Nancy relates her journey with Cancer on Vimeo
Losing and Getting:
When I was in the fifth grade, I was in love with a tall blonde boy by the name of Clinton. I brought hard candies to school and slipped them into his desk when Miss Fugit had her back turned. One day Clinton looked at me with this sort of sweet/sad expression and I thought, uh, oh, here it comes. "Nancy, you are very nice, but I'm in love with Lethe Hunter because she has mountains on her chest."
In the 7th grade, I was waiting in line with the rest of the girls in my class while our gym teacher pinned tucks in the bodices of our May Day costumes. When it was my turn I said, Miss Ligon, you didn’t pin any tucks! She said: You don't need any tucks.
In the 8th grade I was obsessed by French & typing. I practiced both in bed, typing out the French words with my toes. One night my grandmother, who shared my bedroom with me for eight years, shook me awake: "Nancy, I don’t mind your talking in your sleep, but you have to speak English." "What was I saying?" "Sounded like the grand tutton" "Oh, it's a joke, Les Grands Tetons those mountains in Wyoming, the Big Tits!" Ah," my grandmother scooped me into her arms and I nestled on the huge shelf of her bosom. It was perfectly clear to me that tucks are essential, breasts are flesh, not rock.
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I did experiment with falsies for a while. You have to imagine what courage it took in 1949 to even discover the store where they were sold in Atlanta, GA, and then more courage to go and buy them. I had to whittle them down a little. These could possibly have sprouted over a weekend? But they were a nuisance because they migrated around inside my clothes. One day in the cafeteria line, I reached up over the counter to get my plate, and looking down, saw two breasts, like a stoplight, right in the middle of my chest.
I finally just gave them up; they were too much trouble. And at my women’s college I got to play all the men’s parts, sometimes even in a full beard in what were known in Atlanta as the best drag shows in town. Who needed breasts?
But eventually, with a lot of encouragement, affection, and practical assistance from Harry Duncan, along came our children, Barnaby, Lucy and Guy, and breasts that waxed and waned, waxed and waned, and waned. But this was the 60’s! Everyone I knew, except my mother, burned their bras and the world was filled with breasts of all sizes, jiggling & bouncing in liberation!
Finally, I bought a bra in celebration of the fact that I’d graduated from an A to a B cup! Well, I had to buy a bra just to figure that out.
In March of 2000, on a Tuesday night, I discovered a lump in my right breast. An inch and a half long, big around as my finger, hard as a rock. I knew it was cancer, but I scheduled a mammogram for Weds. to be assured by my doctor from the dimpling on the surface and the size, shape, etc., that I was probably right. There was a biopsy on Friday, and then waiting over a long, long weekend for the official confirmation. If Harry had been alive, perhaps I'd have just popped him in the car and whisked him off to an intimate weekend in McCook, NE, who knows? But he wasn't.
I rented a bunch of sad movies, bought a murder mystery by Josephine Tey, and made a nest for myself in the sofa bed in the library, all the green tea I could possibly want, pillows, a notepad and paper, and a big box of Jordan almonds. For the first time since I can remember, I turned off the telephone.
Most of Saturday was soggy. I was regretting all the things I wouldn’t get to do if I died. I fired God, several times, and hired her back. I progressed from this to planning my funeral. The final version of it included six 7 X 10 rear projection screens, 12 projectors, and all 986 slides from my recent major theatrical production, with personalized listening stations & pre-recorded audio messages for everyone.
On Sunday I was bored by the sad movies, relished the murder mystery & the almonds and began to think of action as a possibility. Y
e gods, is there a war in my own body? How can I handle this , I'm a pacifist? What I need now is a cancer-threatening LIFE.
Then I planned the funerals of about six people who need to die before I do.
By Monday I was ready for the news. A grade 3 aggressive tumor. Mastectomy scheduled for March 21st. Then I told my family and my friends.
Their responses extend along a sort of.continuum of condolence. At the left is something like: "It makes me sad to see you in so much pain. I'm leaving soup on your front porch. Give me something to do."
