The Long Goodbye

 

April 25, 2019

Today is the first anniversary of Michael’s death. I awakened earlier than I wanted, but I’ve become used to this in the past three years of his dying and death. I find a dense fog outside my window in this near dawn light and I wonder if it will rain, for I intend to do a ritual outside in his honor.

It was Michael’s birthday five days ago, and now it is his death day. I guess that it’s good that these events are coming so close together. I’ve taken most of the week off so that I can move into the deeper psychological and spiritual work of this time.

On his birthday, I got a small pastry, put a candle in it, picked some daffodils, pulled a tarot card, and sang Happy Birthday. I started crying in the middle of the song because it felt so empty to be singing to the remnants of what remains of his earthly life, to be singing into the hollowness of life without him.

As I was shuffling the deck of 78 tarot cards, I kept asking for one card, just one, that would tell me what I need to know about Michael. I was thinking that maybe The Star card would show up, for he has communicated with me and others through the stars. But the card that came was Death. I almost laughed when it turned over, and I almost cried. Of course! He is dead and my task is to accept it.

This made me realize that there’s a new level of acceptance that is attempting to come in, that needs to come in. And it’s all about letting go of the various ways in which I’ve tried to keep Michael alive. I need to finally accept that no amount of crying, or praying, or wishing, or remembering, or meditating, or fantasizing, or writing, in short — nothing –will bring Michael back to me. I need to understand this fully and unequivocally. For I believe that this is the level of acceptance that will begin to bring relief to this endless grief.

I have to confess that I’ve been playing Ghost with Michael for this past year. He would be smiling about my “playing ghost” with him for we had joked about it as he was dying, and he vowed he would play it with me.

You may remember the 1990 movie starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in which Patrick’s character is killed and then comes back as a ghost to protect his lover, Demi. The scene that stands out in my mind is the one in which Demi is creating a clay pot and Patrick’s ghostly form sits behind her, holding her, while she makes her art.

I’ve been doing my own version of this. I’ve been feeling Michael holding my hand for many months now. I ask for him to hold my hand, and I feel a very subtle sense of his hand on mine – warm and comforting. Sometimes I feel him holding my hand even when I haven’t asked. I feel him in my office too, the office I shared with him. And I often feel him when I meditate. I don’t know if it’s really him, but it doesn’t matter. It’s something that’s been happening and I have wanted it to happen.

At this one-year anniversary of his death, I’m realizing that at least for now, I need to let this go. I need to stop playing ghost with him. It keeps him too alive in my mind, and it keeps me from moving forward. And the point, the very necessary and painful point, is that he is dead and gone.

But it’s hard to let go of our loved ones, and the efforts toward communication with our dead feel important. It seems natural that we would strive to continue our connection to them. The bonds of love are so potent and profound, and they weave themselves into our  very Being in unknowable and inextricable ways.

So, there is something about fully accepting that Michael is gone and at the same time finding myself at a vibrational level that can occasionally and consciously commune with whatever remains of his spirit in this realm. But this communion needs to change in some indefinable way. I need to accept that no matter how potent the connection may be, I must move on with my life. It is too lonely and too empty to continue to reach back into our life together in this way. It is too sad to sing Happy Birthday to an empty chair. He is gone. And I remain.

And yet, I don’t know how to accept this. Not really. I’ve got the words, the concept, and even the feeling sometimes. But the level of true and complete acceptance of his loss continues to elude me.

Then I realize that I don’t have to know how to accept this, that in fact, I may not be able to know. Like so many things, I can’t figure this out. No amount of time in my head is going to make this clearer or easier. In fact, just the opposite. Once again, it comes down to trusting the very nature of life. To trusting that life will show me exactly what I need to learn. It comes down to being on my knees again, to asking for help and guidance, and to being humble enough to receive it. I have been on my knees so often in these past several years, and yet, here I am again. It seems to be the only place from which I can begin to know the deeper wisdom.

I go out to the garden where Michael’s ashes are buried, and I clear the space around them. The marker stones from last year have been moved by the harsh winter and I am on my knees as I place them once again in a circle. The giant hosta in the center is just beginning to show its spring growth of stalks and leaves. Among the stones are citrine, and hematite, and quartz, and tiger’s eye. There is aventurine and several pieces of lapis, for that is the stone of Medicine Buddha, and Michael had many of them. There is granite and a mysterious translucent green octahedron. There is obsidian and an unknown stone of orange and black. And there is his pocket Buddha. I know I will take these with me wherever I move for the rest of my life. And I will take the small urn of his remaining ashes.

