Beverly

Stacey and I squeezed our way into a couple of available seats in the crowded waiting room. The waiting room, probably designed to hold around 20, had about 30 people waiting. And the shared knowledge in the space that many of us were headed to get some chemotherapy didn’t necessarily boost the overall mood…despite the free coffee. 

I looked up and made eye contact with another person nearby. Her eyes smiled back, and I said hello. And I’m so glad I did. 

For a good stretch of time, Beverly and I were on the same chemo schedule, every other week. And we both had long infusions, so there was plenty of time for conversation back in the infusion area. 

That initial hello in the waiting room, followed by some introductions, led to some rich, deeply experienced conversations. There is a unique depth of conversation that two cancer patients can find quite quickly, and Beverly and I found that depth for sure. I’d come to learn that Beverly had been having conversations with people like that for a long, long time. 

After the wonderful and skilled nurses would get my drugs flowing, I’d wheel my IV pole over to Beverly’s station and find a chair or just stand. We quickly moved through the usual questions in the beginning - what kind of cancer, treatments, latest scan results, etc. 

And then we moved to our most common topic: death. Death may seem like a dark topic in that environment, but it was actually such a life-giving conversation, one we continued for months. Beverly was aware that her pancreatic cancer would lead to her death, and she was committed to “dying well.” She wanted to be a model for dying well for her daughter and grandson in particular.

Despite a host of complications from her cancer and the treatment, Beverly just exuded warmth and perspective. She had been to seminary, been a chaplain, had served as a spiritual director, and also a psychiatric nurse too! So the environment we were in and the topics we explored had already been deeply explored by Beverly. 

I think conversations about death can become so linear and binary - where we move through life to death, and you are either living or dying. But that’s just not how it actually works - our cells are in a constant state of dying and being created! We see the cycles of life and death in nature over and over again. 

Looking at life and death through an either/or view can create an unhealthy relationship to death centered in fear. I’d venture that most conversations about death are grounded in fear, to the point we don’t even want to use the word “death.”

Beverly modeled for me what it looks like to hold both life and death together. And when they can be held simultaneously, and held with wonder and presence, they make the life part all the more rich. Beverly and I found lots of reasons to laugh together, and we found reasons to be sad together too. One doesn’t negate the other. The reality is that death is traveling alongside all of the living, not just the sick or the elderly. 

I remember one of the earlier interactions with Beverly, when I finished up my chemo before she did. After I got unhooked, I went over to tell her goodbye. I told her how much I had enjoyed the conversation and that I would be praying for her. Without missing a beat, Beverly said, “why don’t we do that praying right now.” So I kneeled down, held her hands, prayed for her, and prayed for us. At a moment when our physical bodies were literally getting walloped, I couldn’t have felt more connected. Connected to Beverly, to the Divine Mystery, to everybody and everything. I felt very much alive. 

Beverly

I recently attended the celebration of life for Beverly, as her physical body did eventually give out. It was truly a celebration of life, and I learned even more about Beverly. She was also an avid dancer, a champion for social justice, a kidney donor for someone she didn’t know, and had even competed as a body builder too! She had certainly lived a full life of experiences and service. And Beverly brought the living to each experience, even to the experience of dying. My favorite moment in the service was a more recent video of Beverly, in a body obviously depleted by cancer and treatment, dancing with a big smile on her face.

The hard part for me when I think about my own death, whenever that might happen, is what impact it will have on those I leave behind. It pains me to think about people I love being sad and having to deal with the stuff that comes next. And when I think about my Mom’s death, there certainly was a lot of sadness for me. That’s just hard. Full stop.

And I’ve come to know and, maybe even more so, feel that there is just something bigger at work, playing out in a deeper sense of time. In the writing of Thich Nhat Han, he uses the metaphor of a flower. He notes that while we see and appreciate the flower, the flower doesn’t exist without the sun, clouds, rainstorms, dirt, etc. And the flower was fertilized by the dying leaves and grasses that had composted into needed nutrients. And there’s the bees, and the seeds, and the birds. If you keep going with it, you realize the flower is full of everything. 

And humans are like that too. We are all deeply connected to everything and everyone, and the living is fed in the dying. 

When my sister and I have a long conversation about life, parenting, etc., Mom is very much alive in that conversation. When I see the deep kindness and sweetness in my kids, I see my Mom. When Dad calls or drives down to check on me, I see and feel Mom in those interactions. How could she not be alive in all those moments? She poured so much into each of us, shaping how we interact and move through the world. 

And now as I move through the world, I also take with me the lessons I learned from those infusion room chats with Beverly - to find and create joy, to really be with and serve others, to be present in each moment, to know there are teachers all around, and to seek the both/and rather than the either/or. Beverly definitely continues to live through me. 

May we each let ourselves experience the full depths and love found in both living and dying. May those experiences remind us we are all connected and intertwined. And may we find that through our breaking, we better know our wholeness. 

With much love,

Matt