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One of the dearest delights of my Celebrancy practice: the gift of hand-written notes in my mail box. This week, while my friend Marcy Westerling lay in a California hospital recovering from her latest foray to the far frontiers of medical research, I received a package in the mail containing two signed copies of a book that features Marcy's Yes Magazine essay on Livingly Dying. At Marcy's request I too submitted an essay for the anthology, I Am With You, Love Letters to Cancer Patients. Reading my piece now, on advocating for a friend, I think it contains plenty of good advice which I hope will empower others to step up. But it also reminds me of how much doing helps me cope with the anxiety, confusion, and grief of having a dear friend receive her death sentence. Being with that reality, being a friend first and foremost, is often much harder than executing a list of practical tasks. As a coda to the essay I was asked for a short list of "what gets me through the angst of cancer." I wrote: 1. Being active: doing what I can to ease the suffering of those living with cancer. 2. Remembering well: honoring the memory and legacy of those who’ve died, keeping them alive in the world through valuing all that their life and death nourished. 3. Getting ready: learning everything I can about living with and dying of cancer, and how to grieve the sickness and death of loved ones, to become more skillful at living with a heart broken open by it all. Becoming more skillful at living with a heart broken open by it all - that is a work in progress. No Credentials Required: Advocating for a Friend with Cancer by Holly Pruett Ever since funeral directors offered to "undertake" whatever families couldn't handle, care for our beloved dying and dead has become the purview of professionals. These days, specialists function more like “partialists”. For the newly diagnosed and those living with a terminal illness, who keeps track of the big picture? Who helps navigate the whirling maze of doctors, pharmacies, clinical trials, treatment appointments, complementary care, and insurance coverage, not to mention basic household management? It’s easy to feel intimidated by the complexities of the medical-industrial complex; easy to feel defeated by a terminal or life-threatening diagnosis compounded by a seemingly endless array of needs. That’s why we, friends of those living with dying, need to step up. In 2010 my close friend Marcy Westerling was diagnosed, out of the blue, with Stage IV ovarian cancer. I’ve been privileged to be by her side from the first bleak night after she received her diagnosis, alone in her car on the side of the highway. Her suffering sadness me deeply; the chance to “do something” to ease the way provides some measure of solace. Of the various forms of support I’ve helped put in place (detailed below), what Marcy has valued the most is direct advocacy with the system to cut through its red-tape and endless denials. In her words, she’d like to see more of us “stubbornly pushing and pushing and meeting all the insipid and occasionally useful demands of the system” to get our loved ones into the best trials and providers. Taking on the calls and faxes and tracking, telling the back-story again and again, asking about things that seem off the table – what Marcy describes as “the things that would have overwhelmed me on my own and overwhelm most peer patients I know as they settle for what is offered them versus what might benefit them more.” Here are some of the practices that have helped us, Marcy’s close circle of friends, advocate on her behalf and walk with her into Cancer World. 1. Assemble a Health Profile – Chances are, a second opinion is in order, along with applications for clinical trials, and access to any number of other providers. As a friend, you can help by pulling all of the information together into a single document. This Health Profile should include the person’s date of birth, spouse, contact information, and insurance policy numbers; their diagnosis (using specific clinical language); details of all treatment to date; results of all tests; and contact information for all members of their health care team. Once assembled, this document should be kept up to date and furnished to any new or prospective members of the health care team. 2. Wrangle Red Tape – The search for optimal treatment may include switching among providers. This will necessitate record transfers, determination of eligibility, scheduling of appointments. With a signed release of information designating you as friend/medical advocate, you can make these calls and order these record transfers on their behalf. 