A Serious Pilgrimage

I have friends who are now recovering from serious illnesses. So I was taken by a line by Oliver Sachs in his book A Leg to Stand On where he describes his own recovery from a serious leg injury: “Uneventful recovery.” What damned utter nonsense! Recovery was a “pilgrimage,” a journey, in which one moved, if one moved, stage by stage, or by stations. Every stage, every station, was a completely new advent, requiring a new start, a new birth or beginning. One had to begin, to be born, again and again. Recovery was an exercise in nothing short of birth, for as mortal man grows sick, and dies by stages, so natal man grows well, and is quickened, by stages—radical stages, existence-stages, absolute and new: unexpected, unexpectable, incalculable and surprising. Recovery uneventful? It consists of events. (O.S.)