Story – Laura Stavoe

December 24, 2022December 24, 2022

Shades of Alone

Tending to Endings (seventy)

This year John and I are spending the holiday season pretty much the same way we have since his surgery on October 1, hunkering down away from the various viruses that are out and about this season; his immune system is still drawn down to make his body more hospitable to the donor liver. Things are going well, and he will likely be able to stop many of the medications at the end of the month, but we don’t want to take unnecessary chances. For the holidays we plan to bundle up for walks with family members or connect over zoom.

While we look forward to the day when we can gather again, it feels like a festive holiday even with just the two of us. I even put up a tree, which is not something I do much now that the kids are grown. We are still basking in the afterglow of his having made it through a life-or-death story spectacularly well. He is even gearing up to (hopefully) play tennis in January!

We know we have a wide circle of friends and family who have kept abreast of our story and journeyed through much of this with us in spirit. All of this makes us feel less alone even though we don’t see many people and when we do, we are masked and six feet away, or outside in the cold walking briskly!

Thinking of all this during the holidays has reminded me of how some of my loneliest, most grief-filled days have been in December. The holidays didn’t cause the loneliness, but they certainly accentuated it, and this is true even though I don’t think I ever once was actually alone on Christmas.

There was the loneliness of the first Christmas without my grandma Bedingfield (1983). Throughout my childhood, Christmas morning was defined by going to my grandparents’ house for cowboy coffee cake and oranges halved (each topped with a maraschino cherry) and gifts opened one at a time from youngest to oldest grandchild. How could Christmas even occur without my grandma?

There were the first holidays post-divorce (1999) when Gabe and Dylan were preschoolers and their dad and I entered the era of scheduling two Christmases in two different houses, each marked by absence and filled and with heartache and grief. That one took a long while to transform into something new, and the shadow of it still rears its head from time to time.

Grandma Jean Bedingfield readying the Christmas bacon.

The loneliest of all, though, was in 1981. I was seventeen years old and had just returned home to Illinois after a failed attempt to move to Colorado for my senior year in high school to get residency so I could attend college in Boulder. Well, that was one way to tell the story. Another was that I moved to Colorado to outrun my drinking problem and the wreckage it was causing at school, at home, with friends, and even with myself. I was hoping for a reset, a new start in a new place with new people. A chance to do everything differently. Those familiar with addiction and recovery will not be surprised to hear that in Colorado my drinking and relationship problems only got worse.

That year, I sat with my parents and my two younger sisters, around the tree decorated with ornaments from our childhood. I opened a box from my mom that held a full-length puffy winter coat that I instantly hated because it emphasized how ugly and huge I was (I wasn’t ugly or huge). I am sure after Christmas I returned it the way I returned everything my mom gave me during those years.

What I felt was not the magic of Christmas or the love of my family, but shame and fear and loneliness so deep I couldn’t see a way out. I carried secrets, a tangled mess of my own risky behavior and sexual trauma from abuse and fear that I was pregnant (I wasn’t). I carried the terrifying knowledge that I couldn’t stop drinking even when I tried, even when the stakes were very high.

And, there was a deeper secret below all that. I didn’t see how stopping would help. Alcohol had been a solution for all my unsolvable problems: for anxiety, for an eating disorder, for a pervasive sense of self-loathing that used to come and go and now just stayed. Alcohol had stopped working; it no longer took away the pain. But where would I be without it?

I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone all of this on that morning. Certainly not my parents. I think back to that time now and wonder why. I knew intellectually that I was loved, even when I couldn’t feel my parents’ love. Was it fear of being controlled? Or of hurting them? Disappointing them? Maybe all of the above, though the last rings especially true. I also sensed that in the that telling, I would acknowledge the problem was real.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to start with telling those who loved me most, and I didn’t even have to start with everything. I called an acquaintance from high school who I heard had stopped drinking through a recovery program. On Christmas, he called me back and connected me with a group of people who were not at all baffled by the fact that I kept drinking even when I didn’t want to.

While 1981 may have been my loneliest Christmas, it also ended up being my first sober day, which is to say, it was also my best. It was the beginning of finding a new way of life and a community of friends and a sense of purpose and eventually a way to repair most of those damaged relationships. It led to a long string of sober days that continues today.

It might be tempting after all these years to view that time as a teenage stage that I was bound to outgrow. But overcoming addiction is no sure thing, even for a middle-class white kid in a home filled with Christmas lights and love. Alcohol poisoning, car accidents, suicide–all of them were quite possible. Not every teen makes it through such dangerous terrain. I never take it for granted that I have.

