37days

N is for now

“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe

In 2008, I am going to be here now.

When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day.

I want, instead, to live in Now. This moment. What does that look like? I think it looks like a lot less time on the computer and a lot more time playing Candyland with a four-year-old or making vegan cupcakes with a teenager or raking leaves with Mr Brilliant. I think it looks a lot like paying attention. I think, for me, it looks a lot like writing or being creative every day. Maybe it just looks like breathing deeply every morning before flinging ourselves into the whirling stream of our lives. It is far too easy to be swept into the competing currents.

As Thich Nhat Hanh has written, “Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

Pema Chödrön has reminded us that Now is the only time. That how we relate to Now creates the future. That what we do accumulates and that the future is the result of what we do right now.

I asked Billy Collins (you know, we talk constantly) if death is the main chord of all poetry. “Yes, it is. But poetry isn’t a consolation for death, for the reality that you will die. Instead, it is an expression of gratitude that you’re alive. Poetry italicizes experience or brings it into sharper focus. It provides a fuller immersion into life.” Poetry is about seizing the day, but we only need “carpe diem” if we realize we have a limited number of diems.

Release a dove for Meta

Dear Friends,

Meta's story touched many people. Her too-young death and the extraordinary leave-taking given to her by her family and friends brought lessons and insights to me, to many.

On February 25th at 5pm EST, her family and friends will gather in the mountains to release a dove in memory of Meta and in celebration of her 21st birthday, which will be the next day.

I'll be too far from home to join them, but have committed to Meta's mother, Mary Anne, that I will light a candle at that same time, to send energy to them all - and to the world - in Meta's memory. Please join me if you can in memorializing Meta and holding her family in peace and in love at 5pm EST on Sunday, February 25th. Mark your calendar, join me.

If you'd like to send a birthday greeting to Meta, leave a comment; I'll gather them all and send them to her family.

Where every day is Now

37 days goes by quickly.

So does a life. After a young woman named Meta died this past fall, and in the slightly homebound recuperation following my fall in November, I created a 37days calendar for 2007 to raise money for a scholarship fund in Meta's memory.

The third and final printing of that calendar is now complete. If you'd like one, they are $10 (+$4.50 shipping/handling for 1-5 calendars), with half of that applied to printing costs and half donated to Meta's scholarship fund.

Many of you have generously bought calendars - thank you. You have fed my burgeoning dream of sitting in a vast, spacious, uncluttered studio painted in shades of teal and umber surrounded by papers and textiles, creating small worlds of art that hang from silver threads or fantastic, bright cupcakes. Or something like that. I hope the calendars met your expectations.

If you haven't bought one and would like to, you can order one (or more!) online using PayPal (send PayPal payments to patti at thecircleproject dot com - please include your mailing address in the notes section and let me know how many you want). If you hate PayPal and All It Stands For, you can send a check payable to "The Circle Project" to The Circle Project, 37days Calendar, P.O. Box 18323, Asheville, NC 28814 USA, and the fantastic elves will handle it from there...

Mind the gap

“Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.” –Pema Chodron, In the Gap Between Right and Wrong

In late October of 2003, I spent 12 hours a day at Mission Hospital helping my mom and stepfather reconcile in their minds and hearts and guts and bank accounts the unambiguous death sentence he had been handed, rather abruptly, by a doctor with some significant deficit of Marcus Welby, M.D.’s empathy, manners, and comforting good looks.

Consider yourself part of the solution

“In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.” – Flora Edwards

Do something. Extend yourself.

This is no way to say goodbye to someone who has been your cornerstone, your love, your driving force, your partner, your rock.

Xavier Bowie was 57 and had lung cancer. Finding no one to take them out of New Orleans, he and his wife hoped the storm would spare them. “I’ve got electric and stuff right now,” she told herself. “I can keep going. I’ve got oxygen. I can keep going.” But the oxygen ran out.

Know the point of your life

“Sheridan's gifts as a teacher were as rare as the purity of his passion. Wherein did these gifts lie? In his brilliance? Yes. In his mastery of his subject? Of course. In his capacity for lucid, concrete, and vivid explanation? Again, yes. But there is another factor, one whose roots lie in magic or the supernatural. Sheridan had charm.” --Jonathan Malino, Eulogy for Sheridan Simon, 11 April 1994

This week – today, actually – marks the eleventh anniversary of a death, a death far too young and far too fast and far too unfair. To keep him alive, I want you to meet a most special human being, an extraordinary mind, a brilliant writer, one of the very funniest people I’ve ever met, and a most amazing teacher. A man with definite charm.

Reconnect, now.

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?" 
- Stephen Levine

A woman I used to work with in Washington, DC, died on January 12, 2005.

I was shocked and angered on many levels: first, I was shocked that she was 72 years old. Having never known her age when I worked with her, it's just that I believed her to be closer to my age than to my mother's.   Secondly, that she died of cancer - I'm furious that people continue to suffer from and die of cancer in such numbers. (Just an aside: How does this continue to happen? Where are our funding priorities in this country? Is there something I should be doing?). And thirdly, that unbeknownst to me, she lived (and died) just 3 miles from my house.

Why 37 days?

In October of 2003, my stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later.

During that 37 days, I helped my mother care for him at home, since he wanted to die there. Never having been around someone dying before, I didn't know what to do. When my father died, I was just 19 and sitting in the intensive care waiting room. No one asked if I wanted to be with him; they just asked if I wanted to see him dead after it was all over. It was the beginning of a long realization of how intensively we avoid death, at least in this culture.

But, back to 2003. It was at once profound and awkward, as if I were visiting in a place I ought not to be, hearing things I ought not ever hear, and dispensing morphine as if I knew how. He very soon lost the ability to speak, which made it both easier and harder. I was scared and anxious all the time, not knowing what was coming next. There was no manual that I could find, no prescription for what he was feeling and doing, how his insides were eating him up. I couldn't tell, and very soon into it, he couldn't tell me either.

Everything I could possibly think to talk to him about was so petty as to be painful. Would he like to watch a movie, I would pantomime? What? And have Hugh Grant be the last thing he might see on earth? The newspaper failed, the ads for supermarket bargains not relevant - but what was?

At night, I could hear the oxygen machine making its move in and out as I waited for it to stop. And, finally, it did, after his feet started turning blue and we watched the blueness march all the way up the 6-feet and 4-inches of him.

The timeframe of 37 days made an impression on me. We act as if we have all the time in the world - that's not a new understanding. But the definite-ness of 37 days struck me. So short a time, as if all the regrets of a life would barely have time to register before time was up.

And so, as always when awful things happen, I tried to figure out how to reconcile in my mind the fact that it was happening and the fact that the only thing I could do was try to make some good out of it. What emerged was a renewed commitment to ask myself this question every morning: 'what would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?'

It's a hard question some days.

But here's how I answered it: Write like hell, leave as much of myself behind for my two daughters as I could, let them know me and see me as a real person, not just a mother, leave with them for safe-keeping my thoughts and memories, fears and dreams, the histories of what I am and who my people are. Leave behind my thoughts about living the life, that "one wild and precious life" that poet Mary Oliver speaks of. That's what I'd do with my 37 days. So, I'm beginning here.