The Sounds of Silence

"To hear, one must be silent."

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

It has taken me a few months to venture into the waters of silence. I'd like to say I purposely chose to wade in, but it has happened gradually and accidentally at first. Like so many folks these days, technology has made it all too easy for me to be distracted - the computer, the TV, the phone, notepads - so easy and enticing.

With John's death, 21 months ago today to be exact, I initially found silence to be foreboding. In the middle of the night, when I would wake to overwhelming grief and anxiety, it became a habit to get up, turn on the TV or music and distract myself until I could fall back to sleep. During the day, I would read (usually with a background of music), or call a friend, or run off to do errands or attend a meeting—anything to keep the pain at bay, at least for a little while. At least until I could parcel it out in doses and drum up tried and true approaches that had guided me through other challenges of my life - approaches, in retrospect, that only kept the demons at bay. 

And then, the virus hit, and though I thought and hoped, as many of us did, that everything would be back to normal by autumn, the rising statistics this summer soon proved me wrong. June and July presented a confrontation with everything I believed about myself, the future, and my ability to quiet the cacophony in my head and plan for the future. How does one plan for such an unknown future?

Then, one recent morning, with no particular reason that I can recall, I started to journal in total silence. No music, no news, silence, and the quality of my writing and the level of honesty was so noticeably different that I knew immediately that I could only still the inner noise and confusion by being willing to be quiet enough to hear and deal with it.

At first, I was stunned by a level of grief that I now realize I had simply covered up. Cloudbursts of tears became thunderstorms at the mere glance at John's photo or the discovery of a loving card. I could feel waves of irritation or anxiety physically when I prepared to run even the simplest errand. The more I wrote in silence, the more I got in touch with outrage over how this virus has been mishandled and my dismay over the distrust, nastiness, and division I see in my country. The more I wrote, I more I got in touch with a fear of incompetence and a degree of loneliness I had not felt in decades.

Gradually, I lengthened the periods of silence. I wrote more and more. Began to take my lunch out to the patio and just listen for birds or children playing behind the backyard wall. Slowed down and enjoyed my food. Noticed the sound of the breeze through the trees in the early hours of the morning or Rufus' gentle breathing as he curled up beside me in bed. Caught an idea as it surfaced unexpectedly. 

But most importantly, I recognized, quite abruptly in fact, that my underlying fear was not that I couldn't cope with the present, but instead that I had no sense of purpose for the future, and that I knew errands, and house maintenance and even volunteering were no longer enough. That, without John, I have come to yearn for family and physical proximity to people with whom I have a longer and more intimate shared history. At that very moment, I decided that I will move to New York State when my younger sister retires. At that very moment, I accepted that just as a future decision has emerged in my willingness to be still, so will a larger purpose.

One recent night I realized that I hadn't watched TV for a week other than to turn on some music while I cleaned the house. And that I am going to bed earlier and sleeping better. That when I do wake, I don't get upset. I merely read awhile until I go back to sleep. That projects are emerging more naturally, like simplifying the house, not just organizing it. Or finding it easier to let go of "stuff" because I'm already thinking of moving. Or knowing what I want to blog about without false starts and second-guessing!

Am I totally comfortable with silence? Not by a long shot. Do I plan to take up meditation? Not now, not yet. But I am growing comfortable with long stretches of silence, more confident that I will hear what I need to hear. And, surprisingly, grateful for this period of solitude.

This Much I Know

"Healing in grief is a lot like the onset of spring.  It's unreliable and fickle."

~ Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Unreliable and fickle.  Certainly my experience.  It's uncanny how this spring my inner mood so reflects the weather - or is it vice versa?   

Some days, the skies are gunmetal gray and the temperatures have dropped by ten degrees.  It's all I can do to get out of my nightgown and accomplish anything.  A song, a telephone conversation, an unexpected request related to John's death and I'm weeping.  A grief burst to rival the cloudbursts that have been all too common this spring.  

