....in the end she gave me a gift

Yogis,

I lost a very good friend this week.  On Tuesday evening my spunky neighbor, co-party planner, yellow beetle driver and beach lover, Karen died in her home surrounded by the family she adored.  She had been living these last 25 years with an uninvited visitor who came and went several times, arriving at the most unexpected times……cancer.  And she lived those years with incredible grace. 

One of the many things that yoga has led me to come face to face with is death.  The impermanence of our stay here on earth.  Every single one of us will die, some time or another, one way or another.   It is one of the only things that is guaranteed yet is also one of the things no one wants to talk about.  That somehow if we don’t dwell on it, perhaps it won’t pay us a visit. 

Not Karen. 

In the Buddhist tradition you honor death, meditate on it and practice for it.   In the Dalai Lama’s book “Advice on Dying” it begins by saying that until you completely accept death you are not truly living.   By releasing the fear of leaving this physical body you open to the fullness that this human existence offers.  When you make peace with death, what is left to be afraid of?

Watching Karen over this last year has been an amazing learning experience not only for me, but all of us that were fortunate enough to share it with her.  A gift.  Over and over neighbors and friends have expressed how inspired they have been.   While we typically hear about “fighting” an illness or “battling” cancer, it never felt like that was Karen’s approach.  She often told me that she didn’t try to look far into the future, but instead just woke each day and did what the doctor was recommending and what felt right to her.  She didn’t struggle against what was.  She lived in the now.  She “lived fully” with cancer.  And she did it beautifully.

Karen’s sense of humor did not discriminate and cancer was not free from her uncensored remarks.  She laughed about many of the changes she went through, looked adorable on her “no hair” days, and would point out that at least now she was thin.  When I went over at times expecting to console her, instead she made me laugh – because that is who she was – and an illness couldn’t dim her spark.  Several months ago she told me that one thing she wanted was to make it to her 70^th birthday.  I assumed she wanted to enjoy her party, but no.  She wanted her obituary to say she was 70 because when people see 70 they say ‘oh she had a good life’ vs seeing 69 gets the ‘oh taken out in her prime’ response! 

She was a lover of greeting cards and would always send you the absolutely perfect one.  While under the care of hospice she received many and they were all lined up right next to her on a table.  But the ones she made her daughter read to me were of course the funny ones.  She loved them and their irreverence toward the disease she had come to know well.  Even the priest got a taste of her spunk.

Laughing about death.  But when you stop and think about it, what is the alternative?  Which will you choose?

No one knows why some of us become ill while others don’t.  Karen never took it personally.  Toward the end when I asked her how she was doing, she replied that she was doing as well as could expected.  She just needed a new body J  And she was right.  But although her body may have been sick and failing, she most certainly was not.  She is free now, yet on the other hand, to me she always was. 

I hope to live my own death as fully as Karen did. 

I will miss her physical presence immensely,
SARAH