Tending to Endings – Page 2

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.

February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

Whatever Just Happened

Tending to Endings (sixty-four)

As personal as some Tending to Endings posts have been, I have not aimed for it to be a series where I spool out what is going on in my life while it’s still raw. Those blogs are probably more true to the form. But when something big happens in my life, I tend to traverse huge expanses of thoughts, feelings, insights in ways that are disjointed. It’s hard to know where I’m going to land and what is just anxiety and grasping and noise. So generally, I begin in my journal or with close friends who know to not put too much stock in anything as I verbally wander and epiphanize through the early stages of whatever just happened. Instead I tend to see how events take shape and then write something more akin to a personal essay that I hope might also be useful to others. There was a time when I wanted to be a columnist—Mike Royko and Erma Bombeck were my favorites when I was a kid—and Tending to Endings has let me play at that a bit.

But, two weeks ago, while I was in Maui visiting my dad, John called from Idaho to let me know the MRI results showed the mass in his liver is cancer. I was already staring at my phone because he had promised to call as soon as he came out of the appointment. We knew it wouldn’t be great news since the doctor invited him into the office for the results. I expected more tests, or the cirrhosis is worse, or we need to do a biopsy. But, I learned that afternoon that liver cancer can be diagnosed from an MRI. John’s voice over the phone was relaxed. He was as surprised as I was. All this had started with a wellness exam and none of it seemed real.

As I’ve contemplated what or whether to write this month, I’ve realized that what is going on is a little too relevant for me to ignore. I’ve been writing Tending to Endings for just over two years now, and though the readership is still modest (150 subscribers), you are steady! Some of you have been friends for years or family forever, and and others have been referred here because you are going through a time of loss. Or maybe you found me from a Facebook share, which probably means you are friends with my sister Amy. No matter how you found this blog, I’m glad you are here, and anytime someone takes the time to read something I have written, I am touched and appreciative. It felt important to write this post, even though I don’t yet know the shape of the story or how it might be useful.

Like many medical stories, this one already contains reasons to be hopeful as well as complications. On the good side, John is very healthy and active and doesn’t drink (hasn’t since 1988); it looks like the cancer began in the liver and has not spread; he is currently symptom free and playing tennis daily. On the complicated side, John has prior liver disease advanced enough that the tumor cannot be surgically removed without risking liver failure.

On Thursday, the surgeon referred us to a liver transplant center in Salt Lake, and we are currently researching options and awaiting that appointment. Due to the cancer diagnosis, the surgeon believes John will be placed high on the list. The upside of the transplant is that it offers the best chance of living a cancer-free life and John will have a new liver. On the downside—my husband needs a liver transplant!

I know many of you are at some point on your own hard journey or have just gotten through one or know someone who is going through something painful and full of loss. I don’t have a lot of insight to share yet, though, being me, I’m collecting observations that may someday turn into some post about surviving the first couple weeks after getting really horrible news.

For now, I’m remembering how overwhelming medical news can be. There is the worry over the person you love and then the way the axis of your life suddenly changes to a whole new plot line that includes a mountain logistics to navigate all with a hurting heart and brain that is not operating at full capacity. I didn’t even know how to manage getting home from Hawaii quickly much less helping my husband through a liver transplant. But I did make it home just in time for the first oncology appointment, which is a story of kindness and grace that I will save for another day.

John, by the way, is doing much better with all this than I am. The hardest thing for him is not being able to go out in the garage with his tools to fix his liver himself as is his usual way. But, the other day he came in from tennis and told me that he was in the car listening to music and a wave of pure joy for being alive came over him. “That happens to me a lot,” he said, “but I didn’t know it would still happen after news like this.”

That still happens for both of us.

We are at the beginning of a journey that we would not choose, but we are both seasoned adventurers. I will probably be writing about it here though I don’t know in what form or when. We have set up a Caring Bridge site to let our friends and family know more details as we learn them. You are welcome to visit there. Thank you for being part of our community. We know know we have so much love holding us.

John and Laura, Leslie’s Gulch, ID January 2021

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January 7, 2022January 7, 2022

Borrowed Wisdom

Letting go is a common theme at the end of a year. At least three friends have mentioned burning bowl ceremonies recently which offer a ritual to consider worries or habits or relationships we intend to release. And objects, too. I go through closets and cabinets, and John is cleaning out the garage each afternoon—finding things to give away to make more room.

I am reminded by my sweatshirt, which is worn and faded, but still my favorite to slip into mornings when the house is cold, that there is a keep pile, too, even from these pandemic years. I want to carry forward this renewed admiration for simplicity: The way make-do yoga class on the lawn with friends can turn into my favorite way to do yoga. Or the joy I get from seeing how the library in our backyard along the trail evokes smiles.

This year, along with clothes and books to re-home or reread, I have a lot of index cards with words authored by others scattered around my office, used as bookmarks, or piled into stationary boxes where I someday intend to do something with them. Sifting through them now is slow going, as I remember all I’ve read, all I want to someday write.

And I know exactly where this tendency comes from! My mom was a collector of words. Before I could even read, we memorized favorite poems by Robert Louis Stevenson and recited Madeline like a duet. When I was school age and the new Reader’s Digest arrived, Mom and I would read our favorite “Quotable Quotes,” aloud to each other, me sitting on the shag carpeted stairs, my mom on the couch staring out at the trees. It was there I was introduced to Carl Sandburg and T. S. Eliot and Margaret Mead!

Later, Mom gathered quotes into books she called Borrowed Wisdom that my dad printed and bound using his recycled calendar company materials. She would pass them along to us at Christmas. Mom wrote her own poems, too, but I think finding quotes that illuminated the truth she carried inside her gave her hope and a sense of connection.