If you have been reading Tending to Endings for any length of time, you know I am all about sharing our stories. It is not because I think talking fixes everything. It doesn’t. But for me storytelling and storylistening with those who understand—whether it’s the experience of addiction, or what it’s like to share custody of kids, or the grief of losing a grandparent or a mom—is one way I find sturdier, more expansive ground for the next step.

There is a saying that has become popular in the recovery community in recent years: the opposite of addiction is connection. That seems right to me. Healing has meant connecting in an honest and imperfect way to people both inside and outside of recovery circles including my family. It has meant connecting to my own intuition and the natural world and a mysterious and creative thrum that is more than me, and also, me.

Jane, Dylan, Gabe, and Laura (who could use warmer coat!) circa 2000

And it has led me to find new meaning and purpose in old stories. Sometimes they can be helpful to others who are going through their first post-divorce holiday season or their first sober one or the tenth where there is a particular, empty chair at the table. And even my own stories change with time. When I think back to that huge, puffy, warm coat my mom gave me, all I see now is how much she loved me!

This year while John and I hibernate in the warmth of our most recent story, I am wishing you communion with all that brings you peace and meaning this season. Whether you are worried about someone, or joyously gathering, or sitting this one out, or grieving a hard loss, or some combination of all these things, I wish you connection to community that understands and to whatever inner voice sustains you.

I wish you peace, and I send you love,

Laura

More Resources

Al-anon Family Groups at al-anon.org

Alcoholics Anonymous at aa.org

Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988lifeline.org

Resources on loss and grief: https://grief.com

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November 19, 2022December 30, 2022

Where to Begin

Artwork on the wall of Intermountain Transplant Center in Murray, Utah

Tending to Endings (sixty-nine)

It was our second day in the little house in Salt Lake, where John and I moved to be close to the transplant center while waiting for John to hopefully be called in for a liver transplant. His MELD score would go up on September 29 due to his cancer diagnosis, making it far more likely that he would get called. Still, it would likely be a month or two, we were told, maybe longer.

We arrived with a trailer filled with our work stations, clothes for all seasons, the mattress from our own comfy bed, piles of books for my seminary coursework and a few extras just-in-case. We held out hope for making it home by the holidays, but it was a slim hope.

John and I were told to stay within an hour drive of the transplant center and to answer every call from every area code. I told friends that for me, the waiting was going to be the hardest part. Yes the months of testing and procedures to get John on the list were stressful and all-consuming, but at least I knew what to do. Now we were entering this unknown stage where a call could come at any moment or not at all. All there was to do while my husband’s life was on the line was wait.

And yes, to live while we were waiting, but even that was a strange task, uprooted as were were from our community and home and not certain of how long we would be in this unfamiliar place.

On the road; the view of the Wasatch Range from the backyard of the little house.

The second evening in Utah, just as I logged off Zoom where in my History of Modern Theology course we had been discussing Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher — Is religion morality at its core, or is it, at its essence, a feeling, an experience of the Divine? — I heard John’s phone ring just outside and his hello. He had walked into the backyard of the little house, I would learn later, to snap a photo of the clouds over the mountains at sunset.

A pause and then, This is John, and there was something in his voice—hope? surprise? fear?—something that made me stand and head toward the door, thinking, Already?

When I opened the side door, John was right there about to come in. He pointed to the receiver, wide-eyed, nodding.

*John the day before transplant and the photo he took* of clouds at sunset, September 29, 2022

All that happened since that call is a story I will be writing for a long time. The very short version is that, as of October 1 at about 1:30 in the morning, John has a new-to-him liver and is cancer-free, cirrhosis-free, and very much alive.

John was released from the hospital four days after surgery, and we attended follow-up appointments at the transplant center twice weekly for the next three weeks, and then were told we could head home to Idaho. We happily hauled all those unworn winter clothes back to Boise on October 26.

John still gets blood draws each week and takes an array of medications each day, and we are back to pandemic level protocols during these first months while his immune system is knocked down to the ground floor. But, he is doing exceptionally well. At his latest appointment in Boise, Alyssa, the transplant P. A. said John was definitely an outlier based on how well he is accommodating the new (to him) liver and how fast he is healing. She also confirmed that he really does have to wait until at least January to play tennis so that his abdominal muscles fully heal.

