Blue Shoe

Anne Lamott, in her book Blue Shoe writes this rich dialogue between Harry and his mom:

"Won't you and I die at the exact same time?"  he asked in rising panic.

"No honey.  Where did you hear that?"  

"From Stefan.  He and his mom are dying at the exact same second."

"No they're not, darling.  And besides, I'm 30 years older than you.  So you will probably live much longer."

Harry gaped at her.  He pushed his eggs away.  Then he covered his face with his hands and began to sob, 


"If I had known that," he cried, running back to the window, "I would NEVER have agreed to be born."

Why do I keep thinking it should be any different?

When I was 21, my dad died unexpectedly at 57.  

He had a scheduled operation in Dallas on July 21st, just five days before his 58th birthday.  I really wanted to leave Houston and make the 5 hour trip up to Dallas to be with him and my mom during and after the surgery.  She, however, said she had it all under control, and the room was too small anyway, and it was raining.  My mom is the character basis for the definition of the archetypal hysterical and worrisome mother.  So I sat and waited and just knew something was not right.  

When the phone rang that Wednesday morning in 1999, the words streaming out of the receiver had me crumpled on the floor like a poorly written term paper.  My dad was not doing well after surgery, she said, get here quick.  In a flash, my best friend/roommate was pleading with Continental to secure a ticket for me to fly to Dallas immediately.  Rain be damned!  Why did I listen to her in the first place?  

Rushing around the house like a crazy person to find my missing shoe and my driver's license, the ring of that phone stopped me again, but this time, it was altogether different.  It was a paralyzing, gut-wrenching style of different.  Because I then knew that my father was dead.  My God, how did this happen?  I had no warning, no "last words", no final "inside joke" shared between father and daughter, no hug goodbye.

My mom had watched it all - she, ever-present supporter and champion of my father, was there in the hospital room from the time they arrived that morning to the time he began to have trouble breathing.  Panicked, she hit the call button and a code team rushed in the tiny room, medical equipment and people squeezed into every last inch of real estate, but they were up against a silent killer - a blood clot in the lung.  Within minutes, my dad went from sharing conversation with my mom, to gone.  Pulmonary embolism, the coroner said.  And she was there, my mom, the trooper, to the very end, to the "til death do us part".

And not to be outdone, when I was 31, my mom died very expectedly after years of surviving terminal cancer.  


Her diagnosis came as a shock in early January 2004.  This time, we knew every painstaking detail of the enemy, the damage, the pain, the suffering and the futility of medicine against an invader like stage 4 metastatic cancer.  Well this time, damn it, I was not going to sit idly by, collecting regret upon regret.  Not only did I accompany her every trip to MD Anderson, but I also managed to have her as my housemate, where I could keep a watchful eye to make sure she ate her vegetables and didn't die.  The trouble is that she did die... Right there in front of me on the second floor of Houston Hospice on a quiet and breezy September evening two years ago.

I had every opportunity to talk to her over the five years she fought that beast.  We shared and spoke and reminisced.  We laughed and loved and drank good wine.  She knew the depth of my heart, loved the gracious nature of my husband, held the precious hand of my firstborn.  Mom filled me with stories of our family, anecdotes about her younger life, and enough strength and sureness of self to move a mountain if need be.  And even after all of that, I was still left bewildered and lost in the wake of her passing.  How can you live fully in every single moment and still end up with regret?  The regret, I realized, was not that I failed to do something, but who on earth would not want just one moment more with someone they love?  All of the preparing and knowing and planning, well, those were just things to occupy my anxiety and energy during that wild ride.


Why do I keep thinking it needs to be any different?

I have heard many answers to these two questions over the past thirteen years.  Short answers, long answers, confusing answers.  Life is hard sometimes, and also short sometimes, but care and love and do and serve and breathe and laugh anyway.  Even God suffered the loss of a loved one.   This is not some new concept saved up during all of humanity just for little old me.  Adversity is a committed teacher.  And death is real. My lesson learned? If you really want to live before you die, live generously, love ruthlessly, serve compassionately and push yourself into those uncomfortable and vulnerable moments as often as you can muster; because she's right, its not like Stefan said at all.  






"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." - CS Lewis The Four Loves