In the middle: "Nancy, you are a survivor, a fighter through and through, even though you weren't born here, you are a Nebraskan in your soul, go big RED!"
And at the far end: "Thank you for being a part of my life. I just want you to know I’ll never forget you."
Several said, "Nancy, cancer is going to teach you many lessons. The most important is for you to learn how to allow us love you.."
One friend didn’t say anything. I sank into wonderful deep hugs - the magnificent comfort of Les Grand Tetons!
I had trouble sleeping because my breasts whispered to each other in the night.
R: You were the one the doctor was watching why isn't it you?
L: Try to imagine how I'm going to suffer carrying the burden of suspicion all by myself.
R: It’s her fault she never really valued either of us.
L: She ate a lot of crunchy vegetables didn’t they like her?
R: I’m frightened. I was too small to even be a memory.
L: Hmmm, a mammary memory.I'm going to miss you.
R: If there is any chance I can come back as a ghost, you are the one I’m going to haunt!
I immediately drafted two friends to help make a rubber mold of my right breast, so she could be a memory. When I told my thirteen year-old British grandson, Matthew, that I was going to send him a chocolate breast for Xmas, he said, "You’re weird, Nancy." A week later, he called to say, "Uh, Nancy, you know that chocolate breast? Well, you don’t need to send it, because it would, it’s well, you know, it might, uh, it would melt!"
"I get it, Matthew, a chocolate breast from your grandmother could be too much for a thirteen year-old. Don't worry about it, Matthew, that breast has been rejected by other people before you. I'll send it to you when you're eighteen."
He must have thought he’d hurt my feelings, rejecting something so intimate, because a week later he phoned back. "Nancy, you know that chocolate breast, well, could I have it in toffee apple flavor?"
I began serious bargaining with my surgeon. "Look," I said, "I'm not going to have all that reconstruction business, taking skin and fat from my belly and moving it up to my chest, tattooing on a nipple to make it look like a real breast that won't ever FEEL anything because it hasn't any nerves - I can see how it could be an option for someone younger, but I'm too old, don't want any of that, BUT the insurance company doesn't know. SO, could you just take 4 little tucks, two each on the sides of my face, right here by the hairline, and sort of lift everything up, and put it on the insurance papers as RECONSTRUCTION?"
He laughed, but said he wasn't the guy to do it. When I first saw the scar he left on my chest, I was shocked & thought he was probably right. I wouldn’t want anything like that on my FACE! But now that I've seen a variety of other scars, I realize how skillful he is and think I could have been happy with whatever he'd managed to come up with.
My friends from all over the country began to call with stories of their own cancers, prepping me for what was to come. Thelma said her first chemo treatment was ghastly, but about twelve days later her husband, John, took her to Kansas City to celebrate. They planned to visit the museums, shop, eat in wonderful restaurants. As they walked across the bridge into the Plaza, a gust of wind lifted Thelma’s hair, and took a large hank of it off in front of her over the water. "My gosh, by the time I get to the restaurant, I’ll be bald." Another gust of wind, more hair, this time rising in front of them as they came off the bridge. "Oh," said Thelma, "I know what a tree feels like in the Fall." A bird flew in, grabbed a wad in its mouth. "Look, Thelma, you’re going to be part of someone’s nest."
Germelina called from Kearney, NE: "Nancy, about a month after my mastectomy my whole family signed up for a golf tournament, and I decided to go along just to save my marriage. I didn’t have my prosthesis yet. The cancer society gave me this cotton substitute to stuff into my old bra, and even though I had large breasts, I thought I could make it work. But I'm a terrible golfer I decided the one thing I could do well on this trip is to look good. So I bought a bunch of new outfits. We went to the tournament and I met another friend there also a bad golfer, so we played together. About the third day, we were between the 4 & 5th holes, when I said, "Oh, my goodness, I’ve lost my breast." I had to tell her the whole story, and then we started to look for it. There it was, a white tent of cotton, lying in the middle of the fairway behind us, looking like a Denver airport for crickets. My friend said, "Germelina, that has nothing to do with you. It never had anything to do with you. Absolve yourself of that breast." So we ignored it and played through.
