Good luck and goodnight Abigail. We love you so much.

Image credit: Abigail holds a bird given to her by her medical team. 

It's given in honor of finishing her last round of chemotherapy and with the message, "Spread your wings and fly." From her Facebook photo album. 

I first posted this 9 years ago on 7-29-14 soon after Abigail continued on. Reading about her makes me smile and realize again that who we love becomes part of us. Inseparably so. 

“Where’s the pizza?” my husband asks.

We eat dinner out. He wants to make sure one of us brought the leftovers in from the car and put them in the refrigerator.

“I don’t know,” I respond from my reading chair as he walks over and takes the pizza box resting under my book off of my lap.

Oh.

He smiles gently though doesn’t mention that I still have my sunglasses on. I notice them when it’s hard to read while squinting over Jalaluddin Rumi’s poem about night travelers who search the darkness instead of running from it (Search the Darkness, The Pocket Rumi, edited by Kabir Helminski, p. 53).

I’m dwelling on the part where Rumi says that night travelers are full of light.

Here it is again: adversity is a harvest opportunity. Those night travelers are full of light from a practice of softening and opening while in the darkness of pain.

I think about Abigail, and that she knows about this type of harvest. (I meet her about a year and a half before she is diagnosed with cancer and while I am in treatment for lymphoma. I’m now stable.)

She just died.

Abigail passed from complications during an autologous stem cell transplant. She is thirty-one.  

I’m sad and shocked. I knew she was very sick. I knew about stem cell rescue statistics. So why does her passing feel sudden and unexpected?

Because she thought, spoke, and lived like she wasn’t sick. Well, it’s more than that. She lived a moment as the best ever, even at her sickest. She had that kind of life-loving spirit.

Even when her stem cells are being drawn to save for re-entry later, her “no big deal, I can do this, wait, I can do this with humor and acceptance” comes through. As if giving a White House tour, in a video she says:

“Welcome! Here I am at the hospital…blood being drawn. Stem cells! As you can see, I have a corner view.” She gestures to large windows and raises her eyebrows in jollity, making me wonder if she’s at a five-star hotel. With a click of her tongue, a nod, and grin, she closes with an Edward R. Murrow mimic. “Good luck and good night.” Then she smiles like an Olympian who has already won a gold medal.

And just a few weeks ago when her healthy stem cells were being reintroduced into her body, a group of nurses gather to sing happy birthday. Abigail opened to the love, raised her arms, and directed their song as if conducting a choir.

Abigail was happy.

Overflowing happy. I see it in her short simple videos: a close-up glee of a sparkler aflame, pleasure in seeing rowing crews glide by on a river outside her window, sounds of the Pacific lapping on the shoreline, a recording of her beloved Stanton’s Daffy Duck voice. And the video of a butterfly visit and request: “Butterfly, tell me your secrets.”

I think that butterfly gleaned from Abigail’s secrets. I imagine that large black swallowtail gathering and sprinkling golden pollen dust in a Roald Dahl BFG blow-dreams-into-hearts way. That's how Abigail's attention felt. Being happiness was giving it.

Her happiness is confident and evident in our conversations. Even ones about tough topics.

We talk about how both her brother and my son died unexpectedly. She says, “You know how when someone dies they’re still here?” I smile and tell her about the day a hummingbird flew into my school classroom and landed at my feet when I am in early grief about my son’s passing. Her face lights up as if she knows that bird. She speaks with a heart-connected sparkle in her eye, “I feel my brother nearby like that.” And then we share beautiful and quirky ways we’ll visit loved ones after passing on.

She calls around the end of June.

She talks about the coming stem cell capture procedure. She’s thinking a lot about that. Well, not that exactly. She’s thinking about love. And those who love her.

She hopes so much that they feel her love. I listen to what I believe is one of the most precious soliloquies I’ve ever heard about her deep and abiding love. Her voice sings in joy.

In love.

