On No Sorrow

I've been avoiding this post for days, not wishing to fetishize the death of my friend, nor to question it away...nor to draw attention to myself as a great tribute-writer or some sort of paragon of "how to accept death with equanimity." Today the words will have their way.

Here's my sweet Betty, who passed away, her partner wrote, "with grace and beauty," out of pain and happy, on Friday night, March 30. This was the second bout of cancer in her body that I am aware of; after successful treatments for lesions in the brain last month, more lesions were found in her spine and she opted not to continue treatments. Hospice was called in and in her last days, Betty was surrounded by loved ones and, I like to think, other angels such as she.

Betty and I were not close in the way I used to think closeness meant: we had no weekly or even monthly phone calls or emails, we never visited each other at our homes or took trips together. We lived on opposite sides of the country for most of our acquaintance and hers was not the name that first came to mind in my times of need; yet I would gladly have flown to her bedside if called upon (and I understand she wanted no visitors). Instead I sent Reiki, love notes and photos.

She told a friend she would love a call from me; I didn't call in time. I'm not sad about it; I realized any desire to speak to her was not for her but for me. Our last words were exchanged many months before her diagnosis and I am sure they were loving words, as ours always were to each other. Now I can talk to her whenever I want to...and I do.

Betty and I bonded not simply over The Work but over our mutual passion for writing. She was a talented essayist and wanted to write about The Work for publication, as I had done. She sent me her gems for editing and critique; she struck me as so generous and ego-less with the things she loved.

At a School for The Work, some of the staff staged a skit based on The Sound of Music, called "The Sound of Questions." (Guess who played the Mother Superior?!) As "Sister Willingnessa," Betty gave an adorable performance as an innocent nun who sees the light of her own truth while inquiring into the Ten Commandments with "Sister Katie."

"But I don't covet anyone's wife!"
"Go in, sister..."
"Oh...oh now I see...my mother was a wife and (crying) I wanted my mother to love meeeeeee!"

It was just a few seconds' worth of dialog but she was so sweet and engaging, I will never forget it.

A friend who was at her bedside wrote, "Betty is teaching me to live through her dying." What I can say is that Betty taught me how to live through her living. Knowing her, she didn't miss out on one precious second of her last days of life. As someone who is "alive," I cannot say the same for myself yet. When I got the news of Betty's diagnosis, I had her in the grave immediately; for a little while, believing my thoughts about illness and death, I was under the ground while she, so clearly, was living a full life. While she was still in treatment, she wrote me that a core of peace always remained untouched by drugs and hospital visits and the mental fogginess that occurs with brain cancer. And, she said, it took hard work to stay focused on recovery. I love that she knew when to stop, that she never gave herself anything less than the best that was available.

The day prior to Betty's passing, I felt weak and experienced lower body aches from an impending flu. I kept thinking how she'd be so graceful and present with that pain and it has helped me to be with the discomfort without war. (WWBD: "What Would Betty Do?") That night, as a friend and I were talking about her on the telephone, we simultaneously experienced Betty in us, as us. Here as my very self she remains, so abundantly present that I cannot grieve her death or miss her.

Rest well, sweet Sister Willingnessa. I love you so much.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Grief Isn't Love

Sometimes when I set out to self-facilitate a session of transformational inquiry (download the "Judge-Your-Neighbor" worksheet at thework.com), it's because I'm feeling stressed in the moment about a specific situation or person. At other times it just comes to me to work on something that isn't in my face at the moment...a ghost of an old story that seems to be lingering in ways I'm not entirely clear about.

I'm preparing to move from New York to California and in an attempt to lighten my load, I've been sorting and tossing through many years' accumulation of belongings. Just before the new year, while going through some old notebooks, I came across a page of thoughts about my maternal grandfather, who died when I was 10. I loved him very much and his passing was difficult for me. I think about family often during holiday times and it seemed appropriate to do The Work on this beloved one during this time of new beginnings and intentions of peace.

My grandfather and I were very close. I was his youngest grandchild and he seemed to favor me. When my grandfather -- whom I called Zayde -- suffered a stroke, our extended family life changed radically because he was very much the glue that held us together. Photographs of my grandparents' 50th anniversary party portray stoic or resigned adults and the subdued, sad little faces of my eight-year-old self and my not-much-older cousins. There is nothing celebratory about those pictures.

When Zayde died two years later, my parents were having problems with each other while also in the middle of moving to a new home; they weren't answering most of my letters from summer camp and they didn't let me know my grandfather had passed. By the time they came on Visiting Day and told me, the funeral had already happened. I was furious with them and from that time onward I shut down to them. My belief for many years was, "There's no one left to love me." (Many of our most punitive thoughts take hold when we are very young.)

I wrote about Zayde: that I was sad and angry with him because he left me alone and unloved. For so many years I had not been aware of that anger, which I directed towards my parents and myself instead. I went back to the place of being 10 and saw what I did to myself for 37 years, holding this belief as the truth...how I lived a life out of loss and depression and believed it would be that way forever.

One of the insights I received from working on this belief came from the turnaround, "There's no one left to love him." From this I see that grief is not the least bit loving. It blinded me to what was wonderful and beautiful about my grandfather, even after the stroke when he was weakened and seemed not to recognize his grandchildren, couldn't speak, couldn't move much without help and often wept.

What I'm remembering now about that time is that he allowed people to help him, that he was vulnerable and could express his feelings in tears (he used to shout before!), that he could still read the Yiddish newspaper (not the English one though) and that he and my grandmother did celebrate 50 years of marriage in spite of none of us feeling festive.

I remember how he gentled into his age and condition, not fighting it. Wizened in size, he sat in a chair in the living room with sheets wrapped around him and under him, a pillow propping his back. Thinking back, he was quiet and smiley and small and skinny, a Jewish Gandhi. If I hadn't been so self-centered it might have been very sweet to be in his company that way. He and I had never conversed much to begin with -- he had a thick accent and I didn't understand a word he said! I used to sit in his lap and he'd stroke my hair. If I'd known better, after his stroke I could have held him instead of recoiling from kissing the paralyzed side of his face.

I used to believe that if I didn't grieve it meant I didn't care, that I was a cold person...so I became very good at grieving. I have excelled in mourning failed relationships and missed opportunities. That doesn't feel like love to me.

Grief isn't love. At long last and at the perfect time, it is good to know this.

© 2005 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.