For this event you get a new organ and a tee shirt; John ten days after transplant (Oct 11, 2022)

Transplant has profound physical, emotional, moral, and spiritual implications. I knew this going in, but now it is a more textured knowing. Ours is only one experience of many (there were ~9000 liver transplants in the U.S. last year), but it gave me a glimpse into a world I had not seen up close.

One of the reasons I haven’t come here to write all this down sooner is all that complexity. Also, I don’t even know where to begin to acknowledge the grace that showed up in seen and unseen ways, and it feels important to start there. John and I are grateful beyond measure for the help we have received from that first moment we learned that he had cancer in February, all the way to now. Grace that showed up as exceptional medical care and generous housing help and food on our porch and handwritten notes in the mail and heartfelt prayers and people caring for so many parts of our lives that we dropped to tend to this.

It will be a long time before I am able to sift through (and maybe write) about the many strands of this experience that make it whole. But there was a moment the night of the transplant that feels important to attempt to capture here in a blog I’ve been writing for almost three years now about endings.

We were in the hospital room and John was prepped for surgery, but we didn’t know yet whether he was going to get a liver that night. We knew the donor was out-of-state and was scheduled to be taken off life support at ten pm. Then there was a window of time for a number of events to occur that included waiting for a heart to stop beating and a liver to be flown back to Utah.

That night, while we waited to learn whether the surgery was truly a go, I though about the times I have been in that other room while a loved one was taken off life support. It had been twice now, with two dear friends, each too young to die, that a small group of us gathered close and did our best to love someone through the end part of her story in a strange hospital room, under heart-breaking circumstances.

And it came to me and I said to John, “No matter what happens with that liver, that other family is having a terrible night.”

“I’ve been thinking of them all day,” John said quietly. “Something that always get’s me is all the people I don’t even know working on my behalf.”

The place to begin of course is gratitude to the human who checked that box on their driver’s license application or wrote it into their advanced directive or told their spouse they wanted to be an organ donor. And then, to the circle of loved ones who did the very hard work of seeing that wish through.

That night in our room, John and I prayed, and wept, and talked a little but not much. Mostly we waited. We ate hospital jello and texted with our kids and eventually watched the latest episode of The Rings of Power on my laptop. After midnight, John was brought down to surgery.

*Back in Idaho in time for the first snow (November 4, 2022)*

I often know when I’m standing on the cusp of something big, but hardly ever how the story will go. I don’t know what will be the hardest part. Or the best. What will be sloughed off and what will be carried forward. What will be ending and what will be birthed or re-birthed or just plain borne.

But I always know, these days at least, that I am not alone.

With gratitude and love,

Laura

Feel free to comment below or send your thoughts or questions or ideas for future installments to laura@lstavoevoe.com.

If you would like to read future issues, please consider subscribing by leaving your name and email below. If you are interested in seeing my favorite end-of-life care resources, you can find them at Laura’s Library.

August 19, 2022August 24, 2022

Sharing Stories

Tending to Endings (sixty-seven)

Louise has been my friend for a very long time. When I lived in San Diego, we would meet in her beautiful backyard and talk amongst the lush greenery and blooming hibiscus. She helped me through so many of my young adult questions and anxieties about relationships and college and career and worries over nuclear war (It was the 1980s). Louise and I both stopped drinking when we were very young with the help of a recovery community, and she is in front of me in age and sobriety years. I have long considered her an important mentor.

We share a love for words—reading and writing and finding precisely the right one for the occasion—and we share quirks like a tendency to overthink and a knack for wanting to solve problems far beyond our scope of influence. No matter how serious the topic, our conversations always include laughter. I don’t mean the awkward, cover-up-feelings kind, but full-belly laughter that comes from a shift in perspective and seeing our own ego-trappings more clearly.

It was 1989, my last year as a California resident, when Louise’s husband Gordon was injured in a car accident causing him to lose mobility and sensation from the neck down. Louise’s post-accident life began in a hospital room where Gordon was not expected to survive long. As a close friend, I had the privilege of seeing parts of their story unfold.

One of the things that continually surprises me about hard stories is that from a distance they seem monochromatic—all tragedy and ending. And in some ways that is the truth—so much is ending—losses like this one are devastating and traumatic. But up close, I see that there is movement and texture and the light casts various hues over every journey.

I noticed this first in Louise. When we talked on the phone, she would start by telling me how horrible and hopeless everything was—Louise is very expressive—at times she’d even say things like she sometimes wished they had both died in that accident. And then a bit later she would come upon a weird thing that one of the nursing aides had said that was funny and that clicked with her and the laughter would return to her voice. And I felt more secure that she would make it through the day.