3. Set Up a Communications System – Receiving the well-wishes of a large community of concerned people can be as burdensome as it is comforting for those who are seriously ill. It’s hard enough to keep one’s own head above water. Taking care of others’ need to know what’s going on, to process their own grief about the diagnosis, is often more than the ill person can handle. At the same time, if the person’s community is to support them through sickness and even dying, that same community needs care and feeding. As a friend, you can attend to the needs of the broader community by setting up a communications platform like Caring Bridge. This enables updates to reach a broad number of people, and for those folks to post their love and prayers without expectation of a response. 4. Coordinate Support – Your loved one may need meals cooked, errands done, rides provided. An on-line tool like Lotsa Helping Hands can streamline messages about what the needs are, providing automated reminders for those who sign up to take care of specific tasks. 5. Research Options – Are there clinical trials that should be considered? Other providers who might be a better fit? Services that could ease some of the burdens related to treatment, like housing and transportation? As a friend, you can take on these research tasks, using the internet and the phone to track down answers. 6. Provide Eyes & Ears – No one should go to a doctor’s appointment alone. The company of a spouse or family member may be comforting, but that person may be too caught up in their own secondary trauma to listen well or take good notes. As a friend, you can help by discussing in advance the goals for the appointment, bringing a written copy of all questions, writing down every word of what’s said in the appointment (alternately, asking the doctor’s permission to record it with a smartphone), paraphrasing back all key points to confirm understanding, and then writing up a summary of the appointment afterwards. Doctors, social workers, counselors, nutritionists, acupuncturists, chaplains – all of these professionals with impressive initials after their names have vital roles to play. Equally important, though, is the role of medical companion – the friend who shows up and helps to carry some small portion of the load. The skills required are no more than basic organization, ability to follow-through, and respect for the wishes of the one who is ill. What you don’t know how to do, such as using some of the web-based research or communication tools, you can recruit someone who does. The most durable support is provided by a team, with one or two people acting as team leaders to coordinate the division of labor. The tasks described here can be time-consuming, but the rewards are invaluable. From helpless to helpful; from despairing to engaged; from isolated to connected – acting on support of your sick or dying friend is time you will never regret spending. Walking by Marcy’s side since her diagnosis has taught me so much about life, death, friendship, and myself. For those who are ill, may you have friends to companion your every step. * * * Contact Nancy Novack at Nancy@NancysList.org to obtain copies of I Am With You: Love Letters to Cancer Patients to share in your community. Read another essay I wrote on a different dimension of Cancer World, My Friend Marcy Has Cancer. I Don't (Yet). “What are your fears?” and “What are your hopes?” These are among the questions that Being Mortal author Atul Gawande encourages doctors to ask to guide medical decision-making. They also happen to be the first two questions in My Gift of Grace – more specifically, your fears and hopes about playing this conversation game designed to promote living well and dying well. Gilah Tennenbaum is no stranger to the big questions of life and death. Ten years ago, her holiday gift to family and friends was a gift-wrapped set of living will documents and other end-of-life paperwork. Even so, she worried a bit when she turned her most recent birthday party into a chance to play My Gift of Grace. Her invitation explained, “Winner of the California HealthCare Foundation’s End-of-Life Challenge, this game helps families, friends, and co-workers get unstuck and have important conversations. I don't see playing this game as a negative, sad or depressing thing to do. I am not planning to die soon. I see playing the game as life affirming and important sharing for me to do with friends. I have been wanting to play the game for some time, and this seems like a great opportunity.” Reflecting on and then sharing responses to questions like “What do you think happens to you after you leave this life?” or “What habit makes your life worth living?” – would her guests be too uncomfortable? The seven friends who attended admitted that, yes, they were afraid of being vulnerable, of being judged. “But none of that happened,” Gilah reports. “It was wonderful. People loved it.” One friend asked when they could play again. Another has since completed the paperwork from that decade-old holiday gift. And for the friends attending who are living with serious illness, Gilah says, “It helped me better understand them and what they need.” I had heard about My Gift of Grace from Gilah when she gifted me a game of my very own on the Death Café’s first road trip, to the White Eagle Memorial Preserve. We made a coffee date for her to tell me more about the cool new conversation game created by her