – in French and Flemish – joining my English one. Where was I? Where was Sabrine?

Even amid the dreariness, I felt my commitment to “be with” Sabrine, to give her all of me, to bring the space between us alive. There was a perfect intention and an oh so imperfect execution. I saw this … and smiled. I know that my love reached her in her moments of anguish. Something far beyond the realities of my body was moving from me to her.

I wasn’t bleary-eyed all day. In the evening, Lydia and I watched a movie on the sleeping couch. Partway through the adventure onscreen, I got it: however I am in mind, spirit and body is just fine. Love finds its way through it all.