Driving north on I-35 after having just left a powerful Somatic Experiencing® training session in which I relived significant moments of my heart transplantation, tears streamed down my face as I blasted the musical Rent at full volume on my car’s CD player.
♪There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret or life is yours to miss
No other road no other way
No day but today
There’s only now
There’s only here . . .
No other path
No other way
No day but today♪
Deprived of the pounding music and lush harmonies, the words lack the same senses of urgency, pleading, and poignancy that ring throughout every cell of my being as the song escalates, but the sentiment — the exigency to live each day fully and deliberately – stands. As Audre Lorde stated so well, “once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of.” And, she reminds us, “this is a grave responsibility . . . not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.”[i] Lorde wrote those words a year after being diagnosed with breast cancer. The looming awareness of mortality forces an examination of one’s life — in her words, “to look upon myself and my life with a harsh and urgent clarity,”[ii] and as she said, a refusal any longer to settle for less than the joy, satisfaction, meaning, and love of which we know ourselves to be capable.
Living in the proximity of death illuminates the sheer preciousness of life in a way that moves one to tears, at least it does me. Hence my sobs in listening to Rent.[iii] Others have written of this preciousness, Mary Oliver’s words being perhaps the most well-known: “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? / Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?” I’ve heard these words quoted so many times that they verge on becoming trite, so I hesitate to use them here, except to recount the first time I heard them. I had taken students to the local Benedictine retreat center where we spent time walking the labyrinth and talking about prayer, and it was as a prayer that Sister Lois, the retreat center director, shared this poem. I must have been a few years post-transplant at that point, and those final words grasped me by the heart and wouldn’t let go. I had known viscerally how wild and precious this life is, and the poet asked me not only to acknowledge that, but also what I was now going to do with it. More than this, how was I going to honor it? That is the meaning of “precious” after all – something worthy of honor. How was I to live a life worthy of this honor, and not just of my own life, but also of her life – the child’s whose heart now beat inside my chest? It is, as Lorde said, a grave responsibility.
I had delved into Adrienne Rich’s “Women and Honor”[iv] dozens of times, and knew that honoring this life required at the minimum my honesty with myself, my loved ones, my life pursuits. It demanded that I live in line with my values, that I act so as to enhance the possibility of life for every living being, and that I not settle for anything less than living “in accordance with that joy I knew myself to be capable of.” Above all, honoring this life asked that I not let a day go by without fully appreciating the opportunity to be a part of it. Of course, I have – days when I’ve been so sick, or in such desperate grief, or simply bogged down with bureaucratic red tape, that just getting through the day can feel like a chore. But then a glorious sunrise, or stunning hoarfrost, or an unexpected kindness will remind me.
Shortly following my transplant, I experienced a serious episode of rejection of the transplanted heart. It would be weeks before I knew if the infusion of 1000 milligrams of prednisone to stop it had worked, but when it did, tears poured out of me, “ . . . a waterfall of tears at the gladness of the reprieve. . . . I was alive I was alive I was alive. I wanted to shout it to the world, so I went to the one place in the world that I have always felt most fully alive – the great sand beach – and there on the night of the summer solstice my dog, Sam, and I ran the length of the beach, reveling in the last rays of the sun on that longest day. The beach stretched before us as the sun stretched out the day as my life now stretched before me . . . . I was going to live to live to live to shout to run to dance about in the waves we ran and ran and ran . . . .” [v] The moon was rising in one direction just as the sun was setting in the other — we were encircled by the heavens, and I was alive! Yes!
Thirty years ago today I received this gift — not just of life, but of the deepest awareness of its preciousness. If I could pass on anything from this it would be this – to live each day in the spirit of e.e. cummings’ verse . . .
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings . . .
Sources
Bartlett, Elizabeth Ann. 1997. Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Insights on the Road to a Transplant. Duluth, MN: Pfeifer-Hamilton.
cummings, e.e. 2016. Complete Poems:1904-1962. New York: Liveright.
Larson, Jonathon. 1996. Rent.
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press.
Rich, Adrienne. 1979. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose: 1966-1978. New York:W.W. Norton.
[i] Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 57.
[ii] Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” 40.
[iii] For those who do not know the story of Rent, It revolves around the precarity of life living impoverished and unhoused in the city, all in the context of the AIDS crisis. The composer, Jonathon Larson, himself tragically died at the age of 29 of an aortic dissection the day before Rent opened on Broadway. Perhaps on some level he sensed the precarity of his own life for certainly his music pulses with that awareness.
[iv] The essay appears in Rich’s collection of essays, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence.
[v] From my book of reflections on my transplant, Journey of the Heart, 126.
