Letting Go

With the intensity of care-giving, and now the exhaustion of grieving and life transition - blogging has fallen away.  I’m fine with that.

With all its beauty and challenges, the work of caring for Mom in the last year was at times isolating.  In some of the most difficult moments, a source of strength was remembering that so many people were thinking of me, praying for me, walking with me in their own ways.  It shouldn’t be surprising that remembering our interconnectedness can bring peace and strength, that knowing we are not alone can transform a moment.  But it continued to be a delightful surprise as this simple act filled me with momentary renewal. Thank you for being with me.

Now is a time of returning to aspects of my life that had been set aside.  Returning to familiar people, places and tasks with new eyes.  It’s a time of sifting through belongings and feelings, discerning what to keep and what to let go of.

As I let go of this blog for now, I will close with this poem that I wrote for Mom’s last birthday, which also served as the closing words of her eulogy.

Artistic Design ~ Jordan Bent

Allow

There is a great release when I stop trying so hard and remember to simply allow life to be what it is.  In other parts of my life it’s easy to convince myself that I’m running the show.  Look at me, making things happen!  Being with dying quickly deflates that illusion.  And still, it’s an ongoing process of noticing myself trying too hard, and gradually remembering to allow.  Life is so damn daily.

Mom was diagnosed last winter.  I moved in with her in the spring.  We enjoyed an expansive, quality summer.  We geared down in the fall, preparing for goodbye.  Now we are in winter again.  After counting the expected months on our fingers, we’ve ended up living through a full cycle of the seasons together.

A year ago I was celebrating the end of semester and getting ready for the home stretch of my degree.  Now I’m celebrating the end of chemo and getting ready for the home stretch of Mom’s life.  There is nothing to do but allow.  Mark Nepo nails it in these final words of his poem, Understory...

When jarred by life, we might

unravel the story we tell ourselves

and discover the story we are in,

the one that keeps telling us.

October

The pictures on our kitchen calendar are family photos (thanks to the creativity of my sister-in-law, Tonya), dominated heavily by my three year-old nephew, Davis.  Today we turned the page to see this.  Mom and I smiled.  Turning the page on the calendar is a big deal.  None of us expected Mom to live this long, or that her quality of life would remain so high.

I don’t post here often because my mind tells me that I need to say something profound. Silly mind.  Yet despite the significant circumstances, life often feels very day-in and day-out.

But it is the day-to-day reality that has brought us to October.  And to the end of round seven of chemo.  And while many hours of the day feel tedious, there are profound moments.  Knowing there is a good possibility that Mom will die in her sleep, saying goodnight is a big deal.  And saying good morning.

When Mom is gone and chemo is hopefully a distant memory, I hope I can remember the value of day-in and day-out, and that turning the page on the calendar is a big deal.  At my best, I stop expecting life to be profound, and I allow it to be.

Zucchini Wisdom

This year is the first time I’ve planted zucchini and harvesting many large veggies from one seed has been hugely rewarding.  It’s fun to look at the big, green vegetable on my counter and know that I am seeing the combined result of the seed I planted in June, the soil and compost, the sun and rain, the mind-blowing process of photosynthesis that I don’t pretend to understand - all of this is present in this zucchini, which will eventually be in my body.

It’s a helpful reminder that when I look at a person, I am also seeing their parents, friends, mentors, achievements, wounds, gifts, short-comings, choices, and on and on.  It’s easy to believe that my self-identity is all about me, but we are each made up of all the people and experiences of our lives.

The knowledge that people live on in the lives of their loved ones is a thin bandage of comfort for the pain of grief, but it is also a deep and rich truth.  The zucchini will become soup that I will eat, and the nutrients will help feed new cells in my body.  It will literally become a part of me.  I’m not sure it will ease the pain of losing Mom, but trusting that she is a part of me and has nourished so many lives helps me trust that hers has been a life well lived.

Yes, I’ve been reading Buddhist wisdom - again from Joan Halifax’s Being With Dying.  In other updates, Mom’s body and breathing weaken in gradual increments.  Her spirits remain positive and quality of life is still good, with no idea how much time we have left.  I’m finishing round six of chemo, still with minimal side-effects and two more rounds to go.  There have been ups and downs in the last month - the downs including sporadic doses of exhaustion, loneliness, mental fog and emotional soup.  I just came back from days in Vancouver which was a smorgasbord of love, so I’m back to delighting in the joy and privilege of this time.

And so far the zucchini have been transformed into soup, lasagna, and brownies.  All from one seed!

Chemo Brain

I’m half-way through chemo.  Four out of eight rounds are behind me, almost three months to go.  A recent PET scan came back all clear.  I’ve been accepted into a Callanish retreat for cancer patients in November - an exciting carrot at the end of the stick.

