Thanksgiving always is an emotionally complicated time for me. It was just days before Thanksgiving in 1991 that I was diagnosed with cancer, and someone very important to someone close to me just recently was diagnosed with cancer. And then I heard about Kris.
The blogger known as exmearden was among the first I came to know, when I really started spending time at Daily Kos. What first struck me about her were her sense of humor and her astonishing wisdom; and as a writer, I appreciated the pure artistry of her writing. Few here were in her league.
We soon discovered that we had gone to neighboring and rival high schools in the exurban Portland of the 1970s, and it later amused us that we both ended up being invited to be Featured Writers at Daily Kos. It must have been the water. And it felt right that I followed in her footsteps. She was a few years older than me, and so grand in spirit and unassuming in demeanor, one couldn't know her without hoping to learn from her. One couldn't know her without learning from her.
When she was diagnosed with cancer, I shared some of my own experiences, having endured chemo and radiation nearly twenty years earlier, but she already had surpassed me in the wisdom one gleans from the cancer experience. She was fearless even in facing her fears. One needs but read her writings here at Daily Kos to understand that she faced death with an honesty and openness that few do. She embraced it as fully as she embraced life. She loved and cherished her every remaining moment, squeezing more out of her final year than most do out of entire lifetimes.
When I had cancer, a close friend asked if I ever wondered: Why me? I told her that I didn't. I told her that given that one in three Americans will, at some point, be diagnosed with cancer, I felt: Why not me? Cancer happens. It's sometimes random. It happened to me. There was neither rhyme nor reason. It just did. Kris felt the same about her own diagnosis.
A year and a half ago, a different friend asked the same about a close friend of mine, who had just been killed in an auto accident. A speeding semi veered into his car, in a national park in Uganda, killing him and leaving his wife twice widowed and seriously injured. My friend wondered: Why? Why him? Why her?
Another friend asked how I took the news. He wondered if I tried to think my way through it. If I tried to look for cosmic explanations, or if I was angry at the Universe, or if I was trying to look for silver linings. I wasn't. My friend wanted to make sure that I wasn't trying to think my way through the emotional trauma, because he wanted to make sure I was allowing myself to feel my way through it. To allow the pain to wash over me, and through me. Which is the only real way to respond to emotional trauma. Did I allow myself to cry? I certainly did. And I did, off and on, for days.
As I wrote, some time ago, when first I was hospitalized to be tested for what turned out to be cancer, I was alone; but a human saint came to my room, just to check in, and to let me know that although her shift was ending, she wanted to introduce herself because she would be my nurse the next day. And she asked what I knew, how I felt, and if I was frightened. And then she asked if I'd cried. Don't be afraid to cry, she told me. At that point, it had been literally years since I'd cried. I've gotten better at it, since.
In some schools of Buddhism, there is a concept of conscious suffering. That suffering is a fundamental part of life, and that we shouldn't fear it or hide from it. That we should, in fact, nakedly embrace it, no matter how painful. We're all suffering, all the time. The most basic reason for it is our mortality, and our consciousness of our mortality; but we all have plenty of other sorrows, many of them profound. And while it's not good to wallow in conscious suffering, unconscious suffering-- running from it, or trying to numb it-- which is how most people deal with it, even though it doesn't work-- at best creates only a sort of emotionally displaced equilibrium. It leads to psychological and emotional stasis. To really learn and grow and evolve and heal and work things through means facing suffering head on, however complicated or intense.
If we don't consciously come to terms with our suffering, we don't consciously come to terms with life itself. If we don't consciously come to terms with our suffering, it comes back at us in unforeseen and even more damaging ways. Conscious suffering shouldn't be the focus of our lives, but neither should we ignore it. To fully experience life's joys and wonders necessitates our also fully experiencing its pains and sorrows.
There is so much beauty and love in the world, but there also is so much horror and alienation and hatred. They are all part of the matrix of existence. We have to look deeply into all of them. We have to keep our eyes open. We have to try to understand them, but we also have to understand that some things are beyond understanding. We have to experience them for what they are, as they are. We have to feel them. When they arise, as they arise. Without fear.