I was at a loss on what to offer. I was young and self-centered and often afraid. I think I mostly wanted Louise to be ok, for me. She was my spiritual rock. I had not known Gordon well before the accident, but I had had dinner at their house a time or two and got to know his intelligence and quiet sense of humor. When I visited Gordon’s hospital room his helplessness frightened me and I didn’t know what to say. But I was aware of how earth shattering this loss was for my friend. Louise and Gordon had been married 19 years. They were utterly in love. I couldn’t see a clear path through this to any kind of happiness and that made me feel guilty and worried and confused.

After months in the hospital, Gordon suffering bouts of pneumonia and hovering between life and death, the medical staff recommended a long-term care facility. The paralysis was permanent. He would remain a quadriplegic and his doctors did not expect him to live long.

Instead, Louise brought Gordon home. They bought a motorized wheelchair. Friends in our community built a ramp to the front door. A health aide came to help part time. Gordon began a slow recovery, and he and Louise began to learn how to live in these new circumstances.

I moved to Idaho, the year after that accident. Occasionally Louise would send an envelope from their address with a letter from each of them. Gordon could now type on the computer with a mouth stick. His letters were warm and intelligent and filled with details about ordinary life. I thought, He is a whole person! It was a revelation to me that this man who seemed barely conscious when I last saw him and who still could not move most of his body— was whole. I had his full voice in that letter as proof.

I eventually moved again and Louise and I fell touch for about twenty-five years. But I continued to carry Louise’s story with me.

Louise is Episcopalian and I remember once in her backyard she said, “I don’t think God makes bad things happen, but I believe God can bring good out of anything.” At the time this seemed a bit of a demotion for God—I would’ve preferred a higher power that would never ever let my spouse become a quadriplegic. But the years since, in the light of my own losses that sentence has turned to reveal a different hue. What once was: Oh please, not that God, turned to, Thank God I know you can stay sober through that. Your life can re-open even after that.

I thought of Louise often during difficult times—remembered how she continued to be open and honest through all of it. I found myself sharing Louise’s story with others at particular moments. For me it is story that keeps platitudes from being empty, story that acknowledges the texture and emotion and hard-won gains.

In 2018, I was interviewing for positions at San Diego colleges, thinking John and I might move there. During one of my stays, I tried to find Louise, which meant leaving notes with random people who sometimes saw her but did not have her contact information. About a month later, Louise sent me an email. We connected by phone and I heard her beautiful laugh and her stories.

I learned Gordon died of pneumonia in 2008, nineteen years after the accident. He was 74.

“You were his caregiver for nineteen years?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I never really saw myself as only that, so that helped.”

Louise told me she was the liturgist for her church, St. David’s, and she also also wrote (and still writes) a monthly column for their newsletter, which Gordon edited using his mouth stick. They were partners and spouses for thirty-eight years, nineteen before the accident and nineteen afterwards. She spoke of Gordon and their life together with so much love in her voice.

Louise has never been one to sugar-coat, and she continued to express how hard things had been, saying, “A lot of the time we lived suspended between crisis and chronicity!” Mostly, though, she told poignant, quirky, and happy stories about what clearly was, and continued to be, a full life. Louise was still Louise.

It was a few months after our visit that I went to help care for my mom during her decline into cancer and Alzheimer’s. My dad and I would take turns going on a walk each day while the other stayed with my mom. Often, I would call Louise as I walked the ocean path outside of my parents’ Maui home, and I never had to pretend everything was ok. Louise understood that it was not ok at all. I could spill all of my fear and utter disbelief—that my mom had to go through this painful and confusing and traumatic end—and there was so little that we could do to make anything better.

Louise’s story was different than mine. She was a caregiver for nineteen years for the love of her life. But I knew there were things she could hear that few others would know about in such detail. That we were reunited just when I needed, not only her story, but her? That was my idea of a Higher Power bringing something worthy from the rubble.

Where I was going when I started writing (what I thought would be) a short anecdote about Louise, was a reflection, maybe even an explanation, about why I share stories. Even the personal ones, and often while I am still living them and don’t yet have answers or know the way through.

John and I are now six weeks from moving into temporary housing in Salt Lake where we will await a call from the hospital telling us there is a liver that matches his blood type on the way. The prognosis is good. But we have a formidable story ahead with many unknowns. I have been sharing this journey often when I talk with friends, and occasionally here, and also on CaringBridge, a social media site designed to help families communicate during a health crisis.