nephew, Jethro, and his partners at Action Mill, an east coast design shop that creates tools to improve communication and decision-making about end-of-life care. I found much to relate to in the partners' background in community organizing and nonviolent action. I was excited by their approach. But I remained a bit stuck, myself, when it came to playing the game. I kept it on my desk, took it with me over Thanksgiving, tried to imagine inviting friends to play. The timing never seemed right – but the truth is, after supporting conversation about death among hundreds of strangers, I still feel awkward about raising the topic with my closest friends. I got to try a hybrid recently, when I played the game with Jethro and Nick, another Action Mill partner, along with several other community colleagues who were eager to pilot this new tool. Here we were in a professional setting, a bit more exposed than in the anonymity of a Death Café, but still at a remove from the ongoing intimacy of a family system. We began by revealing our fears and hopes about playing the game, and then rolled right into writing our own epitaphs – five words, max. Our last question, chosen randomly: “If you were diagnosed with a terminal disease, who would you turn to for advice?” Big questions, met with sincerity, vulnerability, laughter, tears. “What’s happening here is connection,” one person observed part-way through our session. And reflection. “Play the game over and over,” Action Mill encourages. “Your answers will evolve as you get better talking about life, death, and dying.” (They suggest recording your answers on post-its kept with the card set, annotated with the date of each round of play). The My Gift of Grace website has tips for inviting others to play, and a Conversation to Action Toolkit to turn your answers into “a set of documents, plans, and rituals.” And the Action Mill’s sister site Death & Design features a number of other innovations that support the conversation. As for the name? Nick told Modern Loss: “Gift comes from Martha Keochareon, a nurse from South Hadley, Mass. who learned she had pancreatic cancer. She called her old nursing school and suggested they send over students who wanted to learn about hospice. This flipped our thinking on what people at the end of their lives need. Turns out, it’s the same thing the rest of us need: to feel useful and needed. To give. “Grace has to do with how people express what they want at the end of their lives: dignity, security, love. To us it’s about how we aspire to live our lives: connected to the people around us.” Sometime in the 1970s Ray Losey and his father Rex were driving through the Columbia River Gorge. Rex had Ray turn down the Rolling Stones blasting on the radio to report that he'd seen a rainbow. The Rainbow Warrior, that is, Greenpeace's activist vessel, visiting to expose radioactivity in the river. A master carver teaching the craft to his son, Rex decided that the two of them would carve a totem pole and donate it to Greenpeace. This is just part of the story Ray told earlier this month when he joined another esteemed family of Northwest totem pole carvers, the Lelooskas, for a rededication ceremony I officiated at the Oregon Zoo. The Survival Totem Pole Ray and his father gifted to Greenpeace in 1977, it turns out, had suffered a similar fate to the animals it depicts. (The otter, bear, beaver, wolf, and eagle with salmon are all disfigured — a broken wing, a missing eye — to depict the dangers of environmental degradation.) Once the Rainbow Warrior moved on, the Loseys lost track of what had become of the carving. With some sleuthing, Ray discovered it had been donated to the Zoo where it had been run over by a maintenance vehicle, the eagle's wings lost. Eventually installed, it was obscured behind vegetation. Fortunately, it's a new day at the Zoo. The public art program of a Zoo construction bond supported the restoration of the Survival Totem Pole and a magnificent 50 foot carving called the Centennial Pole. On October 17th we gathered to celebrate the rededication of these two cultural treasures. The Survival Totem Pole is now prominently featured at the heart of the Great Northwest exhibit, adjacent to the California Condors where the two tell complementary tales about threatened species and threatened culture. The tremendous care and skill of the construction crew who installed the poles, noted by Ray in his remarks, offered a redemptive chapter in the carving's history and underscored the call to stewardship that is embedded in the meaning of the totem poles. The Centennial Totem Pole