Some days, I wake to sunshine and the expectation of a good day, but by noon, banks of gray clouds roll in and the threat of yet another cloudburst increases by the hour.  On these days, it takes so little to unleash my own cloudburst of tears.  For how could those grief experts who warn you to prepare for the first anniversary or birthday or holiday know how easily I can fall apart at the sight of the first tulip, remembering the delight he took in planting them.  Or the sight of the first hummingbird, reminding me that he is not here to fill the feeder.  Or how even anticipating the first roses brings tears as I know he will never again bring in a fresh rose in the morning to greet my day,  How could they know?

Lately, however, there are days when I think I'm making progress through the forest of my grief.  The sun shines.  It's warm and a breeze whispers the shrubbery.   I have energy, look forward to the day and getting out and among folks.  The memories are sweet.  I barely shed a tear.  I even laugh.  On these days, I can believe there will be more such days, hopefully, many more.

So, this much I have come to know about this path I'm walking - the journey is, at best, unreliable and fickle.  Grief bursts are to be expected at the most unexpected times.  They are a part of the journey, but they, like spring showers, eventually pass.  So, I do best when I take it a day at a time, some days an hour at a time.  

I know that quotes like the above help me to make sense of my experience.  I know that the good days, and there are good days, are cause for celebration. The good days, and there are more good days, are cause for optimism.  I know that somehow, someday, the firsts will not overwhelm me.  I know that I will survive, and maybe, just maybe, even thrive again.  Even if, today, the clouds roll in again.

I Am No Stranger to Grief

"Grief is not a train track toward acceptance.  Instead, it is more of a 'getting lost in the woods.'"

~ Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD

I am no stranger to grief.   I have walked the path of grief alone and as a companion of family members and friends many times in my 78 years.  I have grieved openly over the assassinations of my youth and the shootings too common these past few years.  I am no stranger to grief.

So I thought I was prepared for John's death.  I was naive enough to think I was "ready".  Moreover, I was more concerned that I would be relieved rather than bereaved.  I wasn't - either ready or relieved.  I was shocked, that the pain and fear and regret were so crippling; also shocked that I was shocked.

It has been 12 weeks now, 12 weeks today, and the initial shock waves after subsided.  I have put my feet forward into the woods, deliberately, albeit with no small measure of anxiety and trepidation.  It is helping to think of this as a journey on an unchartered path through a dense forest.  This metaphor helps me when I'm going along, seemingly upright and grief descends like an unexpected branch that smacks me in the chest or an unseen root sending me tumbling face forward to the ground.  It helps when is a ray of sunshine breaks through the canopy of grief and for a moment I feel guilty that I feel OK.

I'm pretty sure not everyone thinks in metaphors nor finds solace in them, but this one works for me.  Grief as a path, an unchartered path through a dark forest.  A path that one has to create slowly, carefully, a step at a time.  Sometimes moving in the wrong direction, sometimes stumbling, sometimes frightened and disillusioned, but eventually finding the clearing.

I remind myself that I am no stranger to grief.  I may not have been lost in so vast, so dark a forest before, but I have made it through a miscarriage, a divorce, the loss and betrayal of friends, my own cancer - I will survive.  Someday, I may even thrive again.

To Remember

"Promise me you'll always remember:

You're braver than you believe,

And stronger than you seem, 

And smarter than you think."

~ Christopher Robin to Pooh

I gave a plaque with this quote to John two years ago, at the beginning of his valiant battle with a rare cancer of the blood, a battle he lost the Monday before Thanksgiving.  I wanted him to cling to these words, wanted him to remember every day through the hundreds of transfusions he received, through his steady decline how much I believed in him.  How brave and strong and smart I knew him to be.

Then I forgot that I had given it to him.   He never used the words brave, or strong, or smart when people marveled at how resilient he seemed, how courageous, how amazing that he survived beyond the initial prognosis of six months.  Instead, publicly he would credit it to his orneriness or stubbornness.  Privately, he would declare that he expected a miracle.  For hadn't he survived non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, several bouts of skin cancer.  He was going to beat these odds, too, and be the first to defeat what we had been told was incurable.  He didn't use the words, but every day he lived them.