Readers often mention openness as a quality of my writing, maybe saying something like, “You’re so honest!” Sometimes they are expressing gratitude and other times I am pretty sure I’m making them uncomfortable. I get that! Sometimes I make myself uncomfortable!

Even for me, the question of what to share and where is sometimes complicated, and I don’t take it lightly, especially when it involves other people’s stories.

We started the CaringBridge site originally because John—who is famous for his ability to tell stories, particularly those in which he the protagonist—got tired of telling the story of his cancer by the time he got through all five adult kids. He wants people to know and to stay in communication with family and friends, but he prefers that I write it out so they can at least have the basics before he jumps in with whatever is going on today. I am incredibly blessed to have a partner who likes my writing even when I am writing about him.

And while, yes, I tease him about his Johnny West Lore, I know we share a belief that living through hard times a bit more openly can sometimes be helpful to others, too. Not because we have answers, but sometimes it helps to see some of the terrain up close ahead of time. If so, then that helps us to feel useful during a time that can be very self-absorbing. And of course, our main reason for sharing on CaringBridge is because we want to stay connected to our community of support.

As for me, I’ve been a sharer my whole life. Over the years, I have learned to accept this quality as well as try to avoid some of its pitfalls. I question what is over-sharing—either because it’s self-centered or not relevant or too much vulnerability for the context. Or because it’s someone else’s turn! I’m sure I don’t always make the right call.

Writing is my favorite form of sharing because it slows me down enough to see the nooks and nuances of a story, the hue cast by the current light. I have a journal and loved ones like Louise and John who get my first drafts. And then sometimes, after reflection and a prayer in the form of a question–Is there anything here for someone else?–I go to the page and write as honestly as I can, usually spending an unreasonable amount trying to find exactly the right word for the occasion. Sometimes it turns into something.

I share because I enjoy it and it feels a more natural way to live for me. And to untangle confusing thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict. And as a counterweight to cultural habits that seem to isolate people unnecessarily during times of need. I share to invite others, who are so inclined, to do the same.

Louise’s story reminded me—when the details and the longevity of it rose into view—of what I have gained from the stories of others, and how they have accompanied me through some of my hardest times. It is not an exaggeration to say that the stories of others have saved me.

Louise and I talk regularly these days—I usually call while I walk on the trails behind my house and she is in her kitchen or sunny back room. John met Louise over zoom at the beginning of the pandemic and in 2021 we went to San Diego. We ate take-out Mexican in her backyard and visited next to the hibiscus blooms and the statue of St. Francis I remembered from my college years.

And then, this summer, because there is a six-month waiting period before John receives the MELD points for cancer that will move him high on the Transplant List, we were able to spend time doing things we love which included a family reunion in Mission Beach. This time, we met Louise for lunch at a restaurant on the boardwalk with windows looking out onto the Pacific. I don’t even remember what we talked about that day—we talk so often now—only that it was so very good for the three of us to be sitting around a table together.

I share to remember what matters, and what lasts. I share so that when the details of our stories overlap, even miles apart and years later, we can find each other.

Tending to Endings aims to build community and conversation around end-of-life matters. If you would like to subscribe, please leave your name an email below and it will arrive in your in-box about once a month. You can leave comments below, and you can also reach me at laura@laurastavoe.com. Thank you for being here. Laura

July 26, 2022July 26, 2022

Accompanied by Books

Tending to Endings (sixty-six)

As John and I continue on his transplant journey (which truly is still going about as good as a liver cancer odyssey can go), I find myself jotting down things I want to eventually write about here. I don’t finish as many projects during times of upheaval, but journaling about life’s complicated times helps me to understand my own thoughts and questions in the midst of it all. It also helps me to feel connected to others.

I will post more often again soon, and in the meantime, I want to share a few of the books (four nonfiction, three novels) I’ve read during the first half of this year. These include themes relevant to Tending to Endings, and they also contain a hard-to-describe quality that is key for me when my life feels upended. Some people want escape books during hard times (for that I have the Great British Baking Show!) what I want is an author who engages with the hugeness and complexity of living with intelligence and heart. During what has so far been a very strange year, these books have been conversation partners, teachers, honest friends.

