Quantitative Analysis
In college, I had a lot of chemistry classes. An especially dreadful one was called “Quantitative Analysis.” It was a special form of torture that focused on three things: precision, purity, and creating a brand new compound from original ingredients.
We would execute experiments of extreme precision to create new compounds that had totally different behaviors from the ingredients we started with. All this through the “magic” of chemical reactions.
A chemical reaction happens when you mix different chemicals together, then apply heat or something other “stressor” to cause them to react with each other. In that process, the atoms of each chemical come apart, then reassemble themselves into totally new compounds.
Think baking a cake. The original ingredients you measure out and put in the bowl, and stir. Say flour, sugars, baking soda, and such. But when you put that mixture in a cake pan and subject it to oven heat for a period of time, those ingredients “rearrange” to become something new, a cake.
So far, not so bad. But unlike measuring cake ingredients with spoons and measuring cups, in our lab, we had to use TINY amounts of each chemical. So we had to use a special “analytical” balance to weigh out each ingredient, and after the experiment, weigh the tiny amount of the new compound we made.
The analytical balance was so sensitive that you dare not breathe near it. It lived in its own closet, inside its own case, which sat on a thick stone slab for stability. When weighing each item, we had to weigh it three times, and those three measure HAD to match within a very narrow range, or you started over. You were at the mercy of that balance.
To me, it was torture. Sometimes the class seemed less about the actual chemical reactions we had to execute, and more about becoming proficient in weighing the tiny amounts of chemicals. If your weights were wrong at the start, so was your “cake.” And then you failed.
For example, we would usually start with maybe a gram or less of each ingredient. For perspective, 1 gram = 0.035 ounces. Not a lot. And sometimes even less. The balance could measure amounts to the TEN-THOUSANDTH of a gram, or 0.0000035 ounces. REALLY small. So lots of potential for failure.
To make matters worse, once we had our ingredients weighed, before we could put them into our “cake pan,” which was a small ceramic cup called a crucible, we had to make sure the crucible was “pure.”
A pure crucible meant it had no moisture or stray impurities in its ceramic structure that could interfere with the chemical reaction of the ingredients. To achieve a pure crucible, we had to heat it for two hours over a special lab burner that ran at 3000°F. Only then could we start the experiment. Yes, a degree of precision and purity that could drive you crazy.
But the point is this. The process of firing that crucible to white-hot for two hours meant that all stray chemical impurities or water in that vessel were burned out of it. The only thing remaining at that point was the pure vessel itself.
So, to make our chemical cake, it took precision and purity. Then, if you were lucky, you would create that brand new substance that did different things than the original ingredients…and you could then weigh it to extreme insanity.
That was Quantitative Analysis.
The “trauma crucible”
I never envisioned going through that process ever again. Until December of 2006. Watching my soulmate, Ed, almost die in front of me, I became that white-hot crucible being purified over the burner of terror and pain. Anything less than my pure heart would get burned out of me.
As his emergency continued, I also became those chemicals in the crucible, undergoing a reaction to become something totally different. I will note that some chemical reactions are reversible, under the right set of circumstances. But others are not. In our case, life changed permanently. WE changed permanently. We became “new compounds.”
While there are good things we came to treasure “eventually,” first there was “the breaking of both of us.” And we now talk about our lives in terms of “the before 2006 times,” and “the after 2006 times.” However, it would take time, struggle, and help to get to that point. And I will write about that in the next posts.
For now, I want to speak to the one permanent change I did not cover in my previous post, Resume For a Breakdown. Because in those hours I came to know that change on a VISCERAL, even psychic level:
The realization that after all the bullshit of life is burned away, there remains only one thing: And that, is love.
From my 2007-8 Journals:
I think I will let my various journal entries from 2007 and 2008 speak for me about the experience of love that I felt that day. And about the sense that life would never be the same again. Those words were written when all of this was very fresh, and captured it best:
“At first, I couldn’t put the experience down (on paper or tell it)… no words yet. Just feelings, as I wondered if I would ever regain balance….what I was left with was “softness.” The fire melted the edges of me, tempered the rigidity. Left me permanently “malleable,” like nothing would ever be set in concrete again. It was tender, so I had to be quiet, let it come out through my actions…
It is only just in the last few days that I am finally coming to grips with what all this means in my life…regaining my balance, though it is a different balance, never to be the same. It is…of having seen death, as close as you come without crossing over, life lived from here on, carrying that image (from the ER),” and that knowledge, till the day I die. It is a preview of coming attractions. Something about life from here on will never be the same. Never quite as carefree…having seen that image, and internalized it….
I literally felt my heart rip open…I felt this opening inside, a softening, a searing pain that I did not want my husband to suffer. I knew in that moment I could let him go, even as it would destroy me to lose him. I did NOT want him to suffer. For once, I felt this ability to give the ultimate gift to him, freedom to leave this pain and go on to a better place.
In those moments, I saw, felt, the Universe in all its awful, brilliant, powerful glory…when every last belief, comfort, reality, expectation, normalcy was stripped away. I felt like someone had taken a knife and sliced through my heart down to some raw, buried bone. Every last bit of flesh stripped away…down to this deeply buried, unseen place that is my core. I knew that none of that “stuff” mattered anymore. (fights, impatience, irritations)….That none of that stuff was EVER the REAL life.
REAL was right here before me, with everything stripped away and no escaping the pain. We are, at the edge of death, stripped of everything except one thing, the one thing we come into this world with, and that is LOVE. Unconditional love. And in that moment, I got a fleeting momentary glimpse of the extension cords of love extending down from God, into each and every one of us. As if there was this invisible line extending up from us to where we came from when we were born — God.
At the edge of life, there is no hiding. There is no escaping, bargaining, or pretending. There are no more artifices, no walls to hide behind, no pretenses, or fake fronts. All of that gets blown away, and even if you are a murderer, a child molester, or a saint, it is that same place showing that element that is at the core of each of us…pure unadulterated love. We may have chosen not to live that, but we came here with it….
Unconditional love. I’ve heard the term batted around many times. Understood it intellectually. But today, sitting there in that ER room, I FELT it. Knew it. Stood face to face with it. It burned out my soul and destroyed any last shreds of the old me….What I am left with at my core is the healing scars from the burns of a face-to-face meeting with a rare sight — the searing, brilliant power of just total, unconditional, powerful love. I met the Universe…it has burned out my heart forever, and it will never be the same again.
Unconditional love doesn’t require…need…or even WANT anything back. I get such tremendous joy out of giving….When I walk and do my prayers and send them out, maybe these things that don’t fit on a resume are really the stuff of my life….my purpose in the moment.
If you strip away all the layers of life until there is nothing left, there is love. The rest of life is an illusion. If you look deep enough into each person, you can see their heart.
And even as I say this I now, I know I’ll walk out of here and get in my car and curse out the first person who cuts me off. But still, like that chemistry lab mix, stressed past the breaking point of all the chemical bonds, and ceasing to be what it was before,… There will be something new that comes forward….the viewpoint is changed, the reactions change. And that is the gift you bring back to the world.
After that December, I know what’s coming. I am not “happy” about it, but still, there is a “knowing calm.” It is no longer unfamiliar territory but a nudge to prepare because sooner or later, it will return.
My life and work will come out of that December. I was always asking myself, “What is my passion?” Now I know:
December was a wake-up call, not on how to die, but on HOW TO LIVE.”
Soul Mosaic 
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