Layers of Living

*I dedicate this post to the people who I saw each time I spent hours in the infusion room—those who I spoke to and those who exchanged a knowing glance. Those who preferred to be at a distance or needed to be so. We each have our own stories and all, loving tended to by the nursing staff. Your weariness and courage is a mirror for me.

On this last day of chemo, that I pray will be the final infusion of my life, I’m thinking about a moment in the Yom Kippur afternoon service when my voice and my heart cracked. It was when I read the following poem by Tamara Madison called “Sequoia Sempervirens”:

…Some of these trees have been here

Since Vikings drove their boats

Onto the shores of Newfoundland

Some of these trees were seedlings

While the Mayans were worshiping time

While the dire-wolf and saber-toothed tiger

roamed North America

Some of these trees have survived

Lightening strikes and forest fires

Some of these trees house creatures

On the forest floor in burnt out caves

At the base of their ruddy trunks.

Some of these trees have become

Living pipes, chimneys, hollowed out by fire.

They have grown beyond their trauma and focus now

On the daily climb, the adding-on

Of needle and bark, on nature’s drive

To rise above and see beyond

Until the day when death will fell them

And the earth will add them to their riches.

We can be like those trees,

pull on the layers of living

like fine new garments

House the needy in the caverns of our grief,

grow beyond the stories of our scars

Stretch our branches toward the bristling stars.

This poem is my hope and prayer—and captures the powerful confluence of Yom Kippur and the final infusion only a day apart. We pull on new layers of living not to hide our scars, but to grow with them and cultivate comfort. We acknowledge what brings us through fire and storm, letting go and immersing in flowing tears. We bring hard truths and compassion to our pain, stretching to grow despite the unknowns.

I will continue with the next stage of my treatment (radiation), with another surgery after that, and with the waiting to just see what comes. But I am not going to wait by wading into fear and standing rooted in the sludge of regret, rather I choose to live this daily climb as authentically and fully as I can, with the people I love, and with a faith community of soulful practice.

Speaking of faith, I believe our faith is created, affirmed, and renewed, when we know there is a landing place to mark the seasons of our calendar and history, of fire, water, earth and air in our own soul’s journey—what comfort this has brought me when time expands and contracts from the trembling fear that comes with our vulnerability, our mortality.

Thank you, dear ones, for your prayers and encouragement, for helping me and so many others rise above and see beyond, pulling on the layers of the living with steady hope and love.