May 7 – Email from Caitlin

An old friend sent a newly-discovered email exchange he had with Caitlin during her last spring on this planet, when she was alive like we all are alive, and thinking of the future, like we all think of the future, and considering what to do with her life, post-transplant. Public health? Law? Philosophy? Maybe all 3.

Joe is an attorney who, Caitlin had learned, had majored in philosