Sacrificial L[i]mb

Foreword: late post is late. Apologies from the team of monkeys. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Truthfully, there is no more visceral a reminder as a change to one's body. You may not remember the wild night, but the butterfly tramp stamp will be with you until after ten painful laser removal treatments. Injuries and illnesses that take away mobility are a constant reminder of what you lost. I was only two when I was diagnosed with cancer; I remember almost nothing of the treatments, but there remains a surgical gash on my stomach to this day. It's always present in the back of my mind. So it is with Dana's arm in Kindred.

Of course, it's not a stretch to say that Dana's missing arm is an omnipresent reminder of the bizarre and harrowing experience she endured. Dana can't get Rufus off her mind, even in her own time. Her fifteen days in LA with Kevin after cutting her wrists are fraught with worry over coming back once more. But, when Dana returns after killing Rufus and losing her arm, the experience is apparently over. She begins to travel again, going to Maryland to check out records of what happened after she left. We don't hear anything about any more time travel. There is no Rufus to call her back. In much the same way, the tramp stamp person learns an important life lesson about the dangers of excessive drinking. The injured/ill may be much less able now, but they're certainly still alive. I may have an unsightly line across my left abdomen, but the cancer seems to be gone. The marks that remain are a constant reminder both of what we went through and that we aren't dealing with them anymore (Note: this doesn't really work for people with deteriorating conditions, like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's).

Dana losing her arm has a sense of finality to it. It feels like she sacrificed some of herself so that she could be free of the curse (of time travel). In a real sense, she sacrificed a part of herself when she killed Rufus too, both considering his status as her ancestor and their relationship. But, Rufus's ruthless love could only be ended or satiated with hurt. Imagine, for a moment, that Rufus and Dana are playing tug-of-war and between them is a portal between their worlds. For the portal to close, there are only three possibilities: Dana pulls Rufus through (unlikely), Rufus pulls Dana through (he is satiated), or somebody cuts the rope. Their connection is ended, and like any games of tug-of-war when the rope breaks (looking at you, Spirit Assembly) everybody falls down. Rufus dies, Dana loses her arm, but Rufus's love for Dana can no longer hurt her. So it goes.