At the end of the tournament everyone in my family, even the 8 year-old, won some kind of trophy for their excellent playing. After all the trophies were given out, the MC said they were giving a very special new trophy this year, and called me up to the podium. I was so embarrassed. He said, "Germelina, we are giving you this trophy because you are the best dressed golfer." I said, "You shouldn’t give me this. I don't deserve it. Because right in the middle of the tournament, I lost my shoulder pad."
Twelve days after my first chemo, all my gray hair began to come out in the brush, so I trimmed it to a half-inch. One morning, a week later, all the dark hair hit the floor of the shower stall. Wow, I thought, a photo opportunity. I rearranged the hairs into words. In upper case I spelled "HELP". And in lower case I spelled "Leaving" with the tail of the g going down into the drain. And I saved all the hairs themselves to use in a little voodoo doll, just in case one of the people who should die.
Chemotherapy. I suppose there are some people out there who have it easy, but for me there is only one world to describe it: HELL. I survived my first three months of a mix including Adriamycin & Cytoxan pretty well. The anti-nausea medications really do work - at $50 a pill! I'd be sick for three days and then gradually regain my energy over the next three weeks until I was zonked again. But when the regime changed to Taxol for three months, ARRRGG! Taking the drug wasn't the problem, just four hours in a recliner, reading or listening to tapes. But four days later WHAM. Horrible deep bone pain from my knees to my toes, and ZAP, suddenly a fleet of nettle fish began to swim through my nerves, shooting poisonous darts every 40 seconds. The darts hit one at a time, wherever, my neck, my groin, my armpit, intense stinging for 10 seconds fading into a "whacked my funny bone" sort of tingle. This assault of side-effects lasted a full week the first round (I can live through HELL if it only lasts a week), two weeks the second (I can live through HELL if it only lasts two weeks), but three the third (I’m not really sure I can live through HELL if it never stops).
The pain and darts were masked by painkillers, but they, too, had their side-effects, and I languished in a lalaland of wobbly dreaming, stretched out on my bed, restricted from everything but the walk-abouts in my mind to all the places I had been and loved. As my anxiety built for the fourth and last dose, I gave up. I told my oncologist "I just can’t do this again, my hands and my feet are numb - I just don't want to lose their feeling forever." Her response was: "Well, all the studies are on eight treatments, we don’t have any on seven. It's your choice; 7/8th of a cup should be as good as a full one. See you in January."
Most of my friends and family supported my choice. (They know me well enough to know they’d better.) One friend said it made him anxious to think I hadn't done all I could do to stay alive because he wanted me to stay alive. I said, "Thanks, you’re welcome to take that last dose for me."
One doctor friend who has just finished his chemo for leukemia said he was afraid, should my cancer (god, forbid) recur that I would blame myself for not taking that last treatment. Hmmm, yes, perhaps, and yet if that should happen, I'll have so many more potent rages to occupy my mind. There’s that major, ongoing rage: Why is so little being done to find the cause? Billions of dollars are being made on the CURE, but if we take the cause into our minds, do we discover that we are all culpable, all afraid to change our lives?
My family, especially the youngest members of it, had trouble with my chemotherapy, not so much because I was suffering from it, but because I lost my hair. My granddaughters, Louise, age 8, known as Weezie, and Beatrice, age 6, said, "Maga, please, when you come to our soccer games or plays at school, could you wear your hat? Would you get a wig?" I said, "GRRRR, I don't want a wig, it is summer, it is so hot, when I put on a wig it feels as if I had a cat on my head." "But, Maga, please could you wear your cap. All of our friends say, "Your grandmother looks weird."