The Centennial Pole, which stood in a few different locations around the Zoo over the last 50 years, now serves as a sentinel at the Zoo's entrance, greeting all who come to the zoo with its stories of this place we call home. To rededicate the carving, the Lelooska family gathered to offer blessings through dance, music, and the release of downy eagle feathers. The restoration of the Centennial Pole was led by Chief Lelooska’s brother, Chief Tsungani, and niece, Lottie Stoll-Smith. Three generations of family members participated. Chief Tsungani’s daughter, Mariah Stoll-Smith Reese, director of the Lelooska Foundation, told The Columbian about the connection she felt to her uncle during the restoration: “It’s like he’s teaching you, in a way, being able to be that close to the work. That’s why I wanted to make sure my kids were part of the process.” During the ceremony we offered the nearly 100 guests a bookmark depicting the two works of art. It is customary in Native American celebrations to offer a giveaway, a token of gratitude to all who participate that binds us together in common witness. As the baskets of bookmarks circulated, I offered these words: "The totem poles we honor today each tell a rich story. The story of the mighty totems they depict. The story of Oregonians triumphantly traveling to the South Pole, and of Northwest animals struggling to survive a changing environment. The story of the people who carved and restored them. The story of the times in which they were first commissioned, and of the changing landscapes in which they are installed. With your presence here today, you become keepers of these stories. We invite you to use this bookmark to share the stories with others." Photos by Kathy Street, used with permission of the Oregon Zoo. Please visit the Lelooska Foundation and Ray Losey's web site for more information on their work. To read about the ceremony I led earlier this year for the Zoo, to reinter remains discovered during construction, click here. In his forthcoming book Die Wise, Stephen Jenkinson writes, "They say that war's first casualty is the truth. It certainly seems to be the first casualty of the war on cancer." Jenkinson critiques our endemic resistance to "using a language for dying where the truth of the dying is in the language. We traffic in euphemism instead, as if the dying can survive the euphemizing." My friend Marcy Westerling has always been a truth-teller. Her blog, Livingly Dying, keeps the fact of her dying front and center, in the midst of her daily embrace of the life she loves. Thousands of readers around the world love her for it. This month Yes Magazine published an essay by Marcy, "What I Learned About Living From Dying of Cancer." I offer this small taste of her piece with confidence that you will want to click below to read more, and in the hopes that you will share widely. I chafe at being invisible as a person with cancer. I am a lifelong feminist and community organizer. I believe in breaking silence and sharing truth.... In 2014, I can choose to be visible. I have a tattoo on my wrist declaring me a “Cancer Warrior.” I sport buttons saying “Cancer Sucks.” I pedal everywhere, slowly, on a bike that announces “Cancer on Board.” I defy every attempt to limit me to my diagnosis as I dare the world to ignore it. When people with terminal diagnoses communicate about their experience, it may make their walking toward death more doable. I cannot think of subjects better suited for full honesty than birth and death. But sometimes I feel I am as isolated in shouting about my diagnosis as Rachel Carson [who hid her end-stage cancer in 1964 as she broke ground for the nascent environmental movement] was in secrecy. I look so good that observers may well conclude that the sign on my bike, the button on my bags, even the tattoo on my wrist represent strength and survival. I encourage you to subscribe to Marcy's blog.
For more on my journey with Marcy, My Friend Marcy Has Cancer. I Don't (Yet). A few weeks back I received an email titled, Be Bold, Be Bald! In it, a young woman living with Stage IV cancer declared her intent to join this cancer awareness campaign, slated for October 17th, by wearing a bald cap. The question she posed: "Who is in with me? It takes a lot of gumption to commit to going bald for a day. Yes, you will look a little funny wearing a bald cap. Yes, strangers might confront you. And YES, that is the point." October 17th - my Dad's birthday. (Kenneth Albert Pruett, October 17, 1936 - October 3, 2001.) Yes, a perfect way to pay tribute to him and those living with cancer or whose days were ended by it. I didn't know that this same week would bring news of a dear college friend being admitted to hospice (liver cancer). And that another beloved would suffer a bleak week of setbacks (ovarian cancer). Or that a 29 year-old named Brittany Maynard, who moved to Oregon to avail herself of our Death with Dignity law, would end up on the cover of People magazine (glioblastoma, same as my Dad). I also didn't realize how many names would find their way onto my tribute cap. I planned one side In Memory of those who had died; one side In Honor and Support of those living with cancer. Their names brought up other names: those whose deaths came in other forms, those whose suffering is undiagnosed. When it came to wearing the cap, no strangers confronted me. As I met with a client, worked out at the gym, shopped for groceries, picked up a latte, and hit another shop or two, what I got more than anything were averted eyes. It