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I think this beautiful and courageous story raises a question I have trouble answering – just before opening this blog I read about Alabama’s decision last week by accident (open your computer – google something and you’ll get information you don’t want) Oh, no I thought as the despair flooded through me – how much more? Oh I have moments like yesterday when the three amigos ( male wild turkeys who have maintained a close relationship for two years) passed through and left me a feather, and pine siskins were singing their hearts out while peppering the limbs of a nearby tree, but joy is momentary and then it’s gone and in its place that familiar hole. I don’t want to feel like this – but I cannot seem to shake being pulled into that void again and again by circumstances beyond my control.
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I do know about the horrifying Alabama court decision. At least there seems to be quite a bit of outrage about it. I understand all that pulls us back into that void. All the more reason to enjoy the turkeys and pine siskins, as you do so well.
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So true. As Joyce reminds us we have a responsibility to do the best we can to support the preciousness of all life including our won! Funny after reading your post I was feeling dragged down and then a whole bevy of wild turkeys arrived and I got caught by wonder as I watched them entering again that timeless place of joy…
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What an inspiring and wise post! I remember when I was facing a potentially life-limiting illness I felt as if I had been reborn. No matter what happened, and I’m lucky that I seem to have gone past the time of greatest risk of recurrence, I felt as if I had begun life again both because of the change in my daily routine to focus on treating the illness, but also because I suddenly, like you and so many others, regained a sense of the preciousness of every day. But, as Sara mentions, that can be so fleeting, no matter how it comes about. Now, today, exactly ten years to the day when my health saga began, I have to remind myself of that feeling every day to try to recapture it. But then, this morning, I got to thinking about the many articles and interviews with astronomers who talk about how rare, maybe even unique, the Earth is because of our abundance of life in so many different multi-celled forms. What a privilege, but as you also say, a responsibility, to be graced with life on this most uncommon planet in our vast universe. Not only reason to find awe in every day, but also to do all we can to protect it.
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Interesting that we share an anniversary of our health sagas — yours a beginning, mine a new beginning. And yes, as Sara said, the horrifying specter the patriarchal politics can steal those moments of joy, but all the more reason not to let that win the day. It does take reminders, however. Have you seen the Nova series on planet earth? It left me even more in awe of the uniqueness of earth as we know it, and rededicated to work against the ways our society seems bent on destroying it. I’m glad you are past the greatest risks to your health!
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I haven’t seen the Nova series, but I will definitely check it out. I agree that nature photography and videography can make a difference in people understanding the complexity and beauty of our wild world because it doesn’t speak in words but in images which connect so directly to our emotions. It’s a way to experience the “awe” of nature even if you can’t travel the globe (which, of course, has it’s own negative environmental impacts). Thank you for this suggestion!
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Our conversation has made me eager to watch it again. The greening of the earth is so amazing with so many things needing to come together for it to happen. One can’t watch it and continue in habits destructive of it. We are living in such a precious moment in time.
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Hi Beth. I can relate to so much in what you wrote.
The part about not feeling the words of the song in the musical Rent but the sentiment standing.
After my Mom died I was in such a drab world. My partner and I took a road trip to Utah/Colorado not long after she passed. I was looking at desert rock formations as we drove and thought it’s not exciting me. The “old” me would be reveling in this beauty. I felt so disappointed in myself for not appreciating the beauty of Earth. Dark clouds were moving in framing the desert. I thought “Well…I do like to see lightening storms maybe I’ll snap out of this?” We pulled over to get out and see the land before us. Right then a huge lightening bolt struck a large rock formation. The thunder snapped simultaneously with the lightening. I was in absolute awe of it. The power of this lightening. I said “Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!” It was like the power of Earth said “Snap out of it!”
Then I dared to ask my Mother for feathers to let me know she was with me during the trip. It was our last day and no feathers. I felt the sadness and depression looming in. I was getting in the car to leave and I noticed at my feet a Mourning Dove feather. I cried and said thankyou. Then we got home and I went to garage door to put in the code and a Mourning Dove feather was there at my feet. I said thankyou with tears in my eyes.
This Mother Goddess Earth she always takes of me…of us. I feel we in the collective are not honoring her and it really gets me down and I don’t feel her power or see her beauty. I seek….I go for a walk and I am shown again and again her beauty. It ebbs and flows.
The comments, the conversation here resonates so much.
I read the Alabama court decision. Physically I can feel my heart tightening. I’m tearing up. For me for us. I’m going to try to be present and see from my heart and soul. Honor her. I’m going for a walk…
Thankyou all Beth for the story and Carolyn and Sara for the comments.
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Thank you for sharing all of this, Michelle. What poignant and powerful experience of the lightning, the feathers, the presence of your mother, the amazing ways the earth lifts us up again and again. You’ve written of it all so beautifully here and with such heartfelt honesty. Thank you.
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Thanks for reading Beth. I feel that FAR is such a supportive community and grateful to be in it.
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I completely agree.
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