One afternoon they came over with their mother to take me out to lunch. I headed out the door, bald, and Weezie said, "Maga, could you put on your hat? " OOOF, I said, "Weezie, it is too hot to have to wear a hat, there is nothing wrong with being bald." Weezie shrugged and looked at the floor. Her mother intervened, "Louise, what is on the outside doesn't matter, it is what is inside that counts. What if, when you Dad came to propose to me, what if I had said "Guy, I love you more than anyone else in the world, I can't imagine spending my life with anyone but you, BUT you are two short.' " Weezie shrugged again, looked up at me with a big smile on her face and said, "Maga, PUT ON YOUR HAT!"
This story isn’t really over. I realize that many of the meanings of my journey are still a mystery. I miss my right breast. No one designs clothes for one-breasted women. My granddaughter, Weezie, assured me that I SHOULD get a prosthesis. When I said, "No, Weezie they’re hot, it would fall out, the dog might chew it up", she nodded, and said, "I really NEED you to get one so I can take it to show and tell."
I don't know if I've learned the lessons my friends though I would learn from cancer, but I have learned other things. I’ve realized it’s not possible to lose something without getting something back. Not the same thing, certainly, not what you’ve lost, but something else. My hair could come in RED - it didn't. I learned that it is rather luxurious to scrub my bald scalp with a washrag. (This is a secret men have been closely guarding.) One day I looked down, and thought Whoa, look at this. Anything that happens to miss my mouth has a straight shot to the floor. All those years I wondered why there were more crumbs under Harry’s chair than mine, now, I think I know.
Perhaps it wasn't even genetically possible for me to be a grandmother who could offer a grand teton of bosom to my grandchildren. But there are other shelves to nestle on like this one, the shelf of story. And always, every day, toffee apple!
Note: In July of 2000, I told twelve minutes worth of this story in a workshop called WE CRIED SO HARD WE LAUGHED, conducted by myself, my daughter Lucy Duncan, and Roslyn Bresnick Perry, at the National Storytelling Conference in Kingsport, TN. The focus of the workshop was using humor to crack the trauma of our experience so it can be shared in story. I wasn’t feeling all that well the day of the workshop; I was between chemo treatments, fairly stable, but ravaged by shivers from my medications and the persistent air-conditioning. Chemotherapy manages to reduce a person’s IQ by at least 30 points. There were brilliant storytellers in the audience. I didn’t think they’d miss 30 points, but I knew I did! I also feared I might forget the whole story in the middle. That’s exactly what happened. Roslyn & Lucy tried to prompt me, but I just hung loose there, worried, and the story came back. So the telling became a lecture/demo! Daily, something happens, and I note it, and the story extends. Eventually, I suppose, it will be a small chapbook, or a performance piece, who knows? Many people, I've realized, just want to do the treatments, get it over with, and go back to their normal lives as quickly as possible. Some don’t even want anyone to know they’ve had it. I respect these responses. Employed women have been demoted or fired because they took sick-leave for treatment. But once cancer drew me into its dance, once I realized I had been thoroughly initiated, I knew I could never be the person I was before. My toes are bruised and numb because my dancing partner is sometimes very heavy-footed, but this is a dance of essence, and I’m just learning the beat.
Storyteller NANCY DUNCAN was born in Indiana, reared in Illinois and Georgia, and went to Iowa City, Iowa, in 1958 on a scholarship to the Writer's Workshop, where she met and married printer Harry Duncan.
Winter Solstice 2000 - Omaha, NE
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WOW what a year! I never dreamed I'd run into such a stream of events, nor that I'd survive them, and yet here I am, writing you a letter. Last year at Xmas we were all in Georgia welcoming Graham Garner, Lucy's fiancee, from Croydon, England. My baby brother, Tom Kimmel, has built a magnificent cabin up on stilts on Prince Mtn., near Cherry Log, GA, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, and we snoozed, hiked in the national forest, ate and talked, laughed and played Fictionary to our heart's desires.
I came home to the sad news that my big show, Always/Never Coming Home , was not going to be booked into the Lied Center in Lincoln for its run in April "because the Center had lost too much money on a big show and had to use the space for money makers."
