A friend celebrated her 50th birthday by jumping out of a plane: Sky-diving. She lived, and she loved it. I was puzzled. I know I will never do that – it just is not in me to leap out of a perfectly good plane. Sometimes I have experiences that feel like my imaginary sky-dive feels. Terrifying, out of control, and new. Some of them have had a lot to do with cancer.
My mom was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer 5 years ago. I was diagnosed with Clear-Cell Cervical Cancer in 2014. After my surgery my mom said “Now our insides match!” Indeed, our outsides match a lot too. When people see us together they comment that we are very alike. We are alike, but one thing that dialoging with cancer has revealed is that we are both alike and different when it comes to our theology. Mom fits well in the Humanist world of Unitarian Universalism. I fit with the more spiritual folks, specifically the earth-based UUs.
Living with cancer and the reminder of our mortality has invited us to dialog about things that matter. We are lucky. We had a close and open relationship already. Cancer has prompted us to move into deeper waters as we both learn to swim with our diagnoses and our new realities.
We both ask hard questions. Questions like “What actions are most important now?” I ask myself, “How do I want to be remembered?” and she asks, “How will I be remembered?” These questions create more questions like, “What happens after death?” and “Who am I?”
Mom’s journey with cancer is reaching a visible end. She enrolled in hospice just before Christmas and is making decisions about the limited time she has left. Questions of what to do and with whom? My journey with cancer is open-ended. My 3 and 6-month checkups show N.E.D.: No Evidence of Disease. This presents me with decisions about how I want to use the gift of time that I have been given.
During my visit with my mom last week we talked about what happens after death. We leaned against each other on the black leather sofa, listening to the rain outside, and watching their puppy demolish a bone. I offered a poem by Kentucky poet Judy Sizemore, in her book Assymetry, titled “Clearing.” as a possible answer. Spiritually, I find the poem comforting because it describes the poet’s death and transformation into mushrooms, flowers, and a great tree.
Mom countered, saying that turning into parts of nature feels small to her. It limits what you have to offer to the physical. She wishes to transform in a different way. She hopes to live on in the many students of her writing classes, in her daughters, and in her books and stories. She offered a humanist counterpoint to my earth-based poem and we found a poem that made sense to her: “May I Join the Choir Invisible” by George Eliot. Then, as I was preparing for my Martin Luther King Sunday service I saw the same sentiment in one of his prayers. He was expressing gratitude ” … for the lives of great saints and prophets in the past,… for our foreparents, who’ve given us something in the midst of the darkness of exploitation and oppression to keep going.”
I am grateful for her perspective. One of the things I love about Unitarian Universalism is how we are open to the richness available to us from many spiritual sources. I’ve long appreciated the rituals, especially for Samhain, that honored our ancestors and the intangible gifts they pass down to us, but this was the first time I thought of someone I knew well becoming an ancestor and was able to listen to how she would feel about that. I hope that Mom is glad to know her photo will be on my ancestor altar some day and that I, and younger generations of our family, will call on her energy when we sit down to write, or to sing.
As I reflect on my experience of being sick and being pronounced N.E.D. I realize that I feel an added urgency to be my authentic self, and to use my precious gift of time well. Mom’s questions arise because the end of the road is in sight. My questions arise because I expected to be facing the end of the road, but it is suddenly beyond my sight again. I’ve heard from folks who have survived an event when death was the expected result, but they survived. They say “Why did I survive? What purpose am I here to serve?”
I survived. I ask: “Who am I? What am I called to do?”
My earth-based spirituality tells me that birth, growth and death are all equally important parts of the natural cycle and the dying process needs to be honored. It tells me that calling upon ritual and spirit help us through the major transitions (and the small ones as well!). I know part of the answer to my questions is that right now, I’m called to accompany Mom as she experiences her next transformation. I am called to invite conversations about the process despite cultural taboos and our fear of the the painful sadness that comes with these conversations.
Answers to my questions lie in my Earth-based UU faith. Who am I? A precious child of the universe, being born each moment. I know I will mess up. And I know that I am already forgiven. And I know I am loved and held even in the most painful moments. What am I called to do? Serve the spirit of life and love. Serving the spirit of love, right now, includes a lot of dialog. Sometimes I call these conversations the “sky-diving conversations” since starting them feels a little like jumping out of an airplane: scary! But every time I have them, I find that the parachute opens and my mom and I land gently, having shared a soulful experience.
May your “sky-diving” dialogs all have parachutes and may your search for meaning and answers be full of spirit.
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