It is so peaceful here today and I’m surprised to find that I am not crying. Instead I am washed in gratitude and love and the fullness of life.

Now I prepare a ritual by creating a sacred circle with the directions and the archangels and the powers they represent. I light a candle that will burn for 24 hours. It is a Yahrzeit candle from the Jewish tradition for remembering those who are gone, and it is lit on the one year anniversary of their passing. My intention is for the deepest honoring possible. And then, finally, it is about letting Michael go, or at least letting him go a little bit more.

For this is the long goodbye. This year of mourning is ending, and though I know my grief doesn’t end now, this is a signpost of some kind. I’ve made it through this terrible ordeal of Michael’s dying and death, and now it’s time to re-enter the flow of life, it’s time to begin to heal.

Even writing these words brings a fresh round of sorrow. But this is the task and I welcome its completion.

I say these words out loud to Michael and to the Universe as I kneel in the garden. “I fully accept that you are dead and gone. I let go of our life together with immense love and gratitude. Thank you, my love. I ask for help in letting go and moving forward into life’s flow. Help me. Please help me to let go of you, as I ask you to let go of me. Goodbye, my love. I will miss you forever in this life.” Now I cry wholeheartedly, every bit of me is committed to this moment, and once again, I water his resting place with my tears. I close the circle in reverence and silence.

I’m hoping that something is shifting. Today, I am trusting the process, the larger Source. It feels a bit like falling, but I’m falling softly, falling gently into the great mystery. And really, it is so soft that it feels like being held. My heart is being held.

 

 

The Lovers

April 11, 2019

I awakened at 11:11 on the night of the total eclipse in January just in time to go out into the fierce cold to see the Wolf Moon. She appeared bloodied by her movement through the earth’s shadow, bathed in a dusky red light, and floating silently in the bright and the icy night. As I watched her, I couldn’t help wondering what this energy might have in store for me, and in store for the world. Such magnificence and such awe-inspiring mystery. It felt like the end of a difficult cycle.

Then at 3:30 that night I awakened again with a strong sense of a Presence overseeing me, watching me, helping me. I know it was my High Self for a feeling of pervasive peace came over me letting me know that everything is completely perfect.

It hasn’t been feeling perfect though. I have literally been crying every single day for the past five months. Storms of grief pass through me with soft tears or utterly surprising  wracking sobs. I’m deeply grieving for Michael again. I’m not sure why this is happening now except that I’m working on the book about his dying and death, desperately wanting to finish it. It’s a special kind of agony to be revisiting all those feelings again as I write and rewrite the saga of our journey through his illness. It had gotten so difficult that I simply stopped writing for several months. I couldn’t face it any longer.

Maybe the grief started to arise again because of the approaching holidays, or maybe because it had been seven months since Michael died, and for some reason, seven months was yet another time for grief – a weird gestation for a sorrow gone awry. For it had gone awry. I was believing that I was moving on from my grief and that the worst of it was over. I was wrong. All I know now is that grief has its own rhythm and its own intelligence. I’m trying to let this be.

For several months I had tried to dodge my grief. It had been so intense for such a long time, and I am tired of its insistence and its pain. I had spent a few months in a fantasy that things were better, that I was better, that I was figuring out how to leave horrendous loss behind. And maybe I am figuring it out, but I’m realizing I can’t force it in any way. As much as I would like to, I can’t force myself to be done with grief.

When Michael died, I felt a horrible aching emptiness, but to some extent, the grief was still distant because his death was so unimaginable and so unreal. And mixed in with the grief there was a sense of relief – relief that his suffering had ended, relief that I was no longer locked in caregiving for a dying man, relief that I could begin to piece my shattered life back together.

Today, I am no longer distant. There is no distance from the reality of this pain. He is truly gone and now I know it in every part of my being.

I miss him. I miss loving him. I miss his humor. I miss his funny old body. I miss cuddling. I miss laughing with him. I miss crying with him. I miss talking with him. I miss dancing with him. I miss his intuitive brilliant mind. I miss his unshakable faith in spirit. I miss how he played with the dog. I miss his voice. I miss his face. I miss seeing his joy when I walk into a room. I miss being known.

I’m finding that grief is its own animal, its own beast, and its own blessing. It has its own rhythm and it comes and it goes capriciously and unpredictably. And to second-guess that rhythm feels stupid and dangerous.