Nonfiction

The Grieving Brain, By Mary-Frances O’Connor

People often ask me to recommend a book about grief. What they mean, I think, is something full of helpful advice. But the books that are generally most helpful to me are either deeper dives into the research or stories in the form of memoir or fiction. Self-help books have the tendency to make me want to look behind to curtain to see what has framed this author’s theory and experience on grief. I just don’t relax into them very often, the way some people do.

However, now I have a one I can recommend that kind of straddles all three of those categories (research, self-help, memoir)! Mary Frances O’Connor is a neuroscientist who is also a storyteller and clearly wants to be helpful. I learned much from her book that I think others will appreciate as well.

Her introduction describes the visceral experience of grief, and why it is disorienting as well as painful:

Losing our one-and-only overwhelms us, because we need our loved ones as much as we need food and water…Fortunately, the brain is good at solving problems. In fact, the brain exists for precisely this function. After decades of research, I realized that the brain devotes lots of effort to mapping where our loved ones are while they are alive, so that we can find them when we need them. And the brain often prefers habits and predictions over new information. But it struggles to learn new information that cannot be ignored, like the absence of our loved one. Grieving requires the difficult task of throwing out the map we have used to navigate our lives together with our loved one and transforming our relationship with this person who has died. Grieving, or learning to live a meaningful life without our loved one, is ultimately a type of learning. Because learning is something we do our whole lives, seeing grieving as a type of learning may make it feel more familiar and understandable and give us the patience to allow this remarkable process to unfold.

This (20 min) clip from Arizona Public Media will give you a taste of O’Connor’s voice and focus as well as some really useful information:

The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green

John and I listened to this series of essays on one of our many trips to and from Salt Lake City for medical tests and procedures this spring and both of us loved it. Green has a way of toggling between big philosophical questions and specific moments in life in ways that are insightful, poignant, and often funny. This three-minute clip will give you and idea of his style and tone.

You can also find versions of many of these essays as a podcast under the same name. I prefer the book version on audio because the essays are shaped into a more connected whole.

The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This book has been around a while, but I just finally read it. It helped me to see the landscape of the whole field of cancer and cancer research in a more three-dimensional way. It focuses on the people who have researched cancer and some of the political forces that have steered money and research in particular directions. It also gives insight into why cancer is a particularly difficult riddle to solve. The book is very readable, and while it gives no simple answers to cancer or anything else, I feel more prepared to join the conversation about treatment options because I have more understanding of the research and forces from which they arose.

This three minute video gives a brief introduction to both the book and the PBS series that followed:

Beauty, by John O’Donohue

If you have not read any John O’Donohue yet, I would recommend starting with Anam Cara which also discusses death (and many other stages of life) in ways that are insightful and true. If you already love John O’Dononue’s work, then I think you will appreciate this one. I’m including it here, because when I got to chapter on death, I immediately began writing down quotes, like this one that mirrors my own cultural experience and explains some of what prompted me to begin exploring the end-of-life field:

Where time is money no-one really wants to focus on that edge where time runs out on you. Our education system never really considers it; we have no pedagogy of death. Consequently, death is something we are left to deal with in the isolation of our own life and family. When death visits, there is no cultural webbing to lighten the blow. Death can have a clean strike because the space is clear. Against this background, it is not surprising that we are never told that one of the greatest days’ work we could ever do in the world is to help someone to die.

And in a section titled “Deathbed as Altar,” Donohue offers wisdom I wish I had available to me the first time I was with a friend during her last moments of life:

If you attend reverently and listen tenderly, you will be given the words that are needed. It is as if these words make a raft to carry the person over to the further shore. We should not allow ourselves to settle for being awkward and unsure around a deathbed. There is vital and beautiful work to be done there. When you realize that the dying person needs and depends on your words and presence, it takes the focus off your limitation and frees you to become a creative companion on that new journey. One of the most beautiful gifts you could ever give is the gift of helping someone die with dignity, graciousness and serenity.

On this homepage that honors John O’Donohue (who died in 2008), you can watch a short clip of the author speaking about connection to landscape and also find a link to a one-hour conversation from his interview with On Being‘s Krista Tippett.

Fiction

These novels are all share a similar structure of using multiple narrators to tell a story that traverses across time, geography, culture, and perspective. Loss and grief are central to each story in ways that beautiful and true and, for me, helpful.

The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich

As soon as I began reading this book, I wished I could share it with my mom I because she was the person who first recommended Erdrich’s writing to me and I knew she would get a kick out of the voice and the sense of humor. Also, it is a ghost story that takes place in an independent bookstore! The Sentence tackles tragic topics such as the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd with humility and honesty and attention to their emotional complexity and real consequences. The fact that all of this is accomplished in one book that is captivating and enjoyable to read is remarkable!