In past years, I’ve included a list of books I’ve read and loved from the prior year in a post. With school, that list is skewed and sprawling in ways that makes it more difficult for me to know what to include. Instead I’ve decided to share some of words that prompted me to grab a pen and index card mid-page, a curated collection from the keep pile.

Borrowed Wisdom 2021

Ancestors

The world today is just as full of sacred presence as it was centuries ago. With the hardening of our minds we are no longer able to feel and sense the ever-present sacred the way our ancestors did. We desperately need to retrieve our capacity for reverence…we let our days fall away like empty shells and we miss all the treasure.
John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Yearning to Belong (76-77)

Walking I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.
Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (159)

Our stories from the oldest days tell about the time when all beings shared a common language–thrushes, trees, mosses, and humans. But that language has been long forgotten. So we learn each other’s stories by looking, by watching each other’s way of living. I want to tell the mosses’ story, since their voices are little heard and we have much to learn from them. They have messages of consequence that need to be heard, the perspectives of species other than our own. The scientist within me wants to know about the life of mosses and science offers one powerful way to tell their story. But it’s not enough. The story is also about relationship.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (vii)

I wash her neck and lift the blankets to move down her heart. / I thank her body for carrying us through the tough story.
Joy Harjo, “Washing My Mother’s Body,” An American Sunrise (32)

Toward the end of her brilliant career, Kübler-Ross was convinced that there really is no death, only a leaving of the body to take another form. Like those who believe in an afterlife, resurrection, or reincarnation, death becomes, then, not an end, but a new beginning. These insights, however enlightening, do not change the fact that in death we surrender our embodied life on earth. Love is the only force that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave. That is why knowing how to love each other is also a way of knowing how to die.
bell hooks, All About Love (202)

Action

We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality, and arrive where reality is.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (91)

We cannot name or be named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles–we cannot think; we do not recognize the danger; injustice strikes us as no more than “the way things are.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (30-31)

If we really knew how unhappy it was making the whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure–how that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our basic intelligence–then we would practice meditation as if our hair was on fire.
Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (104)

So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the the child. Even if the mother does’t understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her act of taking the child into her arms with tenderness can already bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully there is relief already.
Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering (27)

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, / Then love becomes our legacy, / And change our children’s birthright.
Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb (25)

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth…In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Viktor Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning (132)

What happens when they realize that the Americans don’t actually care about this? “Well, do you think they don’t?” If they did, I’m sure I wouldn’t be the one making this clear to the Salvadorans. “You’re right. That is an excellent observation, but don’t worry. No one is going to admit having listened to a poet. That is your protection. Now try to get some sleep.“
Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (185)

Spirit

The poem Death finally conjures up the moment (while I was standing one night on the beautiful bridge in Toledo) a shooting star which fell through outer space in a taut and slow curve passed at the same time (how shall I put this?) through inner space: The dividing contour of the body was no longer there.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation (24)

All too many people attempt to face the tensions of life with inadequate spiritual resources. When vacationing in Mexico, Mrs. King and I wished to go deep-sea fishing. For reasons of economy, we rented an old and poorly equipped boat. We gave this little thought until, ten miles from shore, the clouds lowered and howling winds blew. Then we became paralyzed with fear, for we knew our boat was deficient. Multitudes of people are in a similar situation. Heavy winds and weak boats explain their fear.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Antidotes to Fear,” Strength to Love (127)

As I grow older, I discover more and more that the greatest gift I have to offer is my own joy of living, my own inner peace, my own silence and solitude, my sense of well-being.
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World (113)

God is both intimate and ultimate.
Richard Rohr, Just This (64)

Know that your vision will follow you back and must be incorporated into your life and the lives of those you know. The best way to communicate your experience to others, says [Steven] Foster, is not to talk about it but to live it. “Vision if it is anything, is your life story in action.”
Greg Levoy, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (162)

And we might, in our lives, have many thresholds, many houses to walk out of from and view the stars, or to turn and go back to for warmth and company. But the real one—the actual house not of beams and nails but of existence itself—is all of earth, with no door, no address separate from ocean and stars, or from pleasure or wretchedness either, or hope, or weakness, or greed.
Mary Oliver, Long Life (24)

This is why we love the earth, honor the human body, and bless the stars. Religion is not just a matter of things unseen. For us the Holy is not hidden but shows its face in the blush of the world’s exuberance.
William F. Shultz, quoted by Forrest Church in Chosen Faith (193)

The final verse is always the trees.
Joy Harjo, “Exile of Memory” An American Sunrise, (13)

More Resources

When People Change Their Minds, a recent NYT guest essay by a palliative care expert, mirrors what I have often heard from those who work with the dying and facilitators of Death Cafés: the most important end-of-life planning is to select a health agent who knows you well and understands what is important to you. I might add, to have conversations about end-of-life matters early and often with those you love, so it isn’t so hard to talk about when someone becomes sick or when circumstances and perspectives change.

My Art, Religion, and Contemporary Culture course included an incredible materials including films about extraordinary artists that broadened my perspective considerably. I’ve listed three below that especially spoke to me, but there are many others that I included on my Library II page. With thanks to my UTS Art Instructor, Dr. Jennifer Awes-Freeman for introducing me to these and so much more.

Kusama Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama (YouTube, Also available as a rental on Prime).

Jeong Kwan, Chef’s Table (Also available on Netflix). Jeong Kwan is a monk in Korea who cooks for the temple community. So much beauty.

Muralist Judy Baca and Social Public Art Resource Center (short YouTube clip) This is a segment from a PBS episode of Neighbors. What Baca says in the first two minutes is priceless (and the rest, too).

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