When I imagined this time, I thought the struggles would be quite dramatic - battling cancer, enduring chemotherapy, grieving Mom’s decline while caring for her needs.  Instead, the challenge lately has been notably non-dramatic.  Most days I feel tired, draggy, mentally fuzzy and somewhat zoned-out.  It seems very minor compared to the menu of side-effects I could be experiencing, and yet it’s surprisingly aggravating.

I’m used to feeling an ebb and flow to life - waves of energy, exhaustion, wonder, gratitude, sadness, anticipation.  I usually get excited about ideas and am swept away pondering the possibilities of what they could mean and how they could make a difference.  The beauty of the world generally knocks me off my feet at least once a day.  And the harshness of the world.  Now this monochromatic haze makes me long for the peaks and valleys of daily life.

Like any sickness or limitation, this renews a great appreciation for the simplicity of normal.  Feeling healthy and alert is a gift that of course we take for granted, but what a gift it is.

May your days be blessed with ups and downs, exhaustion and wakefulness.

Help Me Believe

While I was in surgery a few friends held vigil for me in a family lounge down the hall from my hospital room.  They visited and told stories, prayed, made music and art.  When I returned to my room after surgery, this colourful sign was stuck to the wall by my bed with a band-aid.

The words stayed beside me in the hospital and in the weeks of recovery at home.  They made sense to me and they helped me to stay open to the overwhelming generosity of love I was receiving from people every day.

When I started this blog I knew the title would come from this quote.  But I became self-conscious.  I worried that you might think I was being self-absorbed.  So I changed “the truth about myself” to “the truth about life.”  It’s still meaningful, but felt safer.

Recently I realized the dis-service of this safety.  When we don’t acknowledge and celebrate our own beauty, we seek it outside of ourselves.  Beauty becomes something we consume, trying to fill ourselves up.  But it’s a false emptiness.  When we’re bold enough to embrace the truth of who we are, in all its beauty, we find ourselves deeply connected to the beauty all around us.  The idea of being made in a divine image starts to make sense.

When I remember this, I’m open to receiving the abundance that is offered to me.  Friends who hold vigil or send tea in the mail.  Patterns that swirl in the water when my nephew throws sand into the stream as we take a break from riding bikes.  Tasting freshly picked raspberries with my breakfast, a flavour that I hope will never seem ordinary.

And beyond the obvious beauty of birds and flowers and food and friends, there is unexpected beauty.  My surgery scars remind me every day about the amazing resilience of human bodies.  Mom reminds me about the resilience of the human spirit as she dances between choking on a sip of water and expressing gratitude for life, from  struggling to express her extraverted self with a weakening voice to poking fun at my cooking.  Suffering and beauty are the butter and salt on the popcorn of life.  It just wouldn’t taste right without both of them.

And then there’s the beauty of friends who take time to read your words and listen to you wax eloquent about beauty.  Yup, you’re pretty darn beautiful.

I Am Special...and Inspirational

I’ve always enjoyed attention and feeling special.  Is it weird that one of the perks of cancer treatment is receiving lots of special attention?  Even getting my blood work done at the lab I feel special saying, “I have a standing order.”  That’s right, I’m a regular here.

With a lower dosage, I had no side effects in round two of chemo.  Six more rounds to go.  Both my prognosis and prescription allow me the specialness factor of being a cancer patient while mostly feeling physically well.  Meeting other patients who look sick, feel exhausted and have lost pleasure in food, I imagine that feeling special is not so special.

Friends tell me I’m an inspiration.  They’re surprised and delighted to see me looking so well, which makes me feel like a proud peacock.  We all like to see someone ‘winning’ and it’s easy to let cancer fall into the realm of win-lose, especially when it makes you feel like a winner.  But living and dying is not a win-lose reality, it’s just our human reality.

Though I think mostly people are responding to my ‘inspirational’ acceptance of my life circumstances.  On one hand acceptance is a choice that I am indeed choosing, and on the other hand it feels like a gift I am receiving.  I’m not putting effort into accepting my reality, it’s just happening.  Mom is accepting that she is dying.  Most days I am too.  This gift of acceptance allows our home and our time to carry a quality of non-anxious openness to whatever each day holds.

Of course, this makes it sound like it’s all idyllic.  Last weekend at a wedding I had an emotional meltdown, grieving that Mom will not be at my wedding and that all family gatherings will feel incomplete when she is gone.  The truth that she will always be present with us was not comforting in that moment.  I want her here in body.

This path is not easy, but acceptance and gratitude are what continually rise to the surface.  Life is winning.  Life is special and inspirational.

Me, Kirk, Davis & Mom at Point Roberts in April.