For those who want to visit with Louise Erdrich in her famous bookstore where some of this story is set, this (6 min) video is a gem!

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

I have long considered everything Anthony Doerr writes to be a poem as well a a beautiful example of whatever else it is–novel, short story, essay in Orion Magazine. This is because he writes to the essence of things and attends to language so elegantly that whatever he writes comes through as a beautiful whole. A work of art.

Still, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical as I listened to the first chapters of this weirdly titled book, wondering how in the world Anthony Doerr was going to pull this one together! There are so many intricate parts that were interesting in themselves, but that span centuries and geographies and imaginations. I began to worry that maybe this time he was trying to be a little too fancy. Should this be a few different books?

About one-third of the way through, I saw it. And, I went back to the beginning and completely enjoyed re listening, this time noticing all those breadcrumbs leading me to the heart of the story.

In this interview, in addition to learning more about the Cloud Cuckoo Land and Doerr’s process of writing it, you’ll see lots of footage of beautiful, McCall, Idaho which served as inspiration for one of the book’s settings. It also made me laugh that Doerr had a similar feeling I did part way into writing the novel (This is never going to work!)

This story is about all the things I worry about and care about and love. So far, this is my favorite book I’ve read in 2022, and probably in quite a long time. It is a novel that is also a poem. I hope you’ll read it.

The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak

In this four-minute video, Elif Shafak reads a passage from the book that is written from the point-of-view of a fig tree. There are many stories, storytellers and themes contained in this book. It is about immigrating and war crimes and family and loss of a parent and loss of a child and brutality and bullying and being between two or three different cultures. It is about ancestors and politics and young love and old love. And, it is about a fig tree with an amazing story to tell.

What books have accompanied you through hard times? I’d love to read about the stories that have befriended you! Feel free to leave titles and a bit about why they were helpful to you in the comments section. Or, you are always welcome to email me at laura@laurastavoe.com.

If you would like to receive Tending to Endings by email as soon as it publishes, please leave your name and email below. Tending to Endings aims to build community and conversation around end-of-life matters.

Thank you for being here,

Laura

May 22, 2022May 23, 2022

Retracing Steps

Tending to Endings (sixty-five)

In my last post, I wrote about learning my husband has liver cancer, and so it seems only fair to begin with a brief update on our medical journey. Many of my readers know John and while I also have a Caring Bridge site set up for those who know John or want to follow to learn more, this will give an overview which leads into this post’s topic.

John and I have spent much of the past three months going through the very complicated preparation for him to be approved for a liver transplant. It has involved four trips to Murray, Utah (five hours from Boise) dozens of medical tests and interviews, and five outpatient surgeries. I will write more about this someday when I am not so tired from having just lived it, but it is a relief and a joy to report that John has been approved for transplant by the team and our insurance. He is officially on the list.

Because cancer affects the liver differently than some of the other reasons for transplant (It’s complicated, and not all bad for us that they do it this way) there is a six-month waiting period before John will be moved up to a priority spot where he is likely to receive a liver. That will be October 1, and therefore, we plan to move (temporarily) to the Salt Lake City area to await transplant at that time. We of course don’t know how long we will be there, but from what we have learned so far, we expect it to be between two and six months, including wait time and recovery.

In the meantime, John is doing well. The tumor has been zapped by microwave ablation and is now an empty crater and moon dust (not the technical term). He still feels no symptoms from the cancer or cirrhosis. He is playing tennis at least four times a week, and working from home part time as he was before all of this. We are both feeling very grateful to have made it through the transplant prep process and for all the love and support we have received from so many.

John on one of our walks between medical tests in Murray, Utah. March 2022.

I was talking to my friends about how sometimes I function better in the intense time of a crises than after the worst of the danger has passed. Like the stories (maybe urban myths) of people who receive super-human strength when they need to lift a car to save someone’s life. For three months the priority in our life was very clear and I was very focused. Now that John’s prognosis looks good and we have some room to move about, my decision-making skills have unspooled. Do I go for a walk or finish my ethics paper or catch up on laundry? Do we go camping or to visit friends or have the kids over? I have about eight books by my nightstand, and three on audible and I am likely to switch from one to another mid paragraph. Seriously, one reason I haven’t written here in awhile is each time I start an essay I can’t decide what it is about.