reminded me of when I held up a large protest sign about my friend Marcy being waitlisted for chemo. The words referring to Marcy were small and my sense was that most passersby thought it was I who was being denied treatment. For every sympathetic smile there were perhaps five who quickly looked away. When I discussed my experience at a potluck that night (still "bald"), one person wondered whether the lack of comment coming my way was the blase response of Portlanders used to many daily doses of weirdness. Perhaps. But for many, I suspect, their silence was a way of saying, 'I don't know what to say." I've had many, many moments of muteness myself. Sometimes months of muteness - connecting, for example, when my college friend was diagnosed and then again when she entered hospice, but nothing in between. It can be hard to carve out space in a busy life for communication that requires real presence. It can be hard to find words in a language oriented entirely towards fixing things. We are divided, for the most part, into those who live in Cancer World (or the world of another serious illness) and those who don't. Those of us on the outside may visit occasionally - going "bald" for a day, waiting for our own diagnostic results only to return to the land of the Worried Well. I knew that my bald cap was nowhere near an approximation of what I would experience if chemo had actually taken my hair, my eyelashes, my eyebrows; if I couldn't reverse it all with a simple costume change. Whether I raised awareness about cancer among those I encountered or not, here's what being bald for a day did. It opened a door in my heart between the worlds of the living and the dead, the worlds of the ill and the well. As I took the time to call up the names, inscribe them on my cap, see the names, touch the names, I honored them and honored my growing capacity for remembrance and connection. And a I had a few great conversations. The Trader Joe's checkout clerk told me her story, and her son's. Here's to the boldness that might invite such a connection, even without such a bald provocation. Pregnant with her fourth child, Kate knew she didn't want a traditional, consumer-oriented baby shower. She'd experienced the support of a mama blessing ceremony with prior births. But this time, she knew it was about more than her impending labor. This was about the threshold the whole family was about to cross: her twin "big girls" and the toddler who would no longer be the baby. Kate told me she wanted the focus of her ceremony to be on "preparing and supporting me for the labor and birth, as well as preparing the girls/family for the changing roles and family environment. Not so much about the baby herself, but more about creating a special space in the family for her and honoring each family member for the role they'll play in that. Celebrating and affirming our strength: mine, as capable of labor and birth, and the family's, as capable of welcoming the baby and adapting to the changes she'll bring with grace and love." To create a ceremony of support for Kate and her girls, I reached out to friends she and I had made through the PDX Death Café (which is how we met - Kate was the very first person to contact me when I created our local Facebook page to launch the Café). One offered his spectacular wonderland of a back yard as our venue. One created customizable prayer flags to carry our blessings into the birthing room. One fashioned flowers into crowns for our guests of honor. And to bring the magic of song into our gathering, I asked the Threshold Choir to participate. As we gathered on a glorious summer afternoon, guests greeted each other and decorated prayer flags. Everyone had been asked to bring a candle as an offering for the birthing room; we placed them in the palatial gazebo that awaited Kate and her daughters. We formed a circle of welcome where we affirmed our intentions for the ceremony and connected through the first Threshold song ~ Gather Us together (Spirit of Harmony). We then crowned each of our beautiful honorees with a wreath of flowers. Kate had hoped her daughters would feel appreciated, comfortable, and included. To me, they looked magnificently composed and radiant. Our singers held them in the moment with Light Flows (through the heart of my love to you). It was now time for the family passage ritual. We formed two lines, facing each other, a human passageway leading into the sanctuary of the gazebo. As Kate and her girls stood at the entrance to the passageway, our singers led a Meditation on Breath (when I breathe in I breathe in Peace, when I breathe out I breathe out Love). Then, one at a time, our guests of honor slowly walked through the passageway, symbolizing the threshold of their family change, as we whispered words of support, encouragement, and blessing. Once Kate and the girls were settled in the gazebo we gathered around them to present our gifts of light (the candles) and love (in the form of ceramic hearts). We shared John O’Donohue’s Blessing for a Mother-to-Be and the song May Only Love Surround