Safe harbors

I realized yesterday, I am completely surrounded by safe harbors. I have a safe home. Incredibly loving, generous friends. People who are more than willing to drop their own lives for a week to walk into hell with me. (Ranging from my housemate and friends who feel like family, to one who offered to go with me to chemotherapy after meeting me at the Ranch once.) A church I love, and others that are also homes. A refuge I can go to whenever I want. Good work I can come back to, where I am a safe harbor for others. My God, myself, my community.

I’m still struck by a line from last Sunday’s sermon. She said that the idea of the reign of God was for all of us to be together, "everybody safe and playful.” A and I looked at each other and smiled. The idea was so Carol. And so right.

We are so loved.

I have a killer growing inside my body. I have a PET scan tomorrow that will tell us whether it’s responding to the biochemotherapy that leaves me still feeling sick weeks after it’s done. Results of this scan will tell my doctor whether to keep me on the same treatment regimen, or give me high-dose IL-2. The side effects are different. I’d be in the ICU. PET scans take some time to interpret. It’s possible, though not their ideal or mine, that I might not understand what I’m in for until we’re back down there. And I won’t really know, until I’ve experienced it.

I am surrounded by compassionate, competent caregivers in the hospital, and friends who love me. It is the one place I don’t feel safe. We fight this disease in my body. The chemicals course through my veins, and do what they do. I can’t control how the drugs affect me, how I feel, or how my body responds. All I can do is allow it to happen, and let my people love me through it.

I’m not sure of the point I’m making. There’s some connection between coming from as much safety and love as I live in, and going to the place that keeps me awake nights. My next trip is almost two weeks away. I’m going with someone who has been a gift since the day I met her. She loves me, and she’s up for this. I trust her, I trust my Riverside friends, and I trust my care team. I know that I’ve done this twice, already faced the completely unknown once, and can do it again. I know I can do what I already know, if that’s where they keep me. I already know to expect some things as IL-2 reactions, because I’ve had them on the low dose. Still, I’m already afraid.

I can’t find the point I’m reaching for. Maybe I’ll have to be on the other side of fear to articulate it. What I can do, is be grateful for all who hold me in love. For all who keep me as safe, everywhere I go, as I am.

You know who you are. I love you.

Healing

A and I went to Livermore on Sunday. We hadn’t been to St. Bart’s in ages. The rector is retiring, and she’s a friend to both of us. I hadn’t seen Carol in way too long. She’s just good people. Loves me utterly, and made damn sure I know it. It was really healing to have that time.

She said something to me two years ago, that’s been whirring around in my head again. I was starting interferon the next day. I was scared. She was the right person at the right time. She said,

“God will either heal you, or change your heart so you don’t need it any more.”

I’m noticing, that I haven’t been asking. I’ve been aware of the presence of healing. Thankful for it. But I haven’t said, “Look, I don’t know if I’m dealing with this at all well, and I’m really not happy about any of it. Can you just come and hang out with me?” Let alone, “I don’t believe you’re a pharmacist, but I really don’t want to die.” I need to say these things. I need to be honest about them.

I think I’ve gotten too busy scrapping through this. Not only do I not have to do that, but I can’t keep it up all the time. I need to remember that it’s not just me, my care team, and my community in this struggle. God is in here too. God feels exactly as you or I would feel, if someone we loved more than life were this sick. God doesn’t come at disease with a scalpel. (God alone knows why.) God comes to us with love. Love sets us free to be who we really are.

There are times for fighting through, and times for remembering how loved we are. It’s okay for me to be honest about what I need and what I want. It’s okay to ask for whatever these things are. It’s okay to ask for wholeness; it’s okay to ask for life. It’s okay to ask for time.

I believe as I always have, that the medical aspects of this are up to my doctors and my body. I won’t be singled out to be cured. I also know that it’s okay to say, “God, please. Help me.” If that help comes in the form of clarity or love, that is healing.