Stupid, because grief is a completely natural response to loss and to the intricacies of continuing to live without a loved one. I have lost my soulmate and I am keening.

Dangerous, because not trusting the innate intelligence of my body, and my tears, would put me in a compromised position with myself. I would move into a place of distrusting myself and my instincts, and that is crazy-making. I refuse to do it.

And under this, grief is a blessing. For in my grief, I know how much I loved Michael and how much he loved me. And that is worth everything.

Many women have told me that grief takes two years to get through the worst of it, and I’m just now approaching the end of this first year without him. Two years feels like an eternity. But that’s just what people say, and that’s their experience. God only knows if it will be mine. I’m trying not to make predictions or set timelines on this process.

There was a new man in my life – not a lover, but a friend – though lover-ship seemed promised early on. But The Lovers, the card that showed up as the outcome in the tarot reading about our relationship, began to die a rapid and completely surprising death about a month into our relationship, and now we are friends.

I didn’t accept this at first. The lover energy was so strong and so welcome that I wasn’t ready to let it go that quickly. Instead, I found myself building reveries around an imagined life. Not that this was completely my own imagining, mind you. There were statements made early on that fanned the flames of greater union, and I believed them and I wanted them. I greeted this respite from sorrow with open arms, and open heart, only to find a fearful reluctance from my friend who is beset by difficult circumstances.

I had also drawn The Tower card in my tarot reading, The Tower in the position of the self, and I knew that some egoic dream would be shaken to its core. Gradually, I saw that my ego was invested in the idea of who this man and I could become, of what we could be together, of how we would support and love each other. I suppose that those potentialities were truly there, but not in any substantial way. They were a dream, a phantasm that I constructed in order to avoid the grief that underlies my days.

Any fool could have seen what I was doing. Any fool could have known that it was too soon. Any fool would have realized that I was not yet ready for another love. But I am worse than a fool sometimes, and I believed that if love was coming to find me, I should be open to it. For who knows or understands the mysteries of how love arises?

But in my foolishness, I truly wasn’t allowing myself to see who this man really is. Or to see myself. His fear, his issues, and god knows what else, were all in the way. As were mine. Both of us had substantial blockages to being in love.

Several months ago when he said that his aging and his debilitation make it impossible for him to commit to falling in love again, I wrote to him, “Age and decline are not the barriers you make them out to be. In fact, they are the very reason to find the core of life more fervently.”

I believe this. I believe that finding the core of life, finding the heart of love, is the only quest worth pursuing. No matter how old we become, no matter how our bodies deteriorate, love in all of its forms, is the only thing worth doing, or worth being.

But I was still fighting for our love at that time, still hoping that my words might change a situation that really couldn’t change, or wouldn’t change. And mostly, I was fighting to avoid a grief that is so profound that all I want to do is escape its empty silence, an emptiness so deep that its black claws sometimes pull me under on the long nights without Michael.

I’m realizing that my friend is not alone in his fear and weariness over committing to another love. Many of us become frightened by its cost. For the cost is the highest possible. It is our very heart and soul that is at stake, and the more we love, the more we suffer. But it is in the suffering itself where the meaning of life is revealed. It is where our integrity, our truth, and our purity of heart are honed, and there is literally nothing more important than this.

As I look back on this now, I am grateful that the forces of life conspired to show me to myself in this way. And I am grateful to my friend for whatever odd body-wisdom asserted itself and kept us from a relationship that would have ended in flames and further disappointment for both of us.

So, on the night of the eclipse in January, when I awakened at 3:30 in the morning to a gentle sense of all-encompassing peace, it was about both of these men – my dear partner of 35 years, and my new friend who had seemed to promise so much more.

I lay in this peace for hours, feeling its love for me and for my sorrow, and I allowed all of the fantasies to fall away. I allowed the grief for Michael to be the grief that it is, in whatever time and form it takes. I allowed my new friendship to be just that, a friendship with a good man.

Today, months later, there is finally a softness around all of this. I don’t know how else to express it. I feel soft and open and accepting of whatever comes. For today I realize that The Lovers card in my tarot reading wasn’t speaking about my fantasy relationship. It was telling me about my own integration, about the Masculine and the Feminine energies coming together in me in a new and deeper way, about fully loving myself.

So, now I am allowing life to move through me more gently. I honor its vast and mysterious movements knowing that I am learning to trust its vital flow, learning to trust that it will show me exactly how to be, learning that this terrible grief is part of love. And finally, even in this seemingly endless anguish, the cost is truly worth it. For this grief, this enormous weight of sorrow, is exactly the price of love.

