My cousin and friend, a woman I’ve known since our baby teeth began to fall out, died on 24 July 2007. We didn’t get to travel to Italy together as planned, and she didn’t take the trips intended with her children, Caroline and Sean, but what she did do through her pain was to live and enjoy life as long as it was in her power to do so.
My cousin Viv wrote a short piece in a magazine which is distributed free in the city where she lived. She wrote it a few months before she died, and tells about living in the now, embracing and accepting what is, and meditating.
She was sharp as a tack and in touch with her gut, and when she realized that her time on earth was coming to an end, and she couldn’t be on the go as before, she sat in her big comfortable chair in front of a big window and watched the flow of the river and its many changes, and in another area she looked out at the sunsets as never before from the floor to ceiling windows, and in bed she gazed at the moon from the three windows nearby. At those times she lived in the now and meditated on what she saw.
And to say that she was embracing and accepting what is is not to say she sat back and did nothing. That wasn’t her style. She was a powerhouse of doing and she had a will to beat all wills. To buy extra time she did everything that came before her to do. Then when she realized the end was approaching she began eating as much chocolate cake as she wanted for breakfast and dinner.
Toward the end of her life, I noticed how attentively she listened to people and how little she said. She was taking in life. During all this I never once heard her complain about the pain, the trips to all the doctors and the times in the hospital, or about all the medicines. At some point in time she came to an agreement with herself about all the ups and the downs cancer creates, and grace entered.
Oh, how I cried for this cousin of mine after she left us all. But I had to force myself to remember the times she shook a finger my way and said she wanted happy and fun, no sadness when she left. So with her words fresh in my mind I try for the happy and fun. And in her honor, I try for no sadness.
I love you, Viv.