Life, Death and Love

The tomb of Rumi - the poet of love - in Konya, Turkey

(photo: Jill Carroll)

I went to a lawyer this last week and got help writing my Last Will.  I'm having open chest surgery on April 15 and have been in the mode of "getting things handled" before the surgery and hospital stay - paying bills, doing the spring lawn work, getting the vegetable garden in, filing my taxes, and so on.

Getting a legal will on file seemed a prudent thing to "get handled" before I go under the knife in this particular way.  I've had major surgeries before, but none of them unveiled my beating heart and pumping lungs through a splayed chest, as this one will.  This one feels different.

Mind you, I fully expect to live through the surgery.  I'm optimistic and hopeful about things, and I've made post-surgery plans because I expect to here to fulfill them.

I've thought about death a lot, though, lately.  My own death.  What if I die on the operating table?  Or after the surgery due to complications?  What if the cancer returns, can't be treated and kills me?

I've tried to let myself really "be" with these thoughts.  Not in a worried, anxious way but in a sober mindfulness that death is inevitable for all of us in this life.  Given the reality of death - of my own personal death - and given that it could occur sooner than I expect, well . . . what about that?

I don't have a bucket list, and I haven't felt prompted to make one so far.  I've done a lot of things in my 47 years.  I've travelled to many countries, seen many things, had many amazing experiences, and met extraordinary people.  I've done different kinds of professional work, and feel good about the work I've done.   I've been blessed to have my needs, and most of my wants, met.

So, were I to die soon, I wouldn't feel like some kind of activity was left undone or unfulfilled.  Mainly, I would simply miss the world.  I love this world and this life, even with all its hazards and tragedies.  I am grateful for our world, for my life, and that I get to live it here.

As I sit with thoughts of death, what emerges for me as most important has to do with love.  Not love in the abstract, or love of or from some far off deity in the clouds - but love here in this life, with real  people, in everyday situations.  Have I loved?  Have I been loved?  Have I learned anything in the process?

More and more, I think that these are really the only questions that matter.  I am fulfilled in my life to the extent that I love and am loved by people, and learn from that love.  I have learned that, in and through that love, obstacles can be overcome and fears faced down.  Richness, growth and abundance beyond measure are found within it, in the being and doing of it.  And, thankfully, it overcomes limitations and mistakes.  I have plenty of both of those.

I am so grateful to have the capacity for love - for giving and receiving it, and for learning from its treasures.

Because of love, I can be ready to die - even though I expect to live, at least for now.

Feathered Joy

My grandfather's purple martin box.

I've been waiting expectantly since the beginning of the month.  For the last two years, the purple martins who live in our backyard box during the spring and summer have returned from their Brazilian winter during the first week of February.

The box sways in the wind atop its poll, hollow and forlorn, all fall and winter.  The occasional sparrow lights on its perches or squats in one of the dozen apartments, but I pull out their nests if they start to build.  These apartments are exclusively for the purple martins.

My grandfather tenanted large populations of martins.  He had two boxes, each holding over 100 apartments, and most were filled with singles or nesting pairs.  Every year many dozens of birds were born in his boxes, fledged and migrated to Brazil for the fall and winter, then returned to breed and raise their own young in those same boxes.  Papaw would sit in a cane-backed chair under the carport with a .22 rifle, ready to eliminate any starlings that tried to drag out and eat martin eggs or chicks.  His dog retrieved the fallen predators and placed them in a pile by Papaw's chair.  Sometimes, he let me and my cousins retrieve them, which thrilled us.

Rat snakes ate the martins and their eggs, too.  You'd look out the front window and see the long, black body hanging out of the hole while it gorged itself.  Papaw would ascend the ladder within reach of the snake, grab it by its tail end, and whip it out of the hole, forcing it to drop whatever bird it was holding.  In one swift move, holding the pole with one hand and the snake with the other, he would swing the snake in one wide loop to pop it like a bull-whip, sending its head flying over the black walnut trees and out onto the road.  My cousins and I marveled as he slit open the snake with his pocket knife to see how many of his beloved birds had been lost to the predator.

So, I come by my love of purple martins naturally.  I sit in the backyard swing to watch them every day, and I feel an almost inexpressible joy in doing so.  I can hear their sharp, crackling cries from high above me, even above the din of the freeway.  I can pick them out of the clear blue sky even when they are at their highest in the afternoons, surfing the circling wind currents to catch dragonflies.  They are master aerialists, darting and diving and free falling high or low over the lake, their forked tails splayed and turning as a keel.  They zoom over the water, touching their bellies to the surface so as to cool their chicks with wet feathers.  They eat mounds of mosquitos, dragonflies and dayflies.  They settle on the box perches at dusk, chortling and chirping into the setting sun before darting into their apartments for the night.

