the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

78 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
The two Douglas firs cloister the front of my house. A
branch of one brushes my head, no matter how I prune it back, as
I walk across the little stone path in the grass to my door. As I set
aside the verbal and allow myself to sense into the sensory world
around me, the crow and now the trees seem to make relationship
with me. I step across the stones to my door this dusky evening and
sweep the soft fir needles from my hair. I can think whatever I want
about this being only in my imagination, but the sensation in my
body is of receiving. It is like having the attention of a wise elder
that I haven’t asked for but nonetheless get. When my body, not my
mind, responds with “Yes, thank you!” to the fir, there is pleasure,
some new delight received. I have no mind logic for this.
One of the firs drops all of her limbs in a terrible ice storm. Many
hundreds of trees in my neighborhood have simply toppled over with the
great weight of ice. But this one does not fall on my house, which is so near
it, but rather drops all of her branches, leaving a naked pole. I am relieved,
but also touched by this. I know in my cognitive mind that the fir did not act
with intention, but still, so many trees have simply fallen, on cars, telephone
lines, houses.
In the night I set out little candles around her, make snow caves for
them against the wind. They blow out, and I light them again and again. I
wonder what the neighbors think, but I am unaccountably sad. My house
feels naked without her presence.
A week later I sit in meditation with my drum, quietly sounding. As I
painted my way though the verbal intensity of many Robert Bly conferences,
I also learned a bit of drumming. It is now my private way of bringing in the
New Year, to drum from ten to one or two, until sleep comes and falls into
my bones. At nine I call Jake in New York, and she holds the phone out her
window for me to hear the harbor boats come alive there with their midnight
voices of jubilation.
The New Year is coming. Deep into the drum, I feel into the turning of