She loves them, and she knows they love her. She can feel it.  It’s like nothing else matters. There is nothing else to do.

I feel like I’m part of a privileged awareness.

I take in her message.

She thanks me for listening and ends with what she tells everyone she meets, “I love you so much.”

I miss Abigail. I think of all those people missing her right now. Her fearless journey reminds me that love enlarges when I face difficulty with an open heart in community with others. Her passing invites a high calling: face your joy and despair at once.

With inner brilliance beacons, Abigail shows us how. 

Published 7/29/14. 
Republished in celebration of beautiful Abigail, with love and tenderheartedness for her Mom, JoLynn.

NOTE: Pondering that comment Abigail made about visiting someone in quirky ways after passing on—twice in the last months, my phone rang for a FaceTime call invite by Abigail while I was in the middle of a call. Why hello, Abigail.

A shift in my thinking comes sometime between walking meditation and Thây’s last talk

Calligraphy, Thich Nhat Hanh

I recently was on retreat at Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi, with about 900 others and Thich Nhat Hanh (Thây) and a monastic community. This is the fifth consecutive post in a series of six about my experience. Originally published in October 2013.

Around the last day of the retreat, I decided to let go of the fact that I have incurable cancer.

Thây helps me with this decision.

It isn’t a lightning bolt shift in perspective. The change feels more like a soft, gentle soaking in rain.

I remember it like this:

Sometime between walking meditation and Thây’s last talk, there is a session where he invites questions.

Questions such as “How do I deal with my angry friend?”, “Is it possible for humankind to achieve world peace?”, “How do I let go of the fear of someone dying?” and “Should communities organize in civil disobedience to reduce violence?” They grab my be-here-now attention. I feel my mouth open in marvel at the profound simplicity of his responses.

So you want to help?

Start with yourself. Heal yourself. Breathe. Smile. Practice kind, loving speech. Honor all life. Be generous. Make peace with your body, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, and if you know how to do that, you’ll inspire others to do the same. Consume peace. Be peace. Learn to listen deeply. Allow sharing. Don’t interrupt. Give time and space. Start anew. Write love letters (rather than protest letters). Give your time and energy to creating a happy family and community. Practice diligently.

I realize the retreat is designed to practice all of this. 

My fears about our world left entirely after my first walking meditation. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.

Thây leads. Though it is 85 degrees, he wears his winter coat, scarf, and hat. I wonder if his need for heavy clothing is about how much energy he gives off.

Children hold his hands. We walk together. In silence. (During the retreat, film and photography were taken for Walk With Me. I see myself in this photograph and feel grateful for the memory.)

Ten minutes into the walk I feel a rising tide of peace, as if I’m part of a larger walk. Others’ steps echo ours—people such as Susan B. Anthony, the Freedom Riders, Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, the Peace Pilgrim, and Malala Yousafzai. I feel like I’m part of a moving river of peace.

My question about whether there will be peace in the world disappears. Peace already is—its river is already moving. 

I feel a connection to the cloudiness of my personal wellness. That river of peace is not just about our world. It’s about my well-being (and yours).

  

Spontaneity (and goosebumps) during an Omega Institute retreat with Pema Chödrön

An image from Is Nothing Something by Thich Nhat Hanh, author, and Jessica McClure, illustrator. It's a book of kids' questions and zen answers. I chose this image because it tenderly reflects the grace of a tender teacher connection.

Through my monitor, she looks me straight in the eye and calls my name.

Who? Pema. That’s who. Pema Chödrön.

I wasn’t even going to ask a question. But I did. I wanted to feel connected with her, my beloved teacher and look, lucky me.

So Pema looks through my screen and says, “Susan….

Susan…people say that if I look straight into the camera, you’ll feel the connection…so Susan….”

Oh, I feel it. I hear her call my name and feel my heart beat faster.

Okay, wait. Back up.

Why is Pema calling my name?