I yearn for them every year at this time.  And they always seem to come back to their home here right when I need them.  Two years ago, the first one returned the morning after I quit my job.  I woke up after a fitful night and there he was, black and shining in the morning sun.  I took it as a good sign.  Last year, the first bird returned as my friend was visiting us during a particularly trying time for her.  I took that as a good sign, too.

This year, they were almost two weeks late.  But, the first birds returned a few days ago and have already begun scouting out which apartments they prefer.  I begin my second round of chemotherapy this coming week and won't have much energy for anything but sitting in the backyard swing.

Again, it seems, the purple martins have returned to their part-time home at exactly the right time.

Kali: My Chemical Hurricane

Hindus have revered the goddess Kali for many centuries and in many ways throughout larger India.  My friend Calvin sent this card to us recently which displays her in a traditional form.

A dazzling array of devotional practices surround Kali, and the iconography representing her is equally lavish in displaying her common attributes: red rage-intoxicated eyes, lolling tongue, fangs, disheveled hair, dark blue or black skin, 4 or 10 arms, sometimes many faces, wearing a garland of human skulls, holding a severed head and a skull drinking bowl of blood on one side, and a sword and trident on the other.  She is accompanied by jackals and snakes, and often dances in triumph over her submissive consort Shiva.

She represents death, time, energy, the battlefield, change, ultimate reality . . . . . and disease.

I read an article years ago that focused on the ways in which Kali's famous powers of destruction and death are fused with her role as a protective mother in certain parts of India, especially with regard to disease.  The author pointed out that while that "big three" Hindu deities Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva dominate the major urban temples, Kali and other such fierce goddesses reign supreme throughout the smaller towns and rural areas.  People with little or no access to other kinds of medical care apparently need goddesses like these in times of disease.

It takes something more toxic than the disease to fight the disease.  Enter Kali.

This is my first week of chemotherapy for the malignant lemon-sized tumor in my chest.  I am being infused with 4 powerful drugs whose job is to find and kill the cancer cells.  Of course, they'll kill some healthy cells, too, which will push down my red blood cell counts and push out the hair on my head.  But, if they kill the loose tentacles of the malignant lemon and cut it down to size so the surgeon can cut it out permanently, I'm happy to endure the toxic storm of chemicals in my bloodstream for two months or so.

I'm not a very religious person.  I don't pray, meditate or chant.  I don't even do secularized yoga.  When pushed to label myself, I say I'm a pious agnostic.  I don't know what god or gods may or may not exist.  I don't claim to know what any deity wants or needs or demands.  All I know is that I and my world are a small part of an infinitely larger reality that precedes all of us, and will be here when we and our kind are gone.  I revere that even though I don't know what it is.  Mostly, that just means I'm silent in the face of it.

The image of Kali came to me this week, however, and at the same time that I began to use the term "hurricane" to refer to the toxic chemicals being infused into my system.  So, in a particularly "religious" way, I've concocted a sort of mythology that combines all this together into an empowering context for me to forge ahead in the weeks to come.

A hurricane of death and destruction is raging through my bloodstream.  It is combining and swirling and penetrating into every nook, membrane and cell of my system.  Seeking and destroying cancer cells.  Severing their heads, drinking their blood from their own skull bowls.  Drunkenly piercing them with fangs, intoxicated with rage.  Decorated in triumphal dance with a garland of skulls.  The jackals are crying and laughing, ready to eat the spoils.  The snakes are coiled to strike - no one gets away.

My chemical hurricane has begun.  She is coursing through my veins.  She is more toxic than the cancer, and will kill the cancer so that I alone remain.  My chemical hurricane is a category 5 and has been officially named.

Her name is Kali.

In the Thick of Things

My friend Steve Quill invited me to duck hunt with him in Port O'Connor this past week.  The season ends in a few days and I begin chemotherapy soon.  So, I skipped out on some things and rearranged others in order to spend some time in the duck blind.

The bay and lagoons around Port O'Connor teem with wintering waterfowl. Teal, redheads, widgeon, bluebills, pintails, golden-eyes and more spend their days feeding in the flats and soaking up the winter sun that reflects off the reefs.  They join the pelicans, cranes, cormorants and myriad other shore birds in crisscrossing the jetties, lagoons, islands and sandbars of the larger bay.  Ducks loaf the short winter days away, floating and paddling beside tailing redfish and surfacing dolphins.

We watched all this activity become visible as the full moon sank and the sun began its rise on the chilly morning of our hunt.  Four of us stood in brushy pit blinds on a small island no larger than a suburban driveway.  Retriever Jake crouched in his place near the water's edge, ready to bolt for downed birds.