 

In Memoriam

May 13, 2018

How does one remember a love so long and true? How can I speak of my love without falling apart, without being down on my knees, without knowing that any words I could ever speak would be inadequate and pale beside the reality?

As far as I know, there have been three miracles around Michael’s death. The first miracle is that I haven’t had a single migraine headache since the day he died, and I’ve had severe migraines for 25 years. In what is certainly the most difficult time of my life, I haven’t had headaches. I believe that Michael took the underlying pattern of my headaches with him when he left. It was his parting gift to me.

Michael was a deeply spiritual man. In fact, our first real conversation outside of work-related things was about our shared excitement over the Seth books and the underlying reality they revealed. We agreed that we both knew that Seth was revealing the Truth. We knew we were being taught the meaning of life and of death. And we knew that few others shared our passion for this spiritual work. I had already loved his earthy quick dry wit, but now something else emerged. I realized I had found a like-minded soul.

From that moment on, each of us looked for reasons to spend time together – to laugh, to speculate, to talk, to agree on how to value the immense beauty of the Mystery that contains us. From that moment on, it was love.

When Michael died, we’d been together for almost 35 years, and we’d known that we were soul mates. When we met, both of us were coming out of relationships that had scarred us, and we were wary. Well, actually, I was wary. Michael already knew we were supposed to be together. In fact, he said that he’d known it on the day we met more than a year before this. All I had known was that this man was interesting, smart, and really funny. And I wanted more.

Through fits and starts we found our way to each other and were married. It was weird for me. I’d always ridden on passion, and though there was a kind of passion, this was a quiet and calm steadiness that continually surprised me. This was a passion that I didn’t understand. This was Michael.

We raised three good boys into three good men together. We hear so many stories of children so damaged by divorce that their lives are shattered. And though there was surely damage, all three of these boys grew into good men, and to a large extent, I believe that this is because of Michael, because of the kind of man he was, the kind of model he was.

Michael was so amazing that without a word from me, he knew how to be with my children. He knew how to play with them, how to make fun out of He Man figures and legos, how to soothe a frightened child, how to calm an angry one. He was a miracle right from the start.

And saying that, it took me awhile to realize what a real miracle he was – for we could talk about anything that arose between us. Granted, it was always me bringing things up, but when I did, he’d go there with me – through all the highs and lows, he never wavered. His patience with my moods, my quicksilver gyrations, my endless questioning became the balm for my soul. I, in turn, became the language of his heart.

He was also brilliant. His knowledge of esoterica and his ability to integrate genuinely difficult information into workable and practical experience was more developed than anyone else’s I’ve ever met.

It was his brilliance and his inspiration that initiated Eastwind School into being. It was mine that engendered Eastwind Healing Center. Neither of us could have done it alone. It was the alchemy of our marriage, the balance of spirit and heart, the magic of true love, that allowed the first integrative medicine center in Iowa to be born. It was here that we learned the language of teaching in the highest sense that allowed so many to be touched by our work together.

Michael was the most spiritually devoted man I’ve ever known. He literally spent his entire adult life studying and practicing various systems of self development. He started with TM at age 19, then went to Seth, then to the Kabbalah, then to The Tree of Life, then to Western magical traditions. Along the way he also studied Tibetan Buddhism, Reiki, energy healing, Chinese medicine, and various other esoteric healing methods. He was literally the most learnèd man I’ve ever known in the integration of strange magic. His whole adult life was spent in the quest for enlightenment.

In December of 2015 we were initiated into the meditational practice of Light and Sound. Four months later, on April 12, 2016 he realized his essential nature, became enlightened, and was forever changed. I do not say this lightly. This was the real thing and it was evident in the deepening calm and presence around him, a presence that pervaded even the most extreme physical difficulties.

At that time, though we didn’t have the diagnosis, he was already suffering from the disease that killed him. Once he was diagnosed and quit working as a psychologist and a healer, he struggled to find some purpose that would fulfill him. He never really found one. In many ways I think that his enlightenment was his purpose, and it is what allowed him to die. He’d done what he set out to do, and really, there wasn’t anything more that he needed from this life.

We called a psychic who we’d relied on through the years for wisdom and guidance. She told him that he would die within two years unless he learned to receive. She kept saying that: “You must learn to receive, you must learn to receive.” She said he had been a healer in many lifetimes, and that in all of those lifetimes he had given more than he’d received, and in that process, he’d created an imbalance that required adjustment. She said that the final learning of this lifetime was to open his heart to receive love from others, not just from me, but from all the many who were willing to give it in ways both small and large.

While he was in the hospital this last month, I did a tarot card reading on the course of his illness. There were 7 major arcana in this reading which is a very strong indicator that one is now in the hands of Fate with little to no ability to control the outcome. In this reading, the outcome card was The Star — the card of transcendence. When I looked at the reading, I knew he was dying soon. I also knew that when the Tower’s lightning bolt struck, Michael was held in the lap of the Great Mother (the Empress). It was clear that he would move into a state of trust and peace (the Fool) that would lead to The Star.

Five days before he died, Michael said that he realized that all the things that involved dying were easily falling into place, while the things that involved living, were not. I don’t think he believed he would be dead within five days, but he did see that death was coming. He had heard his body’s spirit telling him it couldn’t go on much longer, and he accepted it’s message.

He began to cry more easily than he ever had, and this was a man who almost never cried. He cried when people brought food to our door, he cried when friends dropped in for a short visit, he cried over the kindness of the Hospice team, he cried when his son helped him brush his teeth, he cried after meditating because he was so full of love that he was ecstatic and grateful.

I believe that in the end he did learn to receive. He was bedridden and absolutely reliant on others for his care, and his dear spirit became even gentler, even more loving. He started calling me “my love.” “My love, would you be able to get me another drink?” “Thank you, my love.” He’d never done that before and I knew that in his absolute reliance on others for help, he was experiencing a depth of receiving he hadn’t previously realized.

On April 25^th, he woke me up at 3:30 am. This was the second miracle. I had put on sound-deafening headphones because of a barking dog in our neighborhood. I’d also taken a sleeping pill out of sheer exhaustion and a profound need for sleep. Though there was no physical way that he could have aroused me, I “heard” him calling me and I awakened.

I rushed into the living room to find him gasping for breath and demonstrating what I now know is a “death rattle” – his body so full of fluid that he could barely breathe or speak. He was physically in great distress. I hooked him up to oxygen but it didn’t help. Then I started to do energy work around his crown and 3^rdeye and heart, particularly his crown, opening it so that his spirit could fly out easily. At this point tears were flowing down my face and falling on his bald head. I kept saying, “I love you so much, I love you so much.” With his last gasp he said, “…love…you.” His eyes rolled up to the top of his head, there was one last shudder, his eyes rolled down, and he was gone. Our last words were words of nothing but love.

When he died I felt a brief, deep shock, and then, suddenly, I was very, very calm. A peace came over me and I meditated and sat with his body by myself until Hospice came and then my brother and his wife awakened.

My brother’s wife came into the living room where Michael’s body was laid and said she had a headache. She said it was a weird headache in that she was seeing stars. I said it sounded like it could be the aura that precedes a migraine. I asked her if she wanted some medication but she said it didn’t really hurt.

And here is the third miracle: On their way back to Colorado, my sister-in-law told my brother that she’d realized that the only time she saw stars was when she was looking at Michael’s body. Clearly, he was sending us all a message.

The peace of Michael’s death has remained in our home. I am in deep grief, but there is a level of stillness that wasn’t here before. I know he went to the Stars.  Finally, he has found his way back home.

 

 

Thin Ice

December 21, 2017

We meet with our wonderful nurse practitioner once again and after 17 months of treatment she tells us that Michael’s light chain numbers, though slightly lower, are still not in the normal range. She tells us that if they hadn’t gone down, the medical team would have recommended a “salvage transplant.” We are completely shocked, completely taken aback. We had no idea that the ice we are skating on is quite this thin.

What a phrase! A Salvage Transplant. It sounds so industrial, so vehicular. And I guess to some extent the language is actually representing the spiritual understanding. It literally would be a stem cell transplant to salvage the vehicle of the body, the vehicle of the soul. But it sounds harsh and desperate.

We come home in shock and upset. I’m trying to get my head around what another stem cell transplant would be like now that these transplants are done as outpatient procedures. This literally means that Michael would be taken to death’s door once again and that I would be the person at home taking care of him. Michael is remembering that it took him almost a year to truly recover from his first transplant. It’s overwhelming and I am terrified.

All I remember from the last transplant is that it was a time in hell. The idea of going through diapers, and walkers, and sponge baths, and Michael’s horrifying loss of function once again, is utterly frightening. We would have to get help because I truly couldn’t do it alone.