Pema Chödrön presented a three-day retreat at Omega Institute called Touching the Present: Exploring the Nature of Self (May 2015). I registered to attend in person, but it is sold out. So I chose the next best thing. I joined thousands of others and attended online. After Pema teaches, she invites questions. People line up at a microphone to share a personal struggle within the context of the lesson. A lot of people are in line. Getting to the front of the queue is rare.

My question is asked by an Omega moderator. He says, “I have two questions. Do you want the easy or hard one first?”

Pema says, “The hard one.” (Of course.)

That turns out to be mine. (Oh.)

I haven’t asked a question at any retreat I’ve attended online or in-person. This one came spontaneously. I wrote it to help clarify and personalize her teachings. I had no expectation it would be answered.

My question: “Will you talk about illness as not me and instead as part of a creative process?”

Then the moderator adds the other sentences I wrote as context.

“I have incurable cancer. This workshop invites an investigation of illness as both me and not me. I want to view illness as a river, constantly moving and changing, with anything possible. I want to love this illness that teaches me openness and shows me that I am not what or who I think I am.” 

I’m curious about why I asked that question. I don’t now think of myself as having cancer, though sometimes fear or unpleasant memories return. I’m really asking how to process any serious difficulty, especially the biggies like illness, aging, and dying.

Pema says, “It sounds like you know an awful lot already. At least conceptually you understand what we’ve been teaching and the direction you want to go.”

(Admission: I know a teeny, tiny bit. I'm stable, not in pain, and still giving up the idea of "me" as some fixed thing, like cancer.)

The conceptual understanding she refers to is in her lesson about the skandhas—aspects and functions of the body (form) and mind (feeling, perception, labels, mental formations, and consciousness). Pema's lesson investigates what it means to be human and live with presence, and the skandhas study helps us explore emotional reactivity. (I'm reading this book to gain an understanding of the retreat teachings.)

So, okay, I kind of understand the concept.

I want active, practical application to learn how to live the hardened, tight breath that comes when I'm afraid. 

Pema continues:

“So the instruction is mostly to take to heart and apply [what you learn here] over and over, moment-by-moment, when you get afraid and when your thinking mind begins to create unpleasant scenarios. Just keep coming back again and again to your body and mind as a direct experience. If you can, experience your illness at the level of your sixth consciousness [mind], which is to say, with an innocent awareness that does not escalate or elaborate.

[Admission: "Experience with an innocent awareness that doesn't escalate?" Okay, my head gets it. Now if my head would hold hands with my heart.]

Sogyal Rinpoche [author of the book, The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying] says an interesting thing. When you relate to your sense perceptions at the 6^th consciousness, it creates a little gap, and that little gap makes a significant difference in how you’re going to perceive your world.”

There’s that gap again.

Pema continues, “So what I take from Sogyal Rinpoche’s story is even if it’s just a moment of fresh take—an egoless take on your illness free of storyline, the physical discomfort, and the gut reaction, whatever it might be, just relate to it at the first level over and over again.”

The first level she refers to is a body as form.

This is such a challenging practice, and her next words remind me of that. “Usually, you’re not at a place where you can stay there yet.”

YET. That is one of my new favorite words.

The place I’m not at yet is open spaciousness. Well, actually I am open to spaciousness for the first seconds when I fall into my comfy bed at night and sometimes in meditation. I completely relax and let go.

(Just for now, I imagine doing that. Susan, fall with a deep breath onto your bed or into your favorite chair. Soften. Breathe easy. Hang loose.)

So, I do know this spaciousness. 

I just don’t yet know the full potential of that expansive space when I’m in mental or physical pain. When pain shows up, the tendency is to tighten, not open. I want to feel a fall-into-my-bed fresh sense when it shows up.

I'm curious about my response process to the effects of chemotherapy and 3 years of monoclonal antibody therapy. I want to be able to embrace mental or physical pain without escalating my feelings or elaborating on what is happening. What do I mean by elaborate? An elaboration is when I label what's happening as good or bad, ugly, unfair, character-building, etc., or spin a story based on my ever-changing perceptions. 

