A year ago around this time, I made peace with dying. I lay in my bed in Vermont from which I now write this post, staring up at the gorgeous wooden plank-and-beam ceiling (the ceiling that sold the house to the Guv), looking out my too-high-to-cover bedroom windows at the brilliant green trees blowing in the wind, and thought: what a beautiful setting in which to live out my days. The Guv had given me this barn-red house as a giant Valentine in 2007, celebrating our 10th year of marriage; he didn't intend it for my final resting place, but it seemed, oddly, appropriate, for me to leave this beautiful world surrounded by a symbol of his love.
Needless to say, I didn't die. And reflecting on it may seem morbid, but, for me, it's an act of healing. I have written some things about being sick, but I haven't written a lot about the peace you need to make with this world in order to move on to the next one. In that regard, I've had some remarkable successes, but also some significant failures. I also haven't waxed philosophically on God much, because my faith has been like an open, tender wound. And, like Randy Pausch, I haven't shared much about the effect on my family and, especially, on my kids. For some things, there truly are no words.
This, then, is that post -- the post in which I finally find myself strong enough to lay in this bed, look at the fireflies out of my window, and say: I will be here next year, doing the same thing. And the next year. And so on. God willing, I'll live to see 40, and 50, and beyond. I believe, now, that I'll see my kids grow up, launch careers, get married, have families... not a belief I had a year ago. I believe that the Guv and I will, indeed, share a parkbench at 70, and that it won't be so terribly strange after all. I can't wait, except I can, because I'm too busy living.
This is, indeed, no "last lecture," but I think it might be valuable to share the priorities I made when things were still heading South. And the first priority involved trying to extricate myself from all but the most important duties when it came to taking care of myself, being a wife, rearing my kids, and running my house. I also made a concerted effort to spend more time with friends, joining book clubs, crafting circles, whatever female-bonding experience came my way -- and I think that drawing from the energy of other mothers made me stronger. Learning to focus on self-care, I did a better job of caring for everyone else. And that self-care meant weeding out the negative energy in my life, focusing on the positives, and building sustaining relationships. I recently read a story -- and I'm sorry, I can't find it to attribute -- about a dying man who set up a group of six friends to help raise his kids with the lessons and values he'd have liked to impart. He had the friend to whom they could go for financial advice, another for spiritual guidance, etc. After the year I've had, I know who those friends would be for me (and for my family). None of us should wait to get sick before we have that in place, but, as someone who loves her solitude, I've never placed a high priority on my "village." Now, my Village is my world. With no family nearby, something had to take its place (not that I feel my family is replaceable, but it's not like my mom could bring me lunch from Florida -- though she would've had I asked!). The Village who stepped up to take care of me are truly gifts from God.
And let's talk about God for a minute. I'm going to confess something: I've been hiding from the priest at my new church. He's been trying to welcome our family for about a year, and I've been afraid he'd look at me and yell: FRAUD! Oh, how I've questioned my faith in the past year, and, to some extent, I still have concerns... but it's still there, barely weakened but, rather, built up by some best practices from other faiths, like the meditations of Zen Buddhism. I have always had an unshakable (and, to some, inexplicable) faith in God and in Christ, but when you look at your kids through dying eyes, you tend to wonder where God is in that. And moreover, due to some issues outside of my sickness that have taxed my extended family beyond measure, I've wondered if God is on sabbatical. But then, a lightbulb clicked on one day, and I realized: hey, God actually isn't everywhere. We're given someone to whom to turn with our suffering, but we're not told that we won't suffer. It's like the lyrics of my very favorite song, "How Can I Keep from Singing?": "No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging. Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?" We're not promised no storms -- we're just promised a rock to which to cling during one -- and we're reminded that love is in charge.
It doesn't seem like that always, though, does it -- that love is what makes the world go 'round? Sometimes, it seems like the world is spinning out of control because of a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with love: pettiness and jealousy and anger and hurt. I had all of those things in my sick bed with me, and, at times, they lashed out, not at my little family of four or at my Village, but at the rest of the world. And some of the rest of the world may never recover. This doesn't reconcile with my world view, not with my God of Love, but I learned a new phrase in that regard: "it is what it is." It's my reply to my kids when they want me to change the unchangeable, whether it's getting them tickets to a sold-out movie or finding a way for them to reconcile with a friend who wants no part of it. It is what it is. Some things are unchangeable, and some relationships are untenable. If, like I do, you have your Village, you know from whom to seek counsel when this comes up; and you realize that the Village sustains you through the darkest storms. The Village can't make things all better, but they can help you to refocus. Everyone needs a God of Love, and everyone needs a Village. Everyone, everyone, everyone.
And the last thing everyone needs, in my humble view, is to look at your family every so often through dying eyes. If you had a day, or a month, or a year to live, how would you look at your husband? your kids? your siblings? parents? I'll tell you this: my marriage is better than it ever has been, and my kids are better off than they've ever been, because I sure did get my priorities straight. As another favorite song ("Big Yellow Taxi," Counting Crows version) goes: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?" We all wait, and wait, and wait for our lives to happen, and then suddenly we've lived it ... and then we're out of time, and we don't know what the heck just happened. I went through a phase early on in my sickness, in the most difficult phase of it all, where I just wanted my kids to leave me alone so that I could sleep and so that they couldn't see me cry. And then, as I started to climb out of it, I started sitting at the table with them as often as possible, playing board games or helping them to write stories. I started looking them in the eye more when they talked and making time to listen hard when my daughter wanted to tell me something. I started telling them that I appreciate them, and value them, and, above all else, love them -- not just in a quick kiss as they go out the door, but, rather, at times off of the beaten path, when I snag them in the kitchen or when the car has gone too silent. They smile at me more. They tell me they love me more. And they feel it in a different way, all because I'm there, paying attention -- not checking out of their conversation and making my grocery list in my head but, rather, engaging. I'm not sure I was as "present" for my kids before I got sick. If all of us would stop and look at our kids with dying eyes every so often, we'd stop what we're doing and read a book, play a game, and interact a bit more. We'd be there more. And we'd never have clean laundry or tidy houses or groceries in the fridge. But we'd have that time, and that time can't be recaptured. My aunt used to have a plaque in her house that read "Cleaning and scrubbing can wait 'til tomorrow, for babies grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow; so quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep; I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep." The laundry can wait. Be there.
And being there -- here -- is where I plan to be for a very long time to come. Still, though, I look up at this ceiling, and out these windows, and I think: it would be a great place from which pass from this world into an endless forever. Just... not yet.
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