After an hour or two, we'd taken our legal limit of redheads, as well as a pintail or two.  We stood up in our blinds to watch the clouds of redheads fly over us, picking out the shiny, rusted heads of the drakes and the subtle browns and grays of the hens.  Clouds of them flew over - hundreds of ducks at a time - swooping down to take a look at our bobbing decoys before they careened past us for more distant and enticing water.

One group, however, did not pass.  They swooped low over us and then circled up, high and back - heading straight for the open water amidst our decoys.  In a rush of swishing wings, the entire flock landed in the water not 20 yards from us.  They floated and bobbed, fluffing their wings, shaking off water droplets from the splashdown.

Before we could even look at each other, another group buzzed in from behind us and joined the ducks on the water.  Then another group came. And another.  And still another.  Within about 60 seconds, approximately 1000 redheads landed in our decoys right in front of us.

We were breathless.  Not even our salty old guide who's hunted Port O'Connor for 60 years had ever seen anything like this.  We looked at each other, giddy with amazement and joy, repressing the urge to speak so as not to scare them away.

At some point, I said aloud the only thing that came to mind:  "God is good."

My friend Steve, a retired Lutheran pastor, smiled and nodded.

The ducks stayed with us for 5-10 minutes.  Then, in one magnificent explosion, all of them rocketed up from the water at once and left, flying east for other waters.

For me, to hunt is to participate with intention in a fundamental law of life on this planet: that some things die so that other things may live.  To hunt is also to socket myself down into the thick of things.  Into the flow of life, of the earth, and of the world.  Into the Rhythm of Life that was here before we were, and will be here when we are gone.  Into the primal, natural realities that ground and determine our lives here whether or not we acknowledge them.

With the redheads - both the living and the downed - I feel my own soul expand into the Soul of the world.

Fields, Dogs, the Sky and a Friend

My to-do list today consisted of a round dozen.  Blogs to write, website pages to create, book chapters to write, taxes to file, stuff to do around the house, on and on.

I managed to knock a few things out this morning in between episodes of walking out to the backyard lake to throw tennis balls for Dolly, our rat terrier.  By 11:00 I found myself donning cammo clothes and packing shotguns into the truck.  Nishta convinced me to take Dolly with me, so off we went in my big red pick-up to meet my favorite hunting buddy Bill on our lease near Wallis, Texas.

Bill is a retired guy with a scruffy white beard who drives a beat-up Chevy truck, owns a thousand shotguns and fishing rods, and has crates of hunting and fishing gear in his garage.  We've hunted together for a decade or more.  He hunts with his golden retriever, Hunter, a 3-year old bundle of energy and love.

Bill, Hunter, Dolly and I sat in a pasture all afternoon waiting for mourning doves to come to our decoys.  Dolly is not a hunting dog, but loves to be in the field anyway - that is, until she gets tired and wants to take a nap in my lap.  So, for a while I cradled a sleeping rat terrier while Bill took 2 of the 6 birds who flew within range.

Mostly, we just sat and watched things.  We watched large flocks of redwing blackbirds swirl and swoop like black, living tornados across the pasture.  We watched small groups of doves meander along a creek bed in the distance, far out of range of our shotguns.  We watched Hunter and Dolly run and chase and smell and explore everything within 75 yards of where we were sitting.  We watched a nearby herd of white cows - a big bull, a dozen or so heifers and a few calves - make their way through 3 big round hay bales.  We watched hawks careen and soar overhead, hunting for their prey as we were, reflecting the sun off their wings and through the pale feathers of their tails.  We watched 3 V's of snow geese pass over us, honking and crying to one another as the sun made them look like blinking diamonds in the sky.

Finally, at sundown, with guns unloaded and stored, birds cleaned and in the ice chest, we stood and watched the sun sink below the tree line and felt the sudden chill in the air.  The full moon was already a third of the way up the sky.  It was time to go home.

My to-do list is still here next to my computer.  Only a few things have been crossed off.  But, I don't regret a moment of this day that I spent not doing the to-do list.

I spent the day with my friend, our dogs, and the world - plugged deep into the natural rhythms of things.  Practicing the only religion I practice.

I had a good day.

The Life of Pleasure

Epicurus gets a bad rap as a philosopher.  


Mostly, people think of him as someone who promoted licentious, orgiastic pleasure as the path to happiness.  His name is associated with fine food, wine, sex and other such indulgences.  Our contemporary society doesn't roundly condemn these pleasures - on the contrary, it endorses and encourages them - but Epicurus often gets left out of the conversation by those who discuss, with seriousness, what it means to live a good life.


This is a mistake, in my view.  