Pema ends with, “Sogyal says that just creating that little pause, the little gap, makes a significant difference in how you perceive your illness.”

I’m exploring that.

Image: Pema, a precious presence. Andrea Roth, photographer. From the Pema Chodron Foundation website.

A thousand cranes folded, being and sharing peace, a wish and a surprise

Susan Folds Peace Cranes, Jessi Helmrich, painter. Throwing a kiss to Jessi.

Three months ago I began packing for our trip to Cortona. I included in my luggage papers to fold peace cranes. I was just shy of a hundred to reach my goal of folding a thousand.

I began the crane-folding project four years ago after a call from Clare, Terry's sister, telling us that her breast cancer had metastasized to her lungs and bones.

I was not new to cancer. I was also in treatment and I'd been a caregiver to Terry through two diagnoses, one far-advanced. 

Clare's new diagnosis got my attention in a "wake-up, Susan" kind of way. I realized anew that I am a visitor on this beautiful planet for a short time. 

I can't remember the first crane I gave away. I just started doing it. I do know that I started folding to work with painful feelings around her diagnosis. As I fold, I use this sweet crane to become aware of my breath, breathing in and breathing out, giving attention to the gap between breaths. I think about all the people in the world who have cancer or love someone who is very ill. I'll breathe in my discomfort and heck, while I'm at it, I'll breathe in the discomfort of all others in a similar situation. I'll exhale comfort to them and myself. 

The last crane is for Clare. The legend goes like this: after folding a thousand cranes a wish is granted. I'll give the crane and wish to Clare.

So who is the giver and who is the receiver? Here's what I'm learning. Life is give and take. Not give or take. So this means, each time I give a crane, I receive. I receive things such as smiles, comments, and hugs. A thousand times. Just imagine the joy. Gandhi says, "The fragrance remains in the hand that gives the rose." 

Project Cranes for Clare ends here in Cortona with a gift-twist. When I arrived in Italy, I gave cranes to students. Jessi Helmrich was one of those students. A few weeks later she said, "I've thought a lot about this. I would like to paint your portrait folding the cranes and memorialize this gift."

She did and then gave it to me after we arrived home. 

Opening to the thorny parts of life, a sunset, and thoughts of William and Becky

Hug Me, Simona Ciraolo. 
Simona is a Sardinian born author and illustrator who studied animation in Turin, Italy. Simona's shop. Find her on Tumblr. Hug Me is a children's book celebrating connection and inner softness. Image via Brain Pickings. 

This morning I read about how to live with endless inspiration and love. The message: Live open-heartedly. Simply allow life experiences to come in and pass through your being (Michael Singer).

Let experience come in and pass through? 

Yes. For example, when I'm walking to Le Celle (I'm in Cortona, Italy), I pass hundreds of olive trees. Those trees don't stick to my thoughts. I don't begin to judge the tree's leaves as needing to be another color or its branches as less crooked or whether there will be enough olives in my pasta tonight. I walk by and see the tree, take it in, let go, and see the next one. No issues. Same with the wildflowers I pass. I don't worry that crocus stamens are too delicate.

I see and let go so that I'm aware for the next moment.

Well, I decide that today I'll practice letting all of my experiences come in and pass through. I'll go with the flow. No problema.

So it's late afternoon and I decide to walk to the university to read email and write. As I head up the hill, I feel pink light envelope me. I turn and look.

Oh my.

Close your eyes and imagine this experience.

Bring forth from your memory the most spectacular sunset of your life. Think big sky with tangerine-oranges and pinks gradating to reds, magenta, indigo, and violet. Above that color, place patches of cerulean blues.

Next, place an expansive valley of terraced olive groves and vineyards with mountains in the distance. Highlight the mountainous silhouette in yellow-white light.