I forgot about it as I sent him more cards, found other plaques, penned letters of acknowledgment and gratitude and encouragement, and grieved as I watched him decline,  eventually surrender to Home Health Care, and finally to Hospice services.  

Then, on a day following his death, when I could muster the courage to check out his computer and immediate surroundings, I found the plaque and shared it with my sister who had come to be with us, to be with me.  She encouraged me to place it where I could see it.  Where it could serve me as surely it had served him.

So, it now rests on my bedside table where it nudges me to remind myself in the morning and in the evening, in the moments when grief and loneliness descend on me like a sudden thunderstorm, when I fear I haven't enough years left to ever feel content again, that

You are braver than you believe,

And stronger than you seem,

And smarter than you think.

~ John to Angie

I repeat the words and hope someday I'll believe them.  Just not yet.

Who Will Remember?

"I never wanted to be the eldest."

~ Ben Magestro

I haven't thought of this comment in years.  Many years.  Dad made it at the news of the death of his remaining older brother over 25 years ago.  Dad was just about the age I am today.  I didn't pursue the comment.  Maybe it was because I am the eldest child and grandchild and had never given it much thought at the point.  Maybe I feared I'd make both of us uncomfortable discussing why he felt that way. Maybe I arrogantly assumed I understood. Whatever - I just let it pass, one more comment to file away. 

Until recently, when I caught a video of my remaining uncle, now in his 80's, suddenly frail, undoubtedly old.  In the weeks that have followed, my dad's comment has popped up at the most unexpected moments.  Finally, I suspect I understand.  When this uncle dies, when I am the eldest in the clan, who will remember?

For, it's not only that this uncle is the last of his generation.  In many ways, he was more an older brother than an uncle.  We lived under the same roof at the end of World War II.  He consoled me and tried to protect me when the stress of that household at that time was too much for a little girl.  He took me trick or treating.  He fixed my plate at the buffet when we celebrated my great-grandmother's 100th birthday.  He was there when I was baptized, and when I received Holy Communion.  He remembers the day Grandma gave up her icebox for a refrigerator, what it took to keep the coal burning furnace going, the snowstorm that crippled the city in 1947.

He was the first male in the family to get a college degree; I was the first female.  He was the first to leave the city and his family to serve in Korea.  I was the first to leave the city and never return.

When he dies, there will be no one left who knows where I began, who can appreciate even remotely what it has taken to be who and where I am today. There will be no one else who remembers. I'm not sure this is what Dad meant when he made that comment so many years ago.  But I rather suspect I'm in the ballpark.

I know there are scientific reasons given for why we older folks begin to dwell on memories of our younger selves.  But what if it isn't also that we reach a point when we are the eldest and there is no one else who remembers?

Because He Listens

"The first duty of love is to listen."
~ Paul Tillich

I write this as we approach our 35th, and I fear our last, wedding anniversary.  We met 38 years ago, Aug. 18, 1980, to be exact.  In a bar in Kansas City, as the song goes.  Just 15 minutes before I had determined to leave.  I was there with a colleague, sharing with her the highlight of a long road trip I had taken alone, so proud of what I had done.

John walked in with a friend to celebrate a successful business transaction and sat at a nearby table.  His first trip to Kansas City, he asked a question of his friend that the man could not answer.  But I could, and without much thought, did.

We continued to talk - about the city, and then work, and backgrounds and interests - and he listened, at a level I had rarely experienced.

When we parted, we exchanged telephone numbers in case I ever got to Cleveland, his home base.  In case he ever visited Kansas City again.  Which I seriously doubted.  

The next day, I told my mother that I had met someone who, though I was sure I would never see again, gave me hope that there might be someone with whom I could build a lasting, supportive relationship.  In fact, I told her, were we to live in the same city I was sure we would end up married.