Yes, he put the experience of pleasure - or at least the absence of pain - at the heart of his definition of happiness and the good life.  But he was very careful to distinguish between different kinds of pleasures, and in which ones the wise person chooses to indulge in order to create a happy, contented life.  Some pleasures are natural and necessary - like food, shelter, clothing, social intercourse (which includes the erotic and non-erotic) and the like.  Some pleasures are natural and unnecessary - like certain kinds of food, shelter and clothing (lobster, starter mansions and expensive finery).  Some pleasures are unnatural and unnecessary - like fame, glory, admiration, receiving honors, wealth and so on.


Epicurus says the path to a happy, good life is to focus one's life on the first category as much as possible, steering into the second category only rarely.  Stay completely away from the third category, he says - it's a straight path toward anxiety and misery most of the time.


I think he's right on this in a general way.  The pleasures in the first category are the simplest, most basic pleasures and, thus, are the easiest to obtain.  The second category takes more effort and work to secure and, once obtained, even more effort to maintain. Bigger houses and cars, expensive clothes and food - these "cost" us more than the simpler pleasures, in money, effort, attention and more.  The pleasures of the final category are largely out of our control anyway, since they depend on the thoughts and actions of others, so spending life trying to obtain them is a recipe for misery.  And we lose ourselves in vanity and narcissism in the process. 


My favorite quote from Epicurus centers on what he sees as a key ingredient to happiness.   He says: 


Of all the means which wisdom gives us to ensure happiness throughout ours lives, by far the most important is friendship.


Happiness is as simple as having one or a few really good friends.  They don't even have to stay the same throughout our lives - people come in and out of our lives throughout the decades.  But, at any one time, to have a least one person (if not more) who sees us and loves us for who we really are, and with whom we can share our triumphs as well as our struggles . . . this is indispensable to the good and happy life.


If true abundance is determined by the presence of friendship in our lives - and I think it is - then I am indeed a wealthy woman.  Forget about the fancy house, cars, clothes and food.  


I've got friends.  I'm filthy rich.

No More Messing Around

For years, I've taught the work of philosophers and thinkers who insist that in order to live well, we have to face the reality of death.  And not just any old death - our own, individual death.  Socrates, the Stoics, Epicurus, Buddha, Chuang tzu . . . many others - they all have their own distinct way of presenting this lesson.

This has always made sense to me on an intellectual level, and even on a personal level to some extent.  Like most people, I've experienced loss in my life due to death.  And every time someone close to me dies, especially if the death was sudden or unexpected, I hear myself and others talk about how life is short, we should all make the best of it, and so forth.

And then usually we all go back to our regularly scheduled life programming.

A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer - a thymoma, a cancer of the thymus that is rare in adults.  It's a big lemon-sized tumor sitting there in the upper right side of my chest.  All indications, so far, are that it's treatable and that I'll recover to resume my life.  Fortunately, I'm being cared for at the most famous and well-regarded cancer center in the world.

But let me just say:  there's nothing like a cancer diagnosis to get you to stop jacking around in your life, wasting time on things that don't matter.

I've been more focused on the things that truly matter to me in the last few weeks since the diagnosis than I have been in the last several months.  Why?  Because suddenly I have a concrete realization that I don't have much time.  I'm not expecting to die from this cancer or during the treatment, but still . . . this treatment alone will take me out  of commission for a while and, well, I've got things to do.

I've got people to see, books to write, websites to build, and relationships to savor!  I've got to get as much of it in as possible before I go "under the knife" because who knows when I'll be able to get back to it?  And, truthfully, I don't really know how life will be for me afterwards.  We never know the future of our lives, do we?

So, I think I get a little more viscerally what the philosophers are saying about death and facing our mortality in order to live well.  I'm sure this is why people who have near-death experiences come back from those experiences and completely change their lives.  They quit their jobs, start a wacky business based on their passions, get out of bad marriages, start new ones, move to the other side of the world, learn to pole dance, sell all they own to live out of a backpack - all sorts of radical things.

They get it.  Big time.  They get that not one of us has nearly as much time as we think we do to be and do what is ours to do on this earth.  Right now - as you read and I type - we have the most time we'll ever have again in this life.  From here, the clock winds steadily down, and there's not one of us who won't die, some of us far sooner than we think.  I have to believe that if we truly lived mindful of that reality every day, we would live differently.

I know I'm living differently, at least these last few weeks.  I haven't had a near death experience, but to hear the word "cancer" applied to me feels close.

I'm not grateful for this cancer.  I'll be happy when that malignant lemon is out of my body and burned in a medical waste incinerator somewhere.

But, if an enlivened sense of urgency about doing what matters in my life is a lesson I can learn from this experience, well . . . I'll definitely take it.