You. "Supported, relaxed, joyfully reverent" is how Kate had hoped to feel during the ceremony. Soon we would emerge from the cocoon of the gazebo to feast on delectable food (the big girls supplied the cupcakes), to enjoy the koi pond and the chickens and each others' company. but first, a closing song: Sim Shalom (grant peace, goodness and blessing). Nothing could have prepared your heart to open like this. Last Spring I sat in a group of Stephen Jenkinson's students at his Orphan Wisdom School in the thawing reaches of Ontario near the Quebec border. We listened to Merv, a local Algonquin elder, talk about life among his Pikwàkanagàn First Nation people. After Merv left, when our largely white group sat in silence sodden with shame, Stephen said this: "The difference between his people and you is that they wake up every day in the presence of what happened to them. You wake up every day in the absence of what happened to you." I am and once was called Amazon Now I am called lesbian. I know that the Matriarchy ruled back then. Sisters, the Matriarchy’s gonna rule again. Only a few centuries ago, as recent as the colonization of North America, as many as 9 million women accused of being witches were interrogated, tortured, and executed - burned at the stake, hanged on the gallows, or beheaded. Every summer I join thousands of women in the woods of Northern Michigan to remember. To push back against the cultural amnesia that would have us forget our lineage and the legacy of matriarchal power that is our birthright. Our Amazon witches have returned to the flame. And we will dance in our moon circles once again. Sisters, we’ve known and loved each other in our past. Amazon Nation is rising at last! This year at the 39th annual Michigan Womyn's Music Festival I stood with over 100 women at the back of a meadow to raise a wooden carving, burnished by generations of female hands: the goddess, Diana. Around me: women of every age, every size and complexion, reverent, irreverent. Wearing Birkenstocks, flip flops, clogs, heels, platform boots, cowboy boots, steel toed work boots, nothing but dirt on their bare feet. Bearded, one-breasted, barechested, tattooed, fully clothed, in newsboy caps, fedoras, wigs, head scarves, hair teased high, hair shorn into flat-tops. A crone resting in a garden cart chariot. Racing among us, a pack of young girls, fierce and feral in the safe embrace of the freedom they feel on the Land. The women you might expect at a Goddess Raising. And the women you wouldn't. One by one we turned to the woman to our left and said these words of re-membering: "Sister, I give you my hand. Together we form a strong circle." We danced in a snaky spiral, chanting "Remember me, loving you," our line looping in on itself so we could gaze fully into each others' faces. Giddy, solemn, tearful, tender, playful, laughing, sweaty, mugging, flirting, faltering - losing ourselves and finding ourselves in sisterhood with the women you would expect, and the women you wouldn't. Five nights later we were joined by thousands more for the Festival's Opening Ceremony, the energy raised in that spiral, raised with Diana, now exponentially multiplied as the Amazon Band united every molecule of every woman there with our past, present, and future. We come regenerate, we come remember We come for knowledge - Power! Power! Come, come again back to our feeding ground Fill up and resonate the sound, the sound, the sound. Come gather round, womyn, this is how we do Big up the female! Big up the female! We who gather under those August Michigan skies know better than most that "Whenever females honor ourselves, wherever we take up space, and sit collectively in the source of our collective power, we are burned and stoned, both literally and metaphorically". We would begin the process, five days later, of responding to those who would put us in the modern-day stocks of political correctness. We would go back to Area 51 - the world we live in for the other 51 weeks of the year, the world that dishonors women and brutalizes so many, still, just for the crime of being female. But on that night, and for those days on the Land that represents Home to tens of thousands of women, we connected to the truth of our beauty, the truth of our power, the truth of our sisterhood. Truths we do not know we've forgotten until we experience what it's like to re-member. Amazon womyn gonna rise again, Amazon womyn gonna rise again, Amazon womyn gonna rise again. Rise again, rise again! With the Festival over, we on crew began the work of dismantling our city in the woods. Picking up and moving out every hay bale and piece of recycling. Pulling down the big tents and deconstructing the three stages women's muscle had hauled and sledged and screw-gunned into place. Eventually nothing would be left on site but a burn pile for the workers' closing bonfire. This year, though, there was some wood that could not be put to the flame. The branches. The branches that had been culled from the forest, painted white and in rainbow hues; that were held aloft, Amazon Proud, in