I was busy working, getting ready to walk into the busiest April ever, when on March 10th I discovered a big lump in my right breast. It was hard as a rock & felt like a pencil hiding under the skin. I got up and looked at it in the mirror and from the hardness and the dimpling, well, it had to be cancer. All was confirmed six days later following a biopsy and then scheduled for surgery on March 21st.
I am sure that some of you have been through this, but for those who have not, I want to say that the mixture of terror and curiosity were profound. I fired God several times that first weekend and hired her back. Then I proceeded to hire all the thousands of minor gods, the goddess of eyelashes, the god of wonderful beds, the elf of laughter, the spirit of hand-holding, the nymph of zinnias.
Peggy decorated my lawn the night before my operation, and when I walked out of the house to go to the hospital, there were 60 vibrantly colored pinwheels spinning their hearts away in the violet beds.
Surgery was quick, extreme, one whole breast disappeared into a now thin and rather dainty scar along with eleven lymph nodes, two of them containing infiltrating ductal carcinoma. But after ten days of recovery, I drove off to Lincoln and did 17 school shows in one week.
I don't think they were my best ever storytelling; I know they weren't, but I did learn a lot about telling that week, and how to lean back into myself and listen to the audience. I was telling the story of Tushi and said, "This wedding present was the best of all. What do you think it was?" A little second grader immediately thrust her hand into the air and sat patiently, absolutely secure in her knowledge of the right answer. When I finally called on her and she exclaimed, "It was a KITTY!", and I asked her how she knew, she said, "Because, that's exactly what I'd like to have."
I had three festivals booked for the spring: one in KC at the end of April (I made it!), one in Beatrice 7 days after my first chemo treatment (I made it with help from Lucy and JoAnne Ollerenshaw), and one in Sioux Falls, SD, after my hair fell out (I made it with help from Barnaby, who came from Idaho to be my handler.)
I remember Harry sitting on the sofa in the living room after his chemo treatments, grey, in pain, saying "Chemo is HELL." And he is right. I have nothing good to say about it except that it seems to make it possible for me to go on living. There were days when I could do little more than lie on the sofa and groan, and I was grateful that no one was around to hear me. Soup appeared on my doorstep regularly, wonderful soups, one named "The Garden Path," and backrubbers, drive-givers, prayer sayers, hand-holders, bakers, gardeners galore who weeded and chopped and shaped, typists who entered registrations for the Festival, and sweet, sweet phone calls from family & friends I found again, anew.
My hair fell out and hit the bottom of the shower, so I dried myself off, got the camera, arranged the hair in the words that show up in this letter, and took their pictures.
Beatrice and Weezie, though, did not like my new bald self. Weezie teared up: "You don't look like Baba Yaga anymore." They both insisted I wear my hat when out with them in public. They came to pick me up for lunch one day and Weezie said, "Maga, put on your hat." I rebelled against this tyranny: "Weezie, what if, God forbid, you managed to get a really bad haircut and went to school with it, and one of your supposed friends said, 'Louise, you look stupid' How would you feel?" Weezie shrugged, smiled, stared. Her Mama, Jenny, said, "Louise, what's on the outside doesn't really count. What if, when you Dad proposed to me, I had said 'Guy, you are the loveliest person I know and I can't imagine being married to anyone but you, but you are too short." Weezie shrugged, looked at the table, smiled, looked up at me and said, "Maga, put on your hat." Now that about a half inch of hair has softly arrived, they pat me as though I were their new puppy.
Chemotherapy was completed in September; actually, stopped. I found the Taxol regime too hard and didn't take the last one. "Hmmm," said my oncologist, "all the studies are done on eight treatments; none on seven. I suppose 7/8ths of a cup is as good as a full one.
Send me a letter in 20 years that you are still alive and we'll know it worked."
I went off to NY in October to see Lucy who came up from Philadelphia, stayed with Roslyn Perry in her wonderful apartment on W. 24th St., saw Copenhagen and got to have suppers with my nice and friends. I also went to see Dr. Wong in Chinatown, who sent me home with tons of little bags of herbs to brew up and drink twice a day. "We going to build up your Chi, Nancy, your power!" It seems to be working.
