I wrote this last night at home so I could easily post it this morning without taking any time away from work.
While Karen was my friend and I am mourning her passing today, it seems strange to accept sympathy. She gave me so much that rather than being consumed with her loss, I'm finding that I'm reminded of what I gained by knowing her, however briefly or from whatever distance. When people say that they're sorry for the loss of my friend, I don't know how to respond, because Karen did not give me loss. She gave me friendship, and the courage to look and deepen my own self-knowledge.
blakeh's post about her passing is
here. I encourage you to read it; it is incredibly moving.
During the month of packing, one of the first things I packed was my books, because they were easy to pull off the shelves and box up. I figured I would be too busy to read, but after a day or two without reading, I began to miss it terribly. Thankfully, I found a book that had fallen behind my nightstand, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. Because it was the only book I had available, I must have read it ten times in the month of May.
This book has a very powerful theme to it, centered around an idea of a role in society called "speaker for the dead." In this series, Card expresses the idea that when a loved one passes away, we have a tendency to make them into someone that they weren't...we gloss over their flaws and ignore their weaknesses. We make them into people who are easier to live with in death than they were in life.
Speakers for the dead speak at funerals in an attempt to describe the person who has passed on. Their speeches are not eulogies, nor are the speakers hell-bent on pointing out every flaw as well as every virtue. Rather, they attempted to describe the person's life in a simple manner, as that person meant to live. They stripped away the person's actions and instead told a story about their intentions.
Last night, I thought about Karen quite a bit. Her journal was incredibly difficult to read at times, and many times I found myself with nothing to say, or with a choked throat. Often, I would walk away from it and contemplate my own views, attitudes, and prejudices on my own mortality. She discussed her thoughts, fears, and even the physical side of death with an eloquence that is rarely seen. She was one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure to meet, and she was a phenomenal writer to boot.
Karen continually did one of the most difficult things possible, which is to look into herself. She faced reality head-on, and faced it with grace, dignity, and style. Because she shared herself with so many, I found that my fundamental attitudes towards death, mortality, and myself began to change. It was a wonderful gift that she gave without foreknowledge or pretention.
Karen wrote the following a few months ago, in response to an anonymous commenter in her journal who expressed sadness and disappointment that Karen so readily and "negatively" accepted and discussed her impending death:
People want to talk about "positive" and "negative" and want to use the words "life" and "death" interchangeably with them. Why is focusing on life the only way our society defines being positive? It actually makes me quite sad that people do not recognize the spiritual need to learn to die well, that people like this commenter may never know the benefit and peace that comes not just from learning to live well but from learning to embrace death as an open and welcoming concept. Now I know when I write that that some people will have a knee-jerk reaction thinking that I am somehow equating the welcoming of death with some sort of death wish or suicide. That couldn't be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that embracing your death--the real and true notion that you are not immortal on this planet--is the only way to be free from the suffering that everyday life provides.
Let me put it more concretely. Every week, I go to my oncologist's office and I get handed a heavy dose of toxic medication that makes me ill and reduces my quality of life. Why would I do that knowing that I have no chance of living through this disease? Knowing that I'm not going to be one of the "winners" in life, what possible comfort could I gain from doing this? As the commenter writes, perhaps I do it to eke out one more day with friends and family. Well, Ok, sure. I like my friends and family. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to die of this, so again...what's one more day when I know that it's all going to come to an end anyways? What's my motivation for eking out more time here? I think most people would assume that I do it simply because I'm afraid to die when, in reality, it's the opposite. I'm NOT afraid to die.
Sounds odd, doesn't it, the notion of NOT being afraid to die as the impetus for me continuing on here now? Let's analyze this for a moment. If I were afraid to die, it wouldn't matter that I eked out one more day because I wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Every waking second of my life would be filled with fear, desperation, longing, clinging, sadness for my upcoming loss, and so on. Who wants to live that way? Oh sure, I could do what this commenter suggests and adopt a denial-filled attitude of false positivity, but really...how long can one continue to fool oneself in the wake of noticeably deteriorating health? At some point during the course of this disease, my upcoming death is going to wake up and smack me in the face, as it will for every other woman with this disease. Denial only works for so long in this game; at some point, your physical health is going to betray you and your denial, and in that case you'd better have another strategy in mind for coming to terms with it all.
So what's my strategy? I make peace with it. I find a way to understand what my death means in the grander scheme of my own personal spirituality. I find a way to realize that my death is not an end of anything, that it's just a transition. I find a way to understand the anatomy of our brain--and its need to classify things as terminal and separate--and how this impacts our ability to realize our spiritual nature. At least, that was the path for me--some take very different spiritual paths. But as a result of my own path, here I am. I do not fear my death, and so I go on with my life being able to appreciate everything--sunshine, the squirrels in my backyard, the playfulness of my cats. Nothing small escapes my appreciation or gratitude anymore. And that only came about because I no longer fear losing it all in my death.
And this is what drives me to continue my treatment. It's not because I am so attached to my life that I am so desperate to have another day; it's because I am NOT filled with the desperation that so many other people are filled with when diagnosed with a disease like this. To be honest, I can't think of a more "negative" thing to have to endure. What a burden it must be for some people to wake up every morning and feel nothing but that kind of overwhelming and crushing despearation that they need to do everything just to eke out one more day! No, I choose to NOT live a life of quiet desperation whereby I am constantly looking over my shoulder in fear for the grim reaper. Instead, I choose to live a life that understands that the grim reaper walks next to me and that he is not my enemy.
Now I don't know what this commenter's spiritual belief system is, but for me, the end of my life is not the end. When this body of mine dies, all it means is that it is my turn to become the rain. If that is somehow negative thinking, well...then so be it. Someone labeling my acceptance of death as "negative" will not change the fact that my happiness runs deep precisely because I am at peace with dying. And someone labeling "life" as the only positive in the world will not change the fact that everyone dies and that everyone will have to come to terms with that at some point. You can either do it now, or you can struggle with it on your deathbed. And for me, I chose to struggle now so that I can be at peace on my deathbed in order to provide comfort to my loved ones. That was the right decision for me. Regardless, at some point every person needs to talk about their death...and it's a shame that those that cling desperately to life can't put aside their own ego and attachment to allow other people to indulge in that freely.
As for this journal being some sort of "beacon" of hope for those dealing with cancer, all I have to say is that this commenter has obviously not read my journal very well. This journal was not and has never been a "beacon" for dealing with cancer. This journal, from day one, has is about dealing with DYING. And if that makes someone uncomfortable, then I'm sorry for that. But realize that my discussion of death is not the problem so much as it is the other person's inability to confront the subject. And as sympathetic as I am for people who wiggle away from the topic of death as if it's a poisonous snake, in the end someone else's inability to deal with the topic of death is just not my problem.
If you've got baggage about death, I can appreciate that. But it might be a good idea to stop blaming those that talk about death as the root of your unease and instead analyze yourself and your own ideas/spirituality to figure out why it is that the idea of death is so anathema to you. After all, "hope" is not just found in life; it can be found in death as well.
Karen needs no Speaker for the Dead, because she lived her life exactly as she intended it.