He called the following Sunday morning just to talk.  And he listened.  As he did every Sunday morning for weeks.  And eventually every Wednesday evening, and eventually every night.  As he did throughout the challenges of determining how to create a lasting relationship across miles and different careers, across different backgrounds and commitments, across significant hesitations and considerations.  Somehow, even when he became most fearful or I became most frustrated and angry, he strove to listen.

And I came to realize that for all the reasons I had come to love him, at the top of the list was that he always listened, no matter how difficult the conversation.  I moved to Cleveland, and we married in l983.

That foundation of talking and listening through the tough conversations has served us well.  Sustained us through several moves, career changes, presidential campaigns, caregiving for my elderly parents, and battles with cancer.  It continues to be a basic survival skill as we deal with this, the greatest challenge we have ever faced, the most difficult conversations we have ever had to have.  Still, he listens.  I have never loved him more.

Random Acts of Kindness

"Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, most underrated agent of human change."

~ Bob Kerrey

I woke this morning to a damp and dreary day. A good day to rest, read, and reflect - especially since we are still recouping from our recent trip to MD Anderson Cancer Center.

This trip can take a lot out of us. It's not just that air travel has become more difficult. It's also the emotional stress of not knowing what we might hear from the hematologist, the physical stress of pushing John everywhere in a wheelchair, the physical stress for him of yet another bone marrow biopsy.  And when we're done, managing another day of travel and our morale for at least another week until we receive the biopsy report.

We've made this trip three times within 17 months. Each with a similar routine, yet each yielding radically different reactions. The first visit we met with the hematologist assigned to us, an austere Russian trained research physician, whose honesty bordered on bluntness, a shocking confrontation with reality while we were already shell-shocked. By our second visit, she was warmer, gentler, but the news she delivered still bleak and unpromising. Still no cure on the horizon. No appropriate clinical trials available. And her concern for John's appearance disconcerting. The biopsy took two attempts, and the results still were inconclusive. Overall, every bit as challenging a visit. Maybe even more so.

It was a surprise, therefore, when we both affirmed as we left our accommodations that this trip was a much more positive experience even though we couldn't pinpoint why at first. Yes, our doctor was even warmer, more personable, more patient with our questions, clearer with her answers.  But still no cure, no appropriate clinical trials. The biopsy went smoother. But still no results yet.

And then it hit us in the airport as someone offered to help with our luggage. This what was different. The constant stream of kindness that had enveloped us the entire trip. People who lifted luggage without being asked. People who held doors and offered help with the wheelchair. People who not only gave directions but walked with us to be sure we were headed the right way - and not because they were paid to do so. People who smiled first. People who genuinely seemed pleased to see us and willing to listen. People who reminded me with every gesture that there are wonderful, kind and decent people all around us.

Simple, unrequested, unexpected acts of kindness. I'd like to think I would always be aware of and grateful for them. But I suspect they have meant so much more because I am so much more aware of our fragility, so much more susceptible to cynicism and despair. Powerful, inexpensive but not underrated in this household.

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I

My Hero

"You must bear losses like a soldier, a voice told me, bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward.  That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong."

~ Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

I admit it, I'm addicted to quotes.  I can spend hours trolling quote sites whenever I get interested in a topic, but especially when preparing to blog.  And I did so when I decided to post this week on the topic of loss.  Because loss is ever present in our lives these days.  Not just the constant presence of the Ghost of Christmas Future, but the onslaught of loss that John has been experiencing of late.  

I set out to find a quote that might capture the feelings I have experienced as I watch him. My concern as I see him walk more slowly, tire more easily, require still another transfusion.  The sorrow I felt when he recently divested himself of his business, his "baby" that he nurtured for almost 30 years.  The heartbreak of watching him sell his car, accepting that the progression of his macular degeneration necessitates my chauffering.  The loss of stamina and energy, the loss of a piece of his identity, the loss of freedom and independence.  Loss upon loss.  I hate this for him.

And then I came upon the above quote and literally, in the moment, realized that this is how John thinks about loss and that the feelings I need to hold onto are my profound respect and gratitude for how he is managing his.  For he doesn't complain, doesn't even see complaining as a choice.  He takes life a day at a time, reorganizes quickly, and moves forward as best he can with amazing agility and dignity.  

I have often described my husband as resilient or persistent.  Strong.  But now, heroic.  My hero - and he will never lose that.

 

When You Need Somebody - Part II

It's been a few days since we've returned from  MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  Although we've made this trip many times, this was especially draining - physically, mentally and emotionally.  Not just because we're older or that this cancer John is fighting is currently incurable, but also because we're more sensitive to the pain and grief around us.  And as this center is the foremost of its kind in the country, perhaps in the world, the presence of pain and grief is profound and palpable. Not only do they deal with the most severe and rarest cases of cancer, but the patients they see are younger and younger.  It's not unusual to meet someone who is caring for a young son or daughter with leukemia or to turn a corner and see a toddler with a bald head, wearing a mask and pulling a tiny chemo caddy.  

But the trip was also draining emotionally because I was so much more sensitive to the small, spontaneous acts of kindness from strangers that I hadn't thought of before now as a form of support. Small moments of generosity and consideration when I least expected it -the two women who came up behind me to push John's wheelchair when they saw me pause, concerned it would get away from me down a ramp.  Women I didn't know, didn't ask.  Or the people who came out of nowhere to hold open the elevator for us or just smile when we passed.  The shuttle drivers who remembered our names, the various service people who exhibited remarkable patience and compassion as we, and others, fumbled for change, or couldn't find what we were looking for.  The nurse practitioner who double checked her answers to reassure us that she had provided the right information (even calling us at 10 p.m. with additional information to allay some of my concerns).  

Most of all, however, it was the conversations we had with other patients and their caregivers as we waited for tests and doctors' appointments. Intimate, honest conversations about diagnosis, prognosis, resources, fears, worries, frustrations.  Conversations too painful, too frightening for many folks, but for those of us in the midst of these challenges a strange relief.  We are not alone.  We are not weak because we are afraid.  We are not demanding when we fight for those we love.  It is not too much to ask for dignity and respect.

And it never ceases to take my breath away when someone who is already fighting for their life or the life of a loved one, someone we've just met offers to include us in their prayers.

So to the list I started in my previous post, I will add these lessons I am learning about support ~

~ Support comes in many different packages.  Physical help can be the easiest to find, especially if you have the financial resources, or can provide it yourself.  Intellectual support is as important, maybe more so for some people. Then there's emotional support, the people who can provide compassion and care, who know how to listen and just be there with and for you, with whom you can cry, but equally with whom you can laugh.  And -

~Support can come from the most unexpected places and in the smallest acts of kindness. 

Hope for the Best; Prepare for the Worst

The first time I heard "hope for the best, plan for the worst" was the morning the man designated to become our hematologist delivered the news that blood tests revealed John had a cancer of the blood and perhaps only six months to live.  

Dr. W. was the hematologist on call the morning after I had driven John to the ER, struggling to breathe. Tall, lanky, soft-spoken, and unassuming - my first thought was of Ichabod Crane. He said as gently as I think anyone could that he thought it could be leukemia, advanced and apparently aggressive. When I broke down in tears, he put his hand on my shoulder and uttered the phrase that I have since inscribed behind my eyelids.

After a second series of tests at MD Anderson, a diagnosis of Therapy Related MDS was confirmed and the prognosis extended to two years. Once again we were told this cancer is incurable and once again exhorted to hope for the best (which would be improved treatment to add life expectancy), but plan for the worst.

It has been a year since that morning I brought John to the ER.  We somehow continue to be hopeful, referring to John's cancer as currently incurable, learning how to work effectively with the clinic, consulting with MD Anderson, adjusting schedules and habits.  All thanks to my naturally optimistic husband.  He, who reminds me he is not a statistic.  He, who declares he will live longer than two years.  