Healing is so much more than cure. Cure is the cessation of disease. Healing is becoming who we are. In all the ways we can think of, and in every way unimaginable. I did not know before I was diagnosed two years and three months ago, that I would be who I am right now. I continue on that course. I believe this with everything I am: love makes real. And real is what we want. Real is where we are going. Real is absolute fearlessness; not defiance, but living in truth. Real is communion with ourselves, each other, and God. Real is love out loud.

Real requires the dropping of boundaries. Becoming demands that I say, “God, I have no idea how to do this. I know that you are with me. Show me how to walk through this.  Show me how to be whole.”

That, I know, God will.

We interrupt this blog for a brief commercial announcement...

Spaghetti Feed Fundraiser "to benefit the care, treatment and general well-being of our dear friend Kirstin Paisley" who is battling cancer will be held Sat. Aug. 21st in Sacramento, CA. Donations can also be sent by mailing checks made out to Kirstin Paisley c/o Safe Ground Sacramento, Attn. Event Coordinator, P.O. Box 1644, Sacramento, CA 95812.


My apologies for this interruption. Regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.
               Love,
Andee (aka A, aka Kirstin's roommate)

Dark corners

I’m home, recovering from round 2. I’ve been home since Wednesday, I think. I’m less queasy, though I still don’t want to be around food much. I still get really tired, though it’s difficult to sleep during the day (and if I do, I don’t sleep as well at night). I don’t have much energy. A says I’m better by the day, but I still feel like crap. And I’m tired of being sick so much of the time.

It’s like I’m in a room, with no particular furniture. The closet door is open, and it’s leaking darkness all over the walls and floor. When I’m quiet, and alone, I don’t want to think about anything. That darkness is what’s there. I don’t want to talk about it with A, because it makes us both sad. But I need to write it out so I can maybe let go of it.

I’m not depressed, or I don’t recognize it as such. I don’t know whether my body is responding to chemotherapy. I threw another tumor the day I was discharged. It’s maybe as big around as a dime, on my hip. These things seem to sprout fully formed from some kind of hydra’s head. The one on my shoulder seems to have shrunk, a lot. The others, I don’t know. And I don’t know what the deep ones—in my lungs, chest muscle, and bones—are doing. I’ll have a PET scan on the 8th. Riverside will get the results, and will either give me more of the same or change it up. I’m anxious on either account. The devil I know is awful enough. I want it to work, dammit. I want to go back to my life.

The nurse who runs the program in Riverside told me that if I had the same stage of some other form of cancer—breast, say—we couldn’t talk about the odds being as good as they are. 30% is still not good. I know the statistics. And I know I’m an individual. But I’m afraid.

I’m not afraid of the spiritual aspects of dying. I know God is with me. I’m afraid of the physical process. Will it hurt? Will I feel ever sicker, just be uncomfortable? I remember watching someone at St. Aidan’s go through pancreatic cancer. I didn’t see her die. I didn’t see her at all for the last three or so months of her life. But when I did see her, she was so thin it just looked painful. I’m dropping weight now, because I’m nauseous and don’t want to eat. It doesn’t hurt. I’m nowhere near emaciated. I know my appetite will come back in a week or so. But I wonder, will my good times in between treatments be less good? Will I forget what healthy felt like?

I know I could live. I certainly have friends who are praying for that. But I’m not counting on it. I still have the tightness in my chest, that I know is not stress. When I cough, I wonder whether it really is simple allergies.

I want to go where I’m going with my eyes open. But I also don’t want to go there at all. I want my life back. I don’t want to think about cancer, sickness, or dying. I want to be hanging out with homeless people, taking bread to the river. I want to be laughing with my friends. Even if I live, I will never be normal again.

I want to go to the Ranch. I miss my refuge. Weekends at home are fine, but it’s hard to be alone here during the week when I don’t feel well enough to go anywhere. I don’t have access to a car right now, but that might change in a week or so. Then I can break away for awhile. But I don’t want to take too much relatively healthy time away from A, either. I want for us to be able to enjoy what we have. We still play. We still laugh. We still have fun together. I want us to do that for as long as we can.