And what is it that I’m doing with my life again? How did I get to be a person writing about death and going to chaplaincy school and using the term end-of-life in regular conversation? And there are so many threads to this life project that may or may not turn into vocation. Do I work on my book, my blog, or my research paper? Do I make a plan to get back to hospice volunteering first or teaching. I’m keenly aware that time and energy are limited resources and so these decisions feel weighty.

Deep down I know myself well enough to realize this is grief and it will pass. So many things are put on hold or slip away when cancer becomes the story. I am both grateful things are going well and very sad that my love has a life threatening illness. People respond to grief differently and for some reason one of my biggest symptoms is difficulty making decisions.

Yesterday, during my morning meditation, something I read made me think, rather than trying to figure where I am going, maybe I should retrace my steps.

This brought me back to a moment in my kitchen when I did know what I wanted to do next and began moving towards the end-of-life field. The full arc of the story, of course, is longer than one moment, a series of deaths of women I was close to in a few short years. The moment of decision that comes to mind, though, was when I was sitting alone at my new kitchen that John had remodeled it to bring in more light; I had just returned home after six months living the confusing, beautiful, excruciating journey of my mom’s decline, and her leaving. I felt like I had visited terrain I had been unaware even existed. I could’ve used a guide, I thought, some preparation, a few anecdotes from those more familiar with the landscape.

When I imagine where this place is, Alaska comes to mind—or what I imagine Alaska to be as I’ve never been there, either. I envision land steeped in ruggedness, days so long they are surreal, nights that never end. I envision weather that changes without notice and beauty dangerous enough to require guidance to enjoy. Or even to survive.

Only, this place that I had now visited three times was somewhere we are all destined for. For most of my life I was okay not thinking about that very much. And then I stood next to the bed as Susan and then Ellen and then my Mom crossed that rugged, strange terrain and death got my attention.

That day in the kitchen I had some vague notion of eventually providing a space for resources and workshops and community. I’m still unclear. There are practical and emotional and spiritual questions surrounding death—all of which seem to overlap on top of one another during times of crises and loss. There are a thousand small decisions and a few big ones and you have no idea which ones you’ll get until they start to glimmer into view. It seems we could help each other with that but it would require acknowledging that someday we will die.

I am from a family of passionate readers. When I was a child, my grandparents read to all the grandchildren regularly and its one of my fondest memories of time with them. I can still hear the unique cadence of each of their voices as they read. My grandma died when I was a teenager, but my Grandpa Vic lived until I was in my thirties, and we often traded book titles and talked about writing and literature over the phone or through letters. When he died of cancer, I was in the middle of reading Stegner’s Angle of Repose and I so wanted to be able to send him a copy. That is what death is, I thought. It’s not being able to read the next book no matter how good it is.

And as I write all this down I suspect that the other reason I can’t decide what to read or where to camp or what I want this post to be about is because with mortality so vividly on the horizon, I want to read and write and live all of it. And I want to do so meaningfully. And deeply. Which of course is an impossible order, but also casts this indecisiveness in new light. There are worse problems to have during a difficult time than to want to be fully alive.

This retracing of steps did not divine my future or even clarify which project I should start next. But it reminded me that this journey I am on started from a place of desire–to be helpful yes–but also because for some reason, I’m really interested in in Alaska.

More Resources

This month I listened to two audio books recommended by friends. The first is Ann Patchett’s Precious Days which is beautiful and honest and includes a number of essays about loss and mortality and love. Her writing reminds me that one of the reasons we need more stories about end-of-life is that people are different in how they experience similar events. There are plenty of places I identified with Patchett, and then others where I am reminded of how different we all are, too, and how a talented, honest writer can help me see and understand a wider emotional range. This makes me feel more empathetic, but also more connected. It is such a generous book.

And then, interestingly, the day after I finished Patchett’s essays someone else recommended What We Wish Were True: Reflections on Nurturing Life and Facing Death by Tallu Schuyler Quinn. Quinn also lived in Nashville, and Patchett’s bookstore hosted an event for her family and her book just last month. What We Wish Were True is a gorgeous love letter that Quinn wrote after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis at age 40. I have to remind myself to breathe while I’m listening; it is exquisitely beautiful and painful in turns, and it is full of wisdom. There is so much more I want to say about this book so I will likely dedicate a Tending to Endings post to it in the future.

Thank you for being here,

Laura

Tending to Endings aims to build community and conversation around end-of-life matters. If you would like to receive Tending to Endings each time I post, please leave your name and email below.