I, on the other hand, at my best could be described as a realistic pragmatist.  On my worst days, as a chronic worrier.  So, I research and note questions for the doctors.  I wake in the middle of the night to make note of something else I need to learn "just in case" or add to our "plans." I try to imagine life without him.  

Historically, we have learned to balance his optimism with my pragmatism, to temper my tendency to worry with his hopefulness, to sustain a healthy tension between our two world views.  But this is new territory. His cheerleading hasn't helped me sleep at night.  And I have struggled to create a sense of urgency without diminishing the sense of optimism he needs to continue to fight.

Then, in the middle of uttering one more time that we needed to remember to hope for the best but also plan for the worst, I realized the phrase had lost its power.  It had become a cliche.  I stopped and asked if John could help me hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.  I asked if we could move from talking about and thinking about and listing to more deliberate action.  Could we schedule an hour every day to check something off my to do list or at least move something forward? 

So - we are preparing.  Can I imagine life without him, no way.  Do I want to, no way.  But for now, at least, there is a semblance of balance again.  We can do both.  We can still hope for the best while preparing for the worst.  

Illegitimi Non Carborundum

It has been almost eleven months since John was diagnosed with Therapy Related MDS, a relatively new and currently incurable cancer of the blood.  Our initial prognosis with six months extended, thanks to a second opinion, to two years.  These months have flown by, but looking back, I am proud of how we have settled into a "new normal" - a daily way of living with this new challenge.  A new normal marked by grace, partnership, support and a quality I've come to recognize as resiliency.

Resiliency - elasticity, malleability, flexibility, plasticity, buoyancy - I've long recognized this in John.  With a history of non-Hodgkins that required the stem cell transplant that is the cause of his current illness, five hernia operations, three bouts of skin cancer, and macular degeneration, one might expect him to rail against the heavens or to just give up or give in. But he endures.  He keeps getting up.  He takes a day at a time and never relinquishes the fight.  He stays remarkably present and positive. He remains optimistic and reminds me that he's not a statistic.  He reminds me, too, that he beat the odds once, and he can do it again. That he can endure until there is a breakthrough that will extend his life with me.

What I haven't recognized is that his resilience has rubbed off on me.  I've thought of myself as tenacious, strong, and determined; and those are not bad qualities. But I like resilient better.  It's more fluid, less easily bent or broken.  Definitely an asset during these tenuous days.

And these days are tenuous.  There are the ordinary breakdowns of everyday life.  The breakdowns we all experience. We lose our TV picture. It's so hot that our potted plants all wither and die.  We keep receiving those calls that our computer is infected or someone can help us with college loans we never took out 50 years ago.  A light on my dashboard lights up for the 4th time, still not fixed after three trips to the dealer. The bombardment of news gets more frightening with each passing hour.  I'm not sleeping well.

What's a resilient soul to do?  Well, work patiently with the disembodied voice in technical support to recover the TV picture and be grateful we got a living breathing soul.  Remove the dead plants and wait till it cools off before replacing.  Stop answering calls from locations we don't recognize.  Take the car to the dealer and tell them the car will be returned if they cannot fix it properly once and for all - they did.  And limit the news, which also cured the sleeping problem.

Then, there are the bigger breakdowns.  The medical assistant that we have come to rely on for information and support suddenly leaves the clinic to move to another city.  A few days later, a dear friend who has been a key member of my personal support system lets me know she is moving, a wise decision for her, another loss for us.  A shot that we have hoped would make transfusions needed less often has had no measurable effect.  

What's a resilient soul to do?  Well, learn to access and interpret John's blood test results on the computer.  (Actually, doing so makes this resilient soul feel just a little proud of herself). Get to know more of the clinic staff. Plan a trip to see our friends after they are settled in, giving us something to look forward to.  Work with our doctor to design changes to John's treatment plan.

This is our new normal.  To take in new information and adjust, as quickly as we can, as patiently and gracefully as we can.  To work with each other and our network of support. To seek solutions rather than rail against the problems.  To focus on what is within our control. A day at a time, some days an hour at a time.

I do like resilient better.  It's more fluid, less easily bent or broken.  Definitely an asset during these tenuous days.  Definitely, a valuable asset for an unknown future.

Help Wanted

I went to a support group for the caregivers of cancer patients yesterday - the first support group of its kind that I've ever attended.  I almost didn't go.  Used all the reasons I've used historically. "I'm not a group person. I'm strong enough, smart enough, I ought to be able to handle this on my own. I don't know these people.  We've done this before, my own cancer, John's non-Hodgkins lymphoma, his skin cancers."  Reasons I've used to avoid asking for other kinds of help.  Reasons I've used to deflect help when it's offered.  

I had the postcard inviting me to attend in my purse, just in case I would decide to check it out. But first, brunch with a friend, herself in the throes of cancer.  As we chatted, I heard myself sigh a sigh of relief when she told me that she was getting the counseling support I'd been encouraging for months.  I heard myself say, "in such extraordinary times, even the strongest, most capable of us need extraordinary help."  And in that moment, I decided.

Now, I need to admit that I still questioned myself the entire way there, almost backing out when I saw the door to the meeting room had been closed.  And I can't share what happened there, other than to say that the topic was emotions, the support was great, the group leader skillful as well as compassionate, and I will be returning next month.  Most important for me, however, was coming home to reflect on how I think about asking for help and the possible consequences for both John and me.

To help me clarify my thoughts last night, I turned to David Whyte's Consolations, the extraordinary volume of his reflections on the underlying meaning of everyday words, and there was the essay, 'Help', underlined and tagged.

• "Help is, strangely, something we want to do without, as if the very idea disturbs and blurs the boundaries of our individual endeavors, as if we cannot face how much we need to go on."  
• "Not only does the need for help never leave us alone; we must apprentice ourselves to its different necessary forms, at each particular threshhold of our lives.  At every stage we are dependent on our ability to ask for specific forms of help at very specific times and in very specific ways."
• "Every transformation has at its heart the need to ask for the right kind of generosity."
• "It may be that the ability to know the necessity for help; to know how to look for that help and then most importantly, how to ask for it, is one of the primary transformative dynamics that allows us to emancipate ourselves into each new epoch of our lives."

Underlined and tagged, read and reread.  But understood this time more deeply, more profoundly.  For this is an extraordinary time -  we have other friends who need our help even if only to listen, even as we are pressed to help each other, and every day and virtually every hour we receive phone calls and e-mails requesting support in some form - surveys, petitions, more money.  Every day and virtually every hour a message appears on the TV or computer of someone, some group in need.  

And we are older, we have less energy, we have decisions to make with less information than we want or need, less assurance that our decisions can make a difference.  

So, duh!, (ok, not very literate), although I may be strong, and I may be intelligent, and I may have faced other challenges well, this is a new challenge in a new environment, at a different time and place, at a new threshhold.  So, I want to go back to the drawing board and determine the very specific forms of help I/we need, not just physically and logistically, not just intellectually but also emotionally.  I want to determine who can best provide that help for me and for us - a friend or a professional?   And I need to gather my courage and, yes, humility and ask.  

For I believe that most people are willing to help, but they need to be asked and asked specifically. They are not mind readers.  And most people will be honored to be asked, especially if you have helped them.  And most people will feel acknowledged for their competence and caring, just as we are when we are asked for help that we can provide.  At least most of the people I know.

I have placed Consolations on my bedside table, beneath the tablet on which I've begun my list of specific requests for help.  I've blocked out some time to work on this project, accepting that I will need to revisit it in the weeks, the months and, hopefully, the years ahead of us.  For, "even in the end, the dignity of our going depends on others' willingness to help us die well; the sincerity of their help often commensurate to the help we extended to them in our own life."

And, yes, I will be going to the next support group meeting.