Living and dying

Nicki and me in December

-->This has been a week in two divergent paths. On the one hand, I am doing exceedingly well. Other than the nap I take in the middle of the day and the metallic taste in my mouth, I feel basically normal and have felt this good since Monday. I never dreamed that the second week of chemo could feel so good. I have to believe that the love and support you send me, the supplements from my mom, and the beauty of the landscape have all woven together to give me an unexpectedly good first 11 days.

And at the same time, just as the more difficult first week was turning to the ease of the second week, my friend Nicki died, her difficult weeks mounting and then easing in one final breath. The massive support of the thousands of people around the world who love her, the best medical care, and the beauty of this country she loved were not enough to stay the crush of the cancer that took her so fast.

Nicki was one of those people I meant to hang out with. In our conversations and meals together, we each talked about a time when things would settle down in our lives (both of us so busy, both of us traveling so much for work, both of us with full family lives), and we could spend more time together. We have been on each others To Do list for years. And then time changes. Nicki was diagnosed in October, a metastasis of melanoma from her 20s, now spread to lungs and brain. Emergency brain surgery to remove the brain tumour and then radiation to keep it smaller left her shaken but still very Nicki—funny and honest and thoughtful about the whole thing. Suddenly we had time for each other and the dawning awareness that one never knows how much time one has for anything.

And then, astonishingly, I had cancer too. We were two women in the prime of our lives blinking at each other and talking about chemo (which she was never well enough to have) and prognoses. And when she heard mine—this on the day after my oncologist had terrified me into thinking there was a reasonable chance I had significantly less future than I was hoping—she said, “Ahhhh, how lucky you are to be talking about years. What I wouldn’t give for years.” Talk about reframing.

Nicki (front) and Oxfam trailwalking team

At our last coffee together, talking about wigs and green tea and death, Nicki said, “Oh, but it’s so much luckier to die this way then just suddenly in a car crash. You get to say goodbye, do things you always meant to do.” She was handing over her Oxfam responsibilities to Keith who will carry them for a time.  She was spending time with her sister whom she loved so much. She was making memory boxes for each of her three kids (the youngest in Aidan’s class): letters to be opened on their graduation days, wedding days, before their first dates. She was saying goodbye.

And so Nicki has been my companion these cancer months, my cancer always referencing off of hers. And now she is gone. Every day I wake up and feel strong and she’s still gone. Yesterday when I put on my sneakers to go for a walk in the hills with Melissa (I am walking the full walk at nearly full speed), I looked out at a dawn so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. I think of the dawns and sunsets and school dances Nicki won’t see; death brings a literally limitless number of future events we’ll miss.  As I set off into the hills—feeling so undeniably, delightedly healthy and vibrant—I carried Nicki with me. I carry her three sparkling and talented kids. I carry her husband, who loved her so much that he must be mute with grief. I carry her passion for making the world a better place. I carry her love for this beach and this sunset and this lifetime. And now, today, I’d like each of you to carry a piece of Nicki with you into whatever day you’re having. Nicki’s life was tragically short measured in years, but the volume of it still expands. The way we touch immortality is to bring love and connection and leave the world slightly better than we found it. Nicki is gone now, but the better world, the love and the connection remain. Rejoice and weep, sing and dance because she was alive…

Sunset, last night

“This whole is the earth and the sky, the ground on which we stand, and all the animals, plants, and other beings to which we are related.  We come from earth and to earth we shall return.  Life feeds on life.  We live because others die, and we will die so that others may live.  The divinity that shapes our ends is life, death, and change, understood both literally and as a metaphor for our daily lives.  We will never understand it all.  We do not choose the conditions of our lives.  Death may come at any time.  Death is never early or late.  With regard to life and death there is no ultimate justice, nor ultimate injustice, for there is no promise that life will be other than it is.  There are no hierarchies among beings on earth.  We are different from swallows who fly in spring, from the many-faceted stones on the beach, from the redwood tree in the forest.  We may have more capacity to shape our lives than other beings, but you and I will never fly with the grace of a swallow, live as long as a redwood tree, not endure the endless tossing of the sea like a stone.  Each being has its own intrinsic beauty and value.  There will be no end to change, to death, to suffering.  But life is as comic as it is tragic.  Watching the sun set, the stars come out, eating drinking, dancing, loving, and understanding are no less real than suffering, loss, and death.  Knowledge that we are but a small part of life and death and transformation is the essential religious insight.  The essential religious response is to rejoice and to weep, to sing and to dance, to tell stories and create rituals in praise of an existence far more complicated, more intricate, more enduring than we are.”                   

-Susan Christ