Memories of the charity and caregiving service for Caritas Czech Republic.
I opened the envelope, and inside was a small note in a black frame telling me that Mgr. MVDr. Vlaďka Hlavová died. They sent me the letter because I was Vlaďka’s carer a few years ago. That was in 1997. Vlaďka was wheelchair-bound and lived in Brno at Bohuslava Martinů 9. The matron, Mrs Šujanová, assigned her to me because she anticipated a certain kinship of souls… My task was to help get Vlaďka into a wheelchair every day and take her down the hill to Masaryk University, where she studied psychology. And then bring her home again. I had to be very careful because the descent down the hill is very steep and Vlaďka was paralysed, so she couldn’t have prevented a collision if I accidentally let go of her wheelchair… Which almost happened a few times… Thanks to this mutual dependence, a relationship based on mutual trust and understanding could develop… Vlaďka was one of the greatest fighters I have ever known. She was a young, healthy woman, a few years older than me… Then it suddenly happened. Her body was paralysed, her legs immobile, her fingers twisted, and she could barely hold a pen. She found herself completely dependent on the help of others, fully aware of the unchanging nature of her situation. None of us can imagine such a thing… By God’s grace, I got to be a caregiver to many similarly affected people during my work at Caritas Brno. I bathed them, put them in the bath, soaped and showered them, dressed them, took them for walks, and so on. It was a very valuable life and spiritual experience for me, so it was me in the end who was thankful that I was allowed to serve these people. In fact, they showed mercy to me by allowing me to serve them. I felt that way then and I wish all young people could see and experience what I did… Vlaďka was a really great fighter. What befell her would have broken most of us, but she did not lose herself in self-pity, did not expect anyone’s sympathy, and tried to defend at least the remnants of her independent spirit. So she began to study psychology, trying to help herself, and so her illness paradoxically became an opportunity for intensive spiritual work. She tried to turn her fate to her advantage, hoping to use her experience to serve similarly challenged people. No wonder, therefore, that the very first time I put on her shoes she immediately and vigorously scolded me for treating her like a child. She had a good capacity for empathy, so our relationship quickly developed on a philosophical basis. Vlaďka even wanted to write a research paper on me because she thought I was a “big mystery” that she couldn’t fit into any of the psychological schemata she had been taught at school. She asked me if I had any instinct for self-preservation, because she couldn’t understand how I could live so carefree and not hoard. And I was seemingly “normal” then. What would she say today if she met a hermit in a cowl completely surrendered to the Grace of God? She also told me once that she had an inkling that her caregiver would be her guru. And indeed it was a bit like that, because I continued to look after her outside of work, and even after my journey led me away from Caritas Brno. When I found myself in Brno, I picked Vlaďka up in the car and drove her out of the city and into the countryside. I parked her in a wheelchair among the trees and gave her an expert lecture on how I managed to quit smoking tobacco, and Vlaďka listened with a smile. Another time I took her to the Jesuits' midnight mass and there I hung a medallion of the Virgin Mary on a silver chain around her neck, which Vlaďka wished to wear, although she herself was an unbeliever. But she was attracted to religious people because she felt they had “something” that other people lacked, whatever that “something” might have been. At other times, she washed and sewed my jacket in return, because I, as a man of the woods living in a log cabin in the Moravian Karst, could not deal with something like that… Then she forced some money on me out of pity for my “poverty”, but I bought a painting with it and gave it to Vlaďka. The painting is called “Fate”, and undoubtedly still decorates her room. Vlaďka secretly cried then. She also confided in me that she always looked forward to the Snippets from the Journey Home that I sent her along with my poems, and she was most moved by my time living in a Romanian cave and my expulsion by the police. Yet our inner worlds were completely different, each of us living in a completely different world. Vlaďka expressed it symbolically in her last letter as a relationship between a “lion” and a “frog”. It was one of the interpersonal encounters and pure karma yoga. And why was Vlaďka hit so hard by fate? She once shared with me that a few months before she fell ill, she had attempted a very indiscreet act. However, God did not allow her to do so, and as a backlash of the karma she had previously created, she was knocked down to a wheelchair. At least that’s how she intuitively felt and perhaps that’s why she endured her illness so bravely… I wish you peace, Vlaďka, wherever you are. I know you still exist, for death here is the gateway to life hereafter. I wish your soul, which is now travelling through the universe, peace in the name of Jesus Christ and my Master. Just now, as I write these lines, a small bird has flown to my hermitage at St. Clement’s Hillfort. It is the size of a finch, but all brown. I have never seen such a bird. And I know that bird was you.
© Swami Gyaneshwarpuri
E-mail: yoga@gyaneshwarpuri.cz
Web: www.hermityoga.cz
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SWAMI GYANESHWARPURI POUSTEVNÍK