I have to fly back to Riverside on the 19th. I just plain don’t want to. I will, because I want to live. But I don’t want to be sick anymore.

I’m just so frigging tired of all of this.

Grace

I’m ensconced in the hospital. I’m going to try not to type too much tonight, because my wrist hurts where my IV line is. (They couldn’t fit me in for a central line tonight; I’ll get that first thing tomorrow.)

The nurse came in, started my IV, and we got talking. We probably talked for twenty minutes. She is an oncology nurse (not all of them on my floor are), has been for seven years. She’s young, and startlingly competent. Right now, she’s looking up my paper chart and printing information about the neuropathy drug they’re discharging me with. (I have the beginnings of peripheral neuropathy, in both hands and feet. It’s scaring hell out of me.)

We talked about my care team here, in Sac, in Oakland. We talked about my support system. I told her some of the things I wrestle with—see how healthy I am, how can I be sick? She told me she thought I’d do well.

I asked her why. She said, “Because you’re so positive. When the mind gives up, the body follows.” I didn’t tell her how much I hate this.

I told her about the wind talking to me at the Ranch. I also told her I want to be alive. We talked on the level of, how does cancer change you? If you live, who are you? How does this make you be?

She got it. And I think now I get it more, too.

They upped my Ativan, another grace. It’s starting to take effect. I’m going to go to sleep now. Goodnight.

Love

My friend S is with me this trip. He’s retired and doesn’t have to save up vacation time to be with me, so we flew down here in the middle of the day. We had time to have dinner with two of my friends from St. George’s. R and D had us over to D’s house, and they fed us with food and love.

We sat on the back porch, eating shrimp and tomatoes (with garlic and capers, yum), grilled chicken and zucchini, and salad. Dessert was grilled peaches and apricots, and homemade ice cream. We watched the finches in the yard, and we all just talked. We were outside. I wasn’t in a hospital gown; wasn’t tethered to an IV pole. I look and act as healthy as anyone’s ever seen me. I didn’t feel like a cancer patient. We all got to be together as human beings. We talked about church, what calls each of us, what we all do in the rest of our lives, retreats. Everything. We acted like old friends. We just got to be.

Two of their church friends brought us muffins for breakfast. They couldn’t stay for dinner, but they said they’d come visit me.

I called A and put her on speaker phone. I had to bring her to the party!

Cancer is hideous. But I get to meet the most amazing people. They know how rough this is on me—knew it before they met me—and their response is food and love.

They sent us home to the motel with leftovers, and a blanket for when I get cold. I feel ready for tomorrow.

They get it. This is how to do community. This is the reign of God.

Grief

Finally, I’m able to cry. I don’t mean hysterical crying on the chemo ward. I mean, feeling my anxiety, fear (yes that too) and grief with my feet on the ground.

I’m in the Sacramento airport right now, en route to my second round of chemo. I know exactly what to expect. Last night, I finally let it go. I’d been stressing, triggered by something A does that she doesn’t mean the way I hear it. I finally figured it out, and I told her. I started crying, and she held me. She cried too. It was good for both of us, to finally get it out.

This is happening in my body. I have no answers for why my medical team does anything; I just have to trust them. I don’t control any of this—I can say stop, and have when I was miserable and hysterical. I don’t dare say that when I mean it. I don't want that taken truly seriously.  I want too much to live.

I woke up this morning with a line from Pat Humphries’ “Walls and Windows” running in my head. I reached for my mp3 player, and listened to it again. And cried again. Here’s the line that got me:

“Did you sing your children lullabies, to calm their fears at night?”

I say I’m not afraid. Usually I mean it. I’m not consciously lying. I’m truly not afraid of death, though I don’t want it right now. I’m not existentially afraid of sickness or suffering. But this loss of control really gets me.

And the intermittent life. I feel well right now. I won’t Friday, and for at least the next two weeks. I will literally be sick half the time. And when I’m well, I can’t imagine that I am as sick as I am. No way do I have a potentially fatal illness. Look how alive I am.  See what I can do.

Then I go back to Riverside, and back to the beginning. Back to doctors and drugs and bad reactions and side effects. Back to nurses waking me every two hours for a vitals check. Back to coming home completely washed out for a week. Back to the incontrovertible knowledge that yes, this is real. And I don’t know what the ending will be.

My body is either responding as we speak, or it isn’t. I won’t know that for weeks. The next time I come down will either be for more of the same, or an even tougher regimen. I have no way of knowing. And no way of controlling. All I can say is go or stop. I won’t stop this (before my doctors do) unless it becomes truly physically intolerable.

It’s the intermittentness of sickness and health, and the knowledge that I may or may not ever truly get better. My well times could be as good as they are right now, or less and less and less. We don’t know.

I want my life back. And I don’t know enough yet about when I’m well and when I’m sick, to snatch it. I just want this to be over. And I want to be healthy.

When I was diagnosed two years ago, survivors came out of the woodwork to support me. Now I know what they lived through. I am learning what they knew.  I know why they were so strong, for someone just entering this struggle.  I appreciate them even more, for choosing to be there for me.

I hate this.  But I'm glad I finally feel it.  I'm not sheltering myself anymore.  I say I want to be whole.  Grief and fear are part of wholeness.  The only way I can do this is with my eyes and heart open.

I need to post this quickly; we’re boarding soon. Keep me in your prayers, everyone.

Getting ready

I’ve got laundry going in the background. I need to pack for Riverside, when it’s done. I need to apply for Medi-Cal, and ask some friends if they wouldn’t mind checking in on me for the first couple days I’m home. Another friend is picking me up tomorrow morning, and we’re flying down for the next round of chemo. Before that starts, we’re having dinner with my new friends from St. George’s.

 I’m writing this for myself, and publishing it anyway. These are things I hold onto when I’m well. These will sustain me when I’m in the hospital, and when I’m first home, feeling so sick I’ll wonder if I’ll ever be me again:

• Listening to music I love
• Forming words into sentences, paragraphs, truth
• Bouncing around the house with unwilling cats
• The feel of wind brushing my body
• Grass underneath bare feet
• Lying on the earth, as much full contact as possible with the ground
• Being held in the arms of friends, soaking healing love into my skin
• The smell of warm earth
• Legs that walk where I want them to
• Bengal Spice tea on foggy mornings
• Praying Compline in the dark
• “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep you in everlasting life.”
• Being back in church, held in loving community
• Knowing that I can preach again whenever I ask to
• Knowing that I can walk back into Safe Ground and belong there, whenever I’m ready
• Breathing in and out
• Laughing
• Singing loud on long car trips
• Playing my guitar for the first time in forever, remembering how
• Hugging trees
• Real conversations that don’t have to do with my health
• Recognizing, and rejoicing in, how alive I am right now

What things keep your feet on the earth?

Amen.

Sean asked me if I'd been to the Cristo.  I said not this week; I'm not in a crucifixion mood.  He told me that the oak tree had split into three pieces.  He mused in his way, whether that meant something.

It damn sure does.  Here is your earthquake.  This is your temple veil.

Take that, death!

Wind

I went for a slow hike this morning. It wasn’t hot yet, unlike yesterday. I needed and wanted to be outside. But my legs, depleted already, were dragging. I would take a handful of steps and stop. I would just stand, or sit, and be, for no idea how long. And then walk a bit again. It was accidentally meditative.

I noticed the wind. I made my way down the hill as the fog burned off. There were lots of little breezes. Every so often, I felt a gentle coolness on my skin. The wind would brush me, and brush past me. I would smell the earth, and the sweet dry grass.

Every time I felt it, I thought, “This will carry you. The wind will carry your memory.”

I’m not romancing death. I’m not yet dying. I have a very serious, most often fatal illness, which is moving at an unpredictable speed. I feel sick from the treatment, but not yet from the cancer. I am very much alive, and I would rather stay here.

Still, that is how the wind struck me. And it was completely okay.

I found it.

I spent most of the day reading old writings. I was looking for perspective, and strength, and I found them. As I was trying to go to bed just now, I came across an e-mail I’d written to my advisor over a year ago. As I was graduating, I wrote her this:

“I’m called to be a safe person in dangerous places.”

It was the second time in the day that I’d come across that sentence. When I first spoke it, I didn’t know if I was talking about the fields or the street. I hadn’t even thought of the river. I just knew I was sent to the edges.

It’s more than a notion. It still fits, completely right.

I can’t put my energy into homeless ministry right now. I’m a cancer patient. I need to focus on my health. As it is, I will be sick off and on for the foreseeable future. I don’t know if I will get better. I can work with Safe Ground when I'm emotionally and physically up to it, but I first need to take care of myself. 

But I’ve known for two years that I have a ministry as someone living with cancer. I wonder... Can I take this presence into the hospital? Can I be that, even there? It’s too much to ask of myself, I know. I’ll be a sobbing, vomiting, miserable mess, when the side effects get to me.

But I wonder. If I can go into that place, with that intention, what can I do? What can God do, if I can be that open? And that calm?

Forgot to post some good news

I was feeling so crappy in the hospital, I never got around to posting this.

We did an MRI in Riverside to rule out brain mets. It did. There are no detectable aliens growing in my brain.

I’m so relieved. One thing that works, you know? And it’s the thing that I count on most. I can communicate, think, feel, and perceive the way I always have. I won’t start having seizures or losing my balance anytime soon. We can put “brain bleed” on the list of things I’m less likely to die of.

I believe, loudly, that God doesn’t give or take diseases. I have cancer because the evolutionary process governing my melanocytes went wonky. God is with me in it; God emphatically did not give it to me. It’s not some ridiculous “trial” that I have to prove myself through.

At the same time, I can say, “I don’t have brain mets (thank you Jesus)!” I stop making sense, out here.

There’s some intelligent commentary on theodicy in that, but I don’t think I’m the one to make it. I will say that if you’re praying for a cure for me, you have my total sympathy. I can’t do it—but I’m glad that people are, even if I don’t think God works that way.

I got invited to help rescue baby oak trees.  Think I'll go get dirty for awhile.

What is brave?

People have been telling me for two years that I’m brave. Brave for looking cancer in the eye. Brave for injecting myself with interferon. Brave for choosing chemo. Brave for talking about this, at all.

I usually say, “You would do it if you had to.” They always look at me doubtfully. And I’m learning what an individual choice committing to chemo is. I heard it enough when I said no in the hospital: both, “Don’t give up,” and “It would be valid if you do.” My solution is to commit to one round at a time. Two if I can handle it: that’s the space between PET scans. If I’m going to put myself through this, it only makes sense to find out if it’s working.

What then, can I say that you would do? You would make the choices that are truest to yourself, when your life is in danger. Believe it. Trust yourself. Because I am no more special than my life has made me.

I just wrote yet another thank-you letter to one of my teachers. She’s no doubt used to it now; I do it every few months. She is very, very present in this whole cancer trip. She was there when I first was diagnosed, when I was still her student.

A year before that, I was in another of her classes. And I wasn’t doing my work. She called me in to talk to me about it. I was scared. I was scared of pretty much everything, back then. I remember two things that she said: she wanted me to learn to be tough, and I was too capable to not be getting my work done.

How I got to be the age I was before either I was told or it sunk in that I was valuable, I have no idea. What I think she was really doing—and I’ve finally gotten this, three years later—is teaching me to frame experience in a way that I choose. I knew how to be a victim. I did not know how to own my own life.

I recognized the teaching as important, even though I didn’t understand it. I worked it. She helped me, when I went back to her (frequently) with either a thank-you or a question. We got through, and I got through the experience.

Then I was diagnosed. And cancer taught me more about courage than my teacher ever intended to. She was with me through everything she could be. She is, now. That’s how I know that her teaching is true.

I learned very quickly to look cancer in the eye. I will tell you easily that I hate having it now. I’ll tell you in the same breath, cancer healed me. There is no question. I was so afraid of everything, before cancer taught me not to be. Fighting for my life the first time—even though I describe it now as “practiced denial”—gave me what I need to be where I am right now, on an equal footing with every other human being, afraid of no more than anyone else is, and in the places where it counts, a good deal less.

Example: I’m meeting with my bishop next month. I did the calendar math accurately, and I’ll be sufficiently past chemo to be able to sit up and speak coherently. (I’m nauseous a week out, but I can think past it. I’ll be two weeks out, then.) I also have every right to be nervous. And there is no fear in me. I will say to him, something very much like this: “I know. I know how sick I am, and I know that we have no idea if I have time to go through this process the normal way. I know that there are other things I could be doing with the time I do have. But this is what I want. I have no idea why your blessing matters to me. But it does.”

He’ll probably say, well, God go with you. If he tells me to wait until I’m well, I’ll tell him why that’s unrealistic. That’s the only hesitation I can imagine him having. He’ll give me qualified and considered permission to enter the process, and we’ll go from there. I’ll do as much as I can, being sick literally half the time—and that’s if the chemo works.

I have no guarantees. What I have in bright, big letters is NOW. And the fearlessness that I need to live here.

Yes, I can thank cancer for that. And I do. I have had the teachers I have needed, human and biochemical. I don’t believe that God gives disease. I know that I have what I need to go through it. I have a loving, supportive community, and I have a strong enough self. And I can say this from here, knowing full well that I haven’t suffered as much as I will: if this kills me or if I live, I will be whole.

Perspective, such as it is

I’m going to the Bishop's Ranch tomorrow, staying until Sunday. I could probably extend that a bit if I want to, but have to fly back to Riverside on 7/21 to be admitted again 7/22.

The Ranch is the most healing place on the planet for me—not just the trees and the trails, but the people. It has been since I worked there, three summers ago. I feel the effects even before I go there. And I’ve been thinking about where I’ve been, and what chemo does to mind and body and being.

If I am to physically live, this has to work. It has a 30% chance of having any effect, from arresting to reversing the disease. If it works, most people get about six cycles, one week on and three weeks off. That’s six months of feeling unprintable, almost recovering, and feeling awful again. Plus probably about another six months I’ll need to recover from the onslaught of doing this to myself.

If biochemotherapy does not work, we go to high-dose interleukin-2. That can eradicate the disease completely—but will do so in 6-8% of people. It’s even harsher to be on, than the treatment I’m starting with.

If those don’t work, we go to clinical trials. The goal would be to further research for the benefit of people coming after me.

In either of the first two cases, I’ll have PET scans after every two admissions, to monitor if and how well the treatment is working. They won’t leave me to be sick in a vacuum. There will always be a point to it, or at least a goal that we can hope for.

Of course I want to live. But I scared a lot of people when I said from the hospital that I was just freaking done with this. That being sick without relief until you die is no way to live. That I just didn’t see any clear way to keep at it.

Fortunately, it’s like what I hear of childbirth. I don’t remember exactly how awful I felt. I remember not being able to stop crying, when the side effects of interferon (one of five drugs/chemicals I’m given) felt exactly as they had two years ago, and it hadn’t helped then. I am absolutely sure that I’ll feel that way again, and I can tell you what day it will start. I don’t know if I’ll handle it any more competently than I already did.

But I do know that I want to live. I know what the cost of choosing to live begins with, and can end with. And I know I can take this, one hospital admission at a time.

I’ve been home for five days, and am only slightly nauseous now. My arms and legs itch, the skin on my face is peeling, and my hair feels like it’s starting to go brittle. And I know I have the coming week to hike to my holy places, to try to catch the silent Benedictines in a giggle, and to spend time with people I really love.

It’s a choice I’ll have to make every day, in the moment, with and without chemicals flowing through a central line into my jugular vein. Right now, I know that tomorrow is worth it. And if I can have the same kind of Tuesday six months or a year from now, that will be worth it as well.

Putting it this way: I missed the Epiphany bonfire this past year. (I was probably helping host homeless people at my church, which is the other thing I’d rather be doing.) I want to go next year. The only way I can make it, is if I give these chemicals a chance.

My birthday is closer; it’s only in September. But the chances are high that I’ll be in the hospital, so I can’t make myself look forward to it. Distant things, past the likelihood I’ll be in treatment, I can look to.

I can do this while I’m mostly free of sickness. I’ll have to talk myself up to it again, week after next. The only way I can do this is, one admission at a time.

Surrounded by Angels

We have been absolutely, positively, amazingly surrounded by angels.
The living, breathing human kind.

Even the bedbug on my neck the first morning (this is Andee writing) counts as an angel, because it got us—rapidly—out of a barely tolerable hotel into one which...well, more about that story later.

When K. found out that she was being sent to Riverside for treatment, 400 miles away from home, and especially when she was told that she would not be allowed to use her cell phone in the hospital, nor have internet access, she sent out a rapid SOS email. Some of you may have gotten it. Essentially it said, here’s what’s happening, I’m going to be isolated from my entire support community, if you are in or near Riverside, please come visit me in the hospital.

Among others, the email was sent to a sort of unofficial listserv for CDSP (seminary) alums. Where someone whom K. can’t even remember ever talking to (she was finishing her MA as Kirstin was entering the school) read it—and promptly forwarded it to friends at her former parish in Riverside.

Within minutes we were getting emails offering us transportation to and from airport, dinner on arrival, hospital visits, communion whenever we felt in need of its comfort and strength, assurance from someone who had been in Kaiser Riverside a few months earlier that K. would indeed be able to use her cell phone, offer of loan of the rector’s Sprint aircard so K. could access the internet from within the hospital. Love. Pure, unadulterated, unconditional love.

The team from St. George’s Episcopal showed up at the hospital the night of Kirstin’s admission with a huge gift basket of edible goodies. They then disappeared for a few minutes – and came back with a huge icechest and various containers, and proceeded to produce an entire feast. Fajitas, roasted potatoes, roasted red bell peppers, hot and fresh off the barbeque, with all the fixings. Phyllo dough pastries, with cheesecake, lemon curd, and two kinds of chocolate mousse. Not to mention the option of fresh blueberries. Home-baked cookies for the medical staff. Offers of anything and everything we could need. The staff couldn’t believe we’d never met these people before, because we were all having such a good time!

We asked if K. might borrow a warmer blanket—three appeared the next day. They washed our clothes to make sure none of the aforesaid bedbug’s cousins come home with us. They’ve supplied paper towels and tupperware and other essentials so I could set up a semblence of housekeeping from my hotel room. We’ve been offered a house to stay in for any other visits this summer. They’ve visited every day, as comfortably as if we’d been friends all our lives.

Love. Pure, unadulterated, unconditional love.
It puts any hospital visits I’ve ever made to shame, and teaches me more about radical hospitality than I ever dreamed.

Before Kirstin’s first procedure (putting in a central line Thurs. evening), the rector came and annointed her.

Today two other seminary friends (both now priests) came to the hospital, and we celebrated eucharist together. Love, laughter, faith, hope. “I am the true bread. Those who eat of me will never die.” It has a new meaning, this resurrection text, when proclaimed in the hospital, in the presence of someone who may be terminably ill, and yet is today so very much alive.

Love. Pure, unadulterated, unconditional love.
Christ’s love, holding us in the scary places, filling us. Believing us.

Then early this evening, I came back to the hotel briefly. Dropped in at the office to thank them for repairing something I had reported. The resident manager – he relocated here less than three weeks ago, asked how K. was doing. Really asked, not just a formality.

“We serve breakfast here every morning, free, good stuff, take anything you want and bring it to her in the hospital. The day you’re due to check out, if you need to stay later in the day, don’t worry, there won’t be any charge. This isn’t about money, this is about taking care of people. That’s what matters. When you come back down here, it doesn’t matter if you’re not staying in this hotel, here’s my card, my name, my phone number—if you need anything, just call me or my wife.”

Angels, as I said.
Lots and lots of angels.

Whatever happens, we have been surrounded with love.
Christ is with us; we have been fed.