remembering Carrie, on the 2nd anniversary of her death

A month before writing to say a final goodbye, my friend Carrie called to ask me for a friend’s address. She had a baby gift to send the new mother.

It was vintage Carrie. In the midst of everything, she was still thinking of ways to share in and bring joy to others. And when I say “everything,” I mean in the midst of cancer treatments, doctor appointments, pain management, and taking care of her family.

 No matter how dark things got or how much pain she was in, Carrie’s messages always included praise and thanksgiving for the God who gave her two amazing children—after medical experts told her in no uncertain terms that she would never have any. She called them her “miracle babies.”

When I hear people talk about fighting cancer, it is always Carrie who comes to mind. She fought that battle with all her might, all the way until the end. If that meant painful procedures that may or may not offer cure, but instead offered a way to extend her time on earth being present to her family, Carrie always said yes.

Carrie believed in and relied on the power of prayer. Not in the sense of telling God what to do, but always with a powerful balance: her complete trust in God’s Divine Providence—and a healthy dose of petitions straight from her humble mother heart.

Her prayers of petition were always grounded on her family. Carrie had no problem reminding God that she had to stick around longer because her son and daughter were simply too young to be without a mother.

I will never forget Carrie describing the gift of her scars… the marks on her body, she explained, was her road map, “a map I hope leads me to eternal life!”

In reality, Carrie and her scars were, and continue to be, a light post leading all of us to heaven. And I have no doubt that her suffering prayers on behalf of others carried many a painful journey, always reminding us of the ways God has already begun answering our prayers.

A week before her death Carrie wrote, once again, asking for prayers—always first for her family, and this time, for a holy death.

They are the most beautiful, loving, joyful children in the world, and

their own mother had to pierce their hearts. Above all else, I ask that

you pray for my Matteo and Francesca. Stefano is also devastated, of

course. My prayer is that the end will be peaceful and not panicked… If possible, I'd like to die at St. Francis of Assisi Hospital in Evanston. My children were born there, half the staff knows me, and I have felt that Francis was always with me in a special way--I was baptized by the Franciscans, wrote a book for a Franciscan, my spiritual director was a Franciscan, I was married at San Damiano in Assisi, and had my children at St. Francis.  I just think it would help to present a sense of peace for my children. I don't know if they would ever be able to handle mommy dying at home.

As the bilirubin on the liver function rises, I'm told my brain will

begin to get fuzzy. As funny as it might be to get emails from me in

that state, I think this is the time to say goodbye.

I thank you all for you the support we've shared, for allowing the occasional vent, for the encouragement, for the beautiful published works that have come out of sifting ideas, and for your friendship.

Thank you, and I love you,

Carrie

Carrie and Francesca rough housing with my first grandchild, Elenita

the end is where we start from

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

~T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets, 

Quartet No. 4, Little Gidding, V

The sun sets over Texas as I drive home from Pat's funeral

It’s been a difficult month.

Exactly two weeks after celebrating the 10th anniversary of arriving in Santiago de Compostela, my Camino buddy and dear friend Pat Stankus completed her earthly pilgrimage. She fought a courageous battle against brain cancer for a year.

I visited with Pat the week of our anniversary. Together we laughed telling stories of our Camino de Santiago pilgrimage to every nurse, aid and hospital staff that came into her room—and together we cried discussing our feelings about her death.

Even writing those words seems strange, like describing the plot of someone else’s novel.

Three days after Pat’s funeral in Austin, I began another medical pilgrimage back in Oklahoma, this one with my Dad, who is still in the hospital.

I will blog as often as I can, but I will first need a little breathing space to digest all these intense and significant emotions. Thank you in advance for your prayers!

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The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces;
The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken. On that day it will be said:
"Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!This is the LORD for whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!"

~Isaiah 25: 8-9

from the OT reading I proclaimed at Pat’s funeral Mass

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They cut me down and I leapt up high

I am the life that will never, never die 

I'll live in you if you'll live in me

I am the Lord of the dance, said he 

Dance, dance, wherever you may be

I am the lord of the dance, said he

And I lead you all, wherever you may be

And I lead you all in the dance, said he

~Lord of the Dance, 

recessional song at Pat’s funeral Mass

The Dubliners: "Lord of the Dance" video

co-m-PASSION

I often say to people, “I will pray for you.” But how frequently is my prayer one of pity or sympathy rather than compassion?

My dear friend Pat is fighting brain cancer. She spends most of her days on a recliner chair in her bedroom, and often when people come to visit her, they sit across from her—and, as she describes it, “silently stare” at her. I laugh when she tells me these stories. But when I witness it with my own eyes, it baffles me.

What bothers her most of all, however, is that it is clear to her when people approach her with pity and sympathy rather than compassion. 

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s always obvious to me,” Pat says. "The love is different."

For author Henri Nouwen, compassion is at the heart of our prayer for others. Literally meaning to suffer with another, compassion necessarily entails becoming close to the one who suffers. It means opening up our own heart to feel their pain as if it was ours. It means seeing Christ in their suffering eyes. 

“When God became as we are,” Nouwen wrote, “that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into his intimate life, it became possible for us to share in his infinite compassion. In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found in the divine love which holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace.”

the Write Stuff

The past couple of days have been full of family events and unexpected surprises—from celebrating my parents 56th anniversary with our daughters to play dates and a surprise visit from my brother Ignacio.  

Needless to say, writing time has been minimal to non-existent!

This morning I went with Papi to his doctor visit, and it reminded me of a crisis time years ago when writing time was simply not optional. It was a survival tool for me, an intimate and personal source for managing and processing all that was going on in my life.

From my book, The Journey: a Guide for the Modern Pilgrim, co-authored with my husband Michael:

When our family first learned about my mom’s colon cancer, I felt compelled to write down every nuance of that experience. Like a cleansing shower after a workout, I would come home from a visit to the hospital or a chemotherapy session and start writing. 

On January 28 of that year I noted, “There is a nurse at the doctor’s office whose care and compassion for mom and for the other patients is deep and evident. When Tori comes to connect her to the IV, she brings her rollaway chair as close to Mom as she can and she touches Mom’s arms softly, tenderly, as if her skin was the softest material she’s ever felt. She is looking for a good vein, which at this point [in the chemotherapy] is hard to find. 

The last two times she’s been “lucky,” she said, and she was able to find a vein on her first stick. When she doesn’t get it, she apologizes to Mom with such feeling, truly aware that every little pain only increases the big pains. It’s not that we feel less when things get bigger, it’s rather that we feel more. We feel everything, especially when it comes to pain. Every experience of pain makes us less willing, more fearful, which is why feeling and loving become a more deliberate choice. 

“Tori’s gentle way,” I continued, “does not go unnoticed by Mom, who always takes note and tries to smile and appreciate her even as Tori is poking her! The past two sessions she has even collected a bag full of samples of “Boost” bars, puddings, cans––to help Mom keep up her strength even as she continues to loose her appetite more and more each day. The most noticeable change to me is in Mom’s eyes.”  

During those long months, I wanted––and needed––to write down every detail that I noticed, about the doctor, about the room, about the new foreign language that the medical professionals used, expecting us to know what it all meant. I wanted to record my emotions, though I often had no clue how to label the tornado of feelings whirling inside me. I wanted to pray, on paper, what I couldn’t pray out loud. Sometimes to fight with God. But more often to simply write on paper what it felt like to mourn the fact that my mother was no longer the woman I remembered. 

Even as I sat by her, hearing her breathing next to me, I was deeply aware that I was watching my mother dying, not today or tomorrow. But simply aware of and acknowledging her death. I couldn’t say those things out loud, so I wrote them. I didn’t want to just survive through that year and a half of surgery and chemotherapy, I wanted it to become a true pilgrimage of whatever it was that God was showing me, telling me, through my mom’s experience. And journaling became a fundamental tool in this process.