I'm also taking classic Yoga and loving the centering, the stretching, the clarity of focus. I'm feeling very well, too well, in fact, for I find myself slipping back into the momentum of my life pre-cancer, and I don't want to go there. I meet women daily who want their cancer to be over so they can get back to life as it was, to being normal. I hope not. I don't want to have just looked down the road I saw when I was sick with cancer. I want to turn the corner and walk all the way to the end.
Hail to the gods of ordinary things.
October 2, 2002
Dear J and J,
Please excuse this computered letter; you are being spared my handwriting.
I’m so terribly sorry that you have been given this maddening disease. DAMN!
There it is, we can’t change it, BUT if I ever find my magic wand, you will get to use it first.
If some angel came to me and said “ Choose, Nancy: go back to your life
before cancer & never have it, or go on as you are.” I honestly don’t think I would go back because cancer has changed me. It certainly has not made me a better person, but it has validated the things I value most and has done exactly what you said on the phone: up front, cancer asks us to live the way we have always said we intended to live, second by second, breath by breath, present in the moment and to the light in each of us. It’s a
worthy task master with very heavy feet, stepping on a lot of toes, but, just the same, it has
been a gift to me. There are aspects of this BIG C trauma that I wanted to tell you about.
Unlike a heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s, or sudden death by accident,
cancer gives us some time to get ourselves and our families ready for the next step, for the
rest of our journey, and I think this is a great gift because it tells us in no uncertain
terms: “This is your time, use it well.” Even so, the time is too short because, in our
remaining days, we, sometimes painfully even, KNOW vividly and deeply how beautiful this world is, how graceful and lovely are those we love, and how little we want to leave them.
Just the realistic thought of it breaks our hearts over and over. All around me I see
people avoiding the heart break, operating in a forced bravado, hiding their tears, but
somehow the tears are healing, necessary, and in themselves, transforming. Danish storyteller
Isak Dinesen says that all of the troubles of the world are eased by salt: sweat, tears,
and the sea! My tears help my children because my tears acknowledge their tears and we grow
closer within them. So, both of you, cry, let everyone see it, ride the roller
coaster of this journey the way Larry Gillick had to ride that real roller coaster in his past when
he stepped into the gap between the cars. Terrified when he realized where he was, he had to
trust the hands of his friends to pull him in.
Cancer also allows us to prepare for a good death. This preparation and
process is something we give to those who love us and follow us. Harry was able to do
this eminently well. Patiently and gracefully, he became filled with light, and
drifted away from us as he flew into the arms of God. We were all there. We held his hands.
Even two year-old Bea and Weezie. Unconscious, he waited for Guy to come back from
the zoo with the kids. It was natural. It was essential. He taught us how to a way
to do it. I know that this is not always possible for everyone; sometimes pain management
robs us of the ability to think, and I hear tales daily of deaths that are made tense
and painful by the struggle of doctors to keep the patient alive and the patient’s need to go.
Cancer allows you some time to make this clear to yourself and to your family and to
facilitate your transformation with dignity. Hospice is a brilliant assistance in this
struggle. Harry benefited from their work. I intend to do so too if at all possible.
My young friend David Barker’s suicide this summer still has me reeling in
grief and anger. I feel as though he meant, by killing himself, to kill all of us who
loved him. I know he was on some kind of downward spin with medication, but his death
underscores the gift of cancer. It allows us to say goodbye, allows those who love us to grieve
with us, to love us openly and to be able to help us (especially when we are so used to
being the helper and don’t know very well how to receive the gifts of love) - this is
a true gift. And knowing you both, I know that you will, in your own unique ways, make good
use of this
time.
Realize quickly that you are in charge and you have to be for your own sake.
No one doctor, surgeon, oncologist, internist, nurse, no one person was overseeing
all my treatment - I had to do it and make the decisions as I saw fit - and it meant
educating myself more than I wanted to be educated about breast cancer.