Michael’s white blood count would be taken down to zero and he would be near death, unable to eat, drinking only minimal amounts of water, moaning and sleeping most of the time.

I would be on call 24-hours a day trying to get him to sip water or broth, keeping him warm, monitoring his intake and output, taking his blood pressure and temperature, and keeping him clean and bathed. I would have to quit my work, hire nurses, and get help with all kinds of tasks that I’m simply not strong enough to do. Just getting Michael in and out of the few steps to our house, wheelchair bound, for our daily trips to the hospital, would require more than I can do. If I dropped him, or if he fell, I simply couldn’t pick him up.

I’m realizing that this salvage transplant idea has scared me to the point of complete ungroundedness until today. Once I meditate and accept my feelings of fear and terrible sorrow, I can move on. Finally energy comes flooding through me from crown to feet. It is the energy of this holy day, this Solstice.

This energy allows me to realize we have reached the beginning of the end – or at least the beginning of the end of Michael’s formal medical treatment. I finally say these words to myself today: The beginning of the end. There may be a long middle section, I don’t know, but it’s clear that we have reached a new level of seriousness. And though Michael doesn’t need a salvage transplant this week, I have a strong intuition that it will be offered again in the future.

What does this mean now? We’ve both been thinking about how to live whatever life we’ve got left. It’s the question for anyone our age, and really, and it is the question for all of us all the time. How do we live a good life within whatever restrictions life has placed upon us?

This is the richest ground, this thin ice, upon which we’ve ever stood. Perhaps richness tends to happen more easily within the restricted ground of mortal illness. It compels us to look closely and pay such deep attention. Life and death are literally at stake and we are forced to live in the present moment! There seems to be little effort in this other than a commitment to see and hear what is really going on around us. What a grand and unexpected benefit this is in a crisis — present-centeredness simply happens.

Since it is the Winter Solstice, we both do tarot card readings, trying to see ahead into our murky futures. This is the reading that looks at the movements of energy within us until Spring raises her lovely green head again in March.

My reading was positive though I have to realize that I am blocking my “initiation into the secret doctrine” (The Hierophant) with my sense of being imprisoned by circumstances (8 Swords). In the four cards that represent the self’s pillar, I receive the Sun, 3 of Pentacles, the Devil, and the High Priestess as the outcome.

The message seems clear to me. My heart (the Sun) is shining brightly and my environment is colored by “perfected work.” But then the Devil appears warning against delusion, illusion, and the power of the mind to distort reality. Finally, the High Priestess emerges as the outcome. On the Tree of Life she is the guardian and the guide to the central channel that leads to the Highest High. Oh how I wish to be guided by her! I meditate on her blue light and find peace.

Michael’s reading is more mixed. His enlightenment is present in the Temperance card that appears in the position of the past. And there are other helpful energies along the way, but he is plagued with the same sense of imprisonment that I had (8 Swords) though his appears as the Self card, which seems fitting. The Tower is also in the self pillar indicating some kind of lightning strike, the hand of God reaching out and upending the status quo. His outcome is the 9 of Swords – sleepless nights. We literally laugh out loud as this card is turned. As a natural outgrowth of this process, we’ve had many sleepless nights, and it looks as if these will continue.

Today Michael says, “I probably won’t go through with another transplant. There’s literally no research to support it.” He explains that there is some support for using this second transplant in a related disease but it’s only anecdotal evidence and it’s for people who’ve already had a remission. Michael has never had a remission. All in all, the costs outweigh the benefits. Suddenly I find my first deep breath in days realizing that I’d had no idea how long I’d been holding my breath.

I’m so relieved by Michael’s statement, by his strength, by his good sense, by his willingness to face into whatever comes with courage and truth.

I write to our nurse practitioner about our concerns and she tells me that an outpatient transplant is “optional” and we could still do it as an inpatient procedure. Though neither of us heard this at the time of our appointment, it softens me and I realize we could make it through such a thing again. I tell Michael this and he says, “There’s still no data to support it.” And he’s right.

So, now, for whatever reason, as Winter dawns we are being drawn more deeply into ourselves. It seems very natural. We have arrived on this rich spiritual path to explore what it means to truly live our lives, knowing they can be overturned at any moment.

The ice is thin here, almost like glass, and I see through it into the depths of the water below. It can break at any moment and we can drown. But for now we are learning to skate this slippery path, learning to balance in the cold bracing air, giving ourselves freely to the heartbreak and joy that it means to be fully alive.