the Opening Ceremony; that were woven into a magical nest at the entry to the Night Stage bowl. Branches emblematic of the tree of life, of our connections to each other and the Land, to the roots of all that has come before, and to the tender young buds of the future pulsing with female power. The branches got strapped to the roofs of cars (the photo in the slideshow below was snapped by a surprised passer-by on the highway in Nebraska). And they were clipped into tiny woo bundles, dispersed across Area 51 to keep us re-membering what happened to us, what matters, and what we know to be true. Thanks to my sisters on crew for the Area 51 photos below. Click left in the upper left hand corner to play. Three years ago, at the age of 34, Kim got the worst kind of news. As she wrote on her blog, Aquarius vs Cancer, "I’ve got lung cancer and I’m not very happy about it. It pretty much sucks." Kim and I met through my dear friend Marcy. When Marcy got her terminal cancer diagnosis she became passionate about connecting with others who were exceptional - exceptional for the early age of their confrontation with mortality, exceptional for their approach to this unbidden "new normal". I wasn't too surprised to find an email in my in-box from Kim a few months back: "So. I'm wondering if we could meet up and talk about end of life planning? I'm just trying to get my ducks in a row." As she'd written on her blog, "I’m the kind of girl who likes to know where I stand at all times. I’m often most uncomfortable when I don’t know what I think or feel on a particular topic or subject." We met and agreed that I would create a customized set of questions to support Kim in thinking through what she wanted to have happen around and after her death. I lent her my copy of Stephen Jenkinson's slim work book, How It All Could Be, which he describes as "part meditation and part guided study – that begins the deep human project of learning what dying well could be, and what dying asks of us all... for anyone trying to approach dying with soul and intelligence intact." I worried that my list of questions, coupled with the Jenkinson booklet, might produce paralysis. Not for Kim. When she found it daunting, what did she do? She invited 12 of her closest friends to come to her home on a Friday night for pizza, wine, and a conversation about death. Hers. And theirs. I was privileged to observe this tender, brave, joy- and grief-filled gathering. They laughed, a lot. They cried. They told stories. They shared answers they didn't know they had. They wondered together. And through it all, Kim presided from a cushion on the floor of her fabulously smart mid-century living room, keeping the group working through the questions she'd culled: Part 1
Part 2
A few days later Kim reported "feeling very good about things today." She was busy typing up her notes and said, "It would have been impossible for me to get the same high quality results answering these questions on my own." What struck me most about that night was that Kim had invited us all to begin exercising our grief muscle, to cultivate this neglected capacity in the company of others. One more thing about how Kim convened her friends: True to her take on life, she opened the gathering not with a focus on the tragic, but with this playful, provocative point of view on the larger arc of our existence. In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm! ~ Woody Allen "Have you lost your mind?!" That's what Debra Gordon Zaslow's cousin said when Debra brought her cantankerous 103 year-old grandmother home. Two different contacts from the PDX Death Cafe community alerted me to Debra's story, Bringing Bubbe Home: A Memoir of Letting Go Though Love and Death. If I weren't leaving town for another sojourn in Nature's arms, I would definitely attend one of Zaslow's Portland readings:
As you'll see in the clip below, Debra is a professional story-teller. The book promises a riveting account of "volatile caregivers, hormonal teenagers, queen-sized diapers and shadows of the past" in which "the two of them sit soul-to soul in moments of stark tenderness." As Amber and I face her father's aging (something I was spared by my own father dying young and healthy), I feel passionately that we need stories like this one... "... the choice to bring death into the home with family, caregivers, and all the ramifications. Zaslow reveals how her grandmother’s shedding of old layers during the dying process created a new bond between them, and how the surfacing of family stories allowed her to see her life in a new context." The reading, book signing and refreshments are free and open to the public. If you go - or pick up the book, or catch a reading in your own town - tell me what you think. |
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April 2020
AuthorI want to know your story. And I want to help you tell it. If you’re eager to embrace the meaning in your life and to connect more deeply with others, you’ve found a kindred spirit in me. Categories
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