In the meantime, live and try to live, because HOPE is perhaps the most
potent and resilient healer. I am staying alive because of the work my weekly doses of
antibody. I suspect this drug will work for another three years or so if I’m lucky, and
then my cancer will figure out a way to get around it. But by then there may be a new drug!
Pancreatic cancer is totally different, but so is every single cancer totally different
because of our own unique chemistries and attitudes. In three years there may be a cure, or
another drug to extend my life. I’m looking for that drug, but I also know that if I have to
go through the horror of chemotherapy again, I am not sure I will choose it. Through genome
experiments and the use of a person’s own cells to heal them, scientists are
finding clues to what’s really going on with cancer and how to defeat it. So, I’d recommend
going to M.D. Anderson, to Mayo, or UNMC and get yourself into a trial for one of
these techniques. They are so much less invasive than traditional chemotherapy and
perhaps you’ll be given the days that I’ve been given by the antibody, days of
sweetness.
I also recommend finding a doctor you like, with a nurse who likes you. It
makes a huge difference. Stefanie found me such a doctor & nurse at UNMC, Beth Reed & Anne
Privitera, and even though I felt I had to do therapy with Beth every time I
saw her for the first two years because she seemed to shield herself rigidly from knowing me
as a person (ARGH- doctors are taught to shield themselves; it’s got to be a damaging and
dangerous training), we broke through that when my cancer metastasized. This makes a
difference to ME. I am happy to be going in for treatment and happy to receive it because I
have a relationship with them that is not JUST illness.
What I am most afraid of for myself in this journey is that I will lose my
mind to pain, so I’ve asked my internist, Ed Taylor, to watch for me and if I’m unable to
think for myself, to allow my family to think for me and to help them let me go when my body
says “enough, already, enough!” That’s a good time when it comes, because it’s
natural, it’s the way it is meant to be.
Thank you for being sweet, wise and loving to Guy. Thanks to you both for
allowing me a place in your extended family. Thanks for your role modeling and loving of
the grandchildren we share, adore, and are daily instructed by. Thanks for Dan
and making it possible for Harry and me both to know and love him. Thanks beyond telling
for Jenny. Her presence in my life is important surpassing her presence to Guy and the
girls. She moderates and strengthens me with her wisdom and clarity. I admire her and
am invigorated by her friendship. I also admire the way your children and
grandchildren learn from you and how it helps to make them who they are. They’ve internalized you in a good and powerful way, and daily, long after we old folks are gone, we’ll
continue to live within them because they’ve learned to talk to us in their hearts.
OK, enough already!
Here’s a story from Crete:
A man who loved his island, Crete, as he loved himself, died. He loved his
island so much that as he lay dying, he scooped up some of the dirt of his island and held
it in his hands. He found himself standing at the gate to heaven. God came out and welcomed
him, but as he started to walk in, God said, “Uh, oh, you’re going to have to let go of
that dirt, you don’t need it here.” And the man refused, saying he could not leave it
behind, so he stayed outside the gate, holding the dirt in his fists. Daily God would come
out and sit with him, leaning against the fence, talking, sharing drink and stories, but
daily the man refused to enter without his fistfuls of dirt. He became a very old ghost,
and finally, one day, God came out of heaven and said, “You’ve kept your vigil long and well,
but come inside now, it’s time. See, you have already lost half of that dust, it’s
sifted through your fingers.” And it was true, while he had been sleeping there by the gate, his
hand had fallen open and there was very little dust left. God took him by the hand and the
remaining dust fell from his palm and was blown away in the wind. He passed through the
gate, smelled the sea, saw the light reflected off the blue of the Mediterranean, and there
before him was his beloved island, Crete.
Death is real, but no more real than the life we share and shall continue to
share. Let’s breathe deeply, all of us, and continue to live in the Spirit.
If there is any little thing, or big thing, like getting my trees out of your
barn, that you want me to do, ask and I will do it, gladly.
With much love for you both,