Then saturate those colors, all of them. Deeply.

I put my book bag on the ground, and walk to the waist-high Etruscan wall, lean on the edge, and gaze longer at the sunset. My breath grows deep and slows. 

I know enough about the science of sunsets that right now I'm only seeing a fraction of its stunning breadth. I’m struck that color is not permanent: the sunlight hitting me now is leftovers from the west, perhaps even yesterday's Florida or Houston sky.

Which reminds me that everything is connected. I take that in.

Moments pass.

A large bat flies by.

The bat circles in a bug feast. Loop de loop, again and again—bat as a child with a flashlight drawing lines.

I take in the experience.

I remember what I read this morning about keeping an open heart. I think, if I can be this open, and oh my goodness, my heart feels flung wide, then maybe I can be this open in any moment in any experience. All I have to do is what this sunset invites: open, relax my heart, and breathe. Let feelings in. Let thoughts come and pass.

That's it.

Okay. Now I'm where I want to be in telling you what happened after I had this wonderful sunset experience.

Well…I notice that I have an itsy bit of arrogance about how well I'm doing. Maybe it's not teeny. No, it's full-blown. Like, "Hey I've got this open-heart thing down, check this off my list."

Which is usually a sign that I'm going to get a chance to grow.

So I get to the university (and WiFi) and open my email.

The first message includes a video of the youngest member of our family and his brother who I see can now swim. I feel like I'm missing out and start randomly trading, well everything, for a chance to hug those two bundles. The next message includes a photo of seven of our grandkids dressed up, and longing joins my missing-family feeling. Then a message from a loved one, and all of a sudden a lump of homesickness saddles up and canters into my heart.

I breathe and feelings swirl, settle for a while, and pass.

But then this.

I read an email from my dear friend and yoga teacher, Becky. She and her husband, William, are at MD Anderson Center where he continues treatment for a serious illness and she continues to care for him.

There you go. Now there's something to work with.

A little humility creeps in. Life isn't always a magenta sunset.

Thoughts and feelings about illness and caregiving don't pass through easily.

I know: I have cancer and I've cared for my husband through two cancer diagnoses, one late-stage. So I'm intrigued about how to stay open.

After reading Becky's message, I'm wondering about this morning's reading and thinking about softening and opening to the thorny parts of life. Is the practice of opening my heart when life is tough really the same as my experience of watching the sunset?

Yes. Every book I've read and teacher I've listened to says yes.

It's painful. (Sometimes it's impossible for me to open.) And I realize that I often read teachings and think practicing what I read is easy. I sometimes even think I should…you fill in the blank. I should be able to do or think or feel or let go and let it all pass. But softening and opening is grueling work.

I have a tender memory of a young woman standing in line at a Pema Chödrön retreat. Pema had just finished talking about softening instead of hardening when things fall apart. She suggested that we sit with our pain: "Let your thoughts and feelings come and go."

So, it's this gal's turn. She goes to the microphone and says, "Pema, but what if a person is really ill, even dying? How does someone open to that? How do I open to watching this person suffer?"

I remember Pema's answer. And her face.

Pema sat for over a minute. She looked out at the woman. She blinked slowly. She swallowed, looked down, swallowed again and looked up and into the woman's eyes. I could see Pema breathe and soften, and I could see that it was painful to answer. Clearly, Pema had personal experience with this question.

In a whisper of a voice she said, "It takes a lot of courage."

Just remembering this and typing it now makes me cry.

My cancer is stable. I'm well. My husband is cured of his two cancers. But William and Becky, and too many others, are actively practicing softening their hearts to extreme challenge.

Moment-to-moment.

Everyday.

So I want to hold up and acknowledge the courageous heart that opens to deep pain and fear.

If I were to imagine the color of this type of courage, you know, what a heart of such softness and strength might look like, it probably would appear as the grandeur of that most-beautiful-ever-sunset I saw tonight.