June -- the Fairest Daughter of the Year

I was feeling a little melancholic these first days of June, and it wasn't just the weather. I was thinking about Brigitte.

In June 2006 I spent an afternoon by the side of a terminally ill friend just days before she passed away. She hadn't told everyone that her disease was back. I think that she must have been trying to protect some of us, or perhaps couldn't bear to see our reaction. Looking back, there must have been times where she hinted at it, but I guess I wasn't really paying close enough attention. It hadn't fully hit me before I was flying out to Toronto on a red-eye -- arriving very early to a warm and misty spring morning.

It was a Sunday, so the usual Toronto traffic was subdued. I remember walking solemnly out of the airport to catch the public bus to Brigitte's neighborhood. I was told that she would be her best around 10am, so there was some time to pass. Every moment seemed at once surreal and hyper-real. I walked slowly, but the world sped by. The promise of summer was apparent in trees lining the parkway, the potted plants on the steps of the lovely brick houses and even in the air, thick with a soft humidity. It did not seem possible that it could also be a time for endings.

This year marks five years since I was treated for breast cancer. I don't know if I'll ever get it again, but so far the most difficult part for me was watching some of the women I got to know through cancer "events" become sicker and sometimes die. I have felt that there must be something I can do in my own life make up for the promise of theirs, and although I now understand this sentiment as a type of survivors guilt, I still feel like I should live in a way that shows that I appreciate the value of my life.

Cancer had been a trump card for me. I felt that because I'd experienced something "life threatening" I was free to experience life more fully. But mostly I was just in more in a hurry that ever. The destination kept changing. I had been reminded of the final outcome and wondered what could be accomplished before that?

That spring day was a most memorable life altering day -- precious, awkward, painful and peaceful... I remember trying to burn every bit of it into my memory, be present for every second. I remember the sensation of warm patio wood under my feet, the view of the city from the balcony, the sweet fruit flan we barely picked at, tea we sipped and the intense emotion. We spoke casually of little things and then I had some private moments to ask Brigitte candidly about her beliefs and feelings knowing she would be honest with me. I hoped that she would have some wise words for me (and she did, but I didn't hear them for a long time). The conversation left me with even more questions. But I resolved to live my questions as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke suggested. And bit by bit I am beginning to experience my answers.

Afterwards, "Survivorship" lost the intensity of the loud battle cry it once had for me. The idea of living a life fully actualized from moment to moment came into my head. I think it had been seeded by Brigitte. She had been studying to be a yoga instructor during her last year of life.

It's natural to look for meaning in all things. It's natural to have goals. It's preferable to me to be ambitious and driven -- even ruthlessly intent on those dreams. But it's been two years since Brigitte died, and I've changed since then. The experience left me with a radically different outlook on life not only because Brigitte and I had so much in common, but also because of something she said once. “... that we need to appreciate living in the moment and that what is most important in our life are love, friends, family and our health. Our everyday worries and concerns are so small compared to the gift of life and love”.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." from Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke