I don’t usually blog about personal matters, but a close friend of the family, a civil rights lawyer named Ashley, has been diagnosed with a fairly aggressive form of inoperable cancer. This is especially painful since she successfully fought off ovarian cancer not quite a year ago. I’m out of the country right now so that’s about as much detail as I know, which is handy since that’s about as much detail as I feel comfortable sharing.
If you find it appropriate to pray, please do so. If there’s some other personal practice that you do when a wonderful family falls on hard times, please do that. I’ve known Ashley since I was 12, and she’s consistently been a simultaneously well-grounded and inspirational voice helping me do what I needed a little nudge to take on. She’s more brave and brazen than anyone I know, and I hope you’ll take a moment to ask yourself what awesome things you’ll do with your life, because without Ashley at least 20 of us are going to have to step it up. She’s been working to make the world a better place and she’s been having an awesome time doing it.
If you’ll excuse me I think I’m going to go enjoy the hell out of my vacation, since that’s what she told me to do.
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To celebrate a life, one often has to ask oneself hard questions like, “What am I doing to help people?” In this day, we (ab)use technology to better ourselves at the expense of others. Your description of your dear family friend reminds me of the journey I’ve only begun – one that has been unfolding through music and movement.
e.g., mark each loss as personal, as affecting what you can do still, as the path to something more meaningful to the remaining six-plus billion humans and innumerable potential organisms.
Mary Oliver perhaps said best in “Thirst”:
“Another morning and I wake up with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I
was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.”
My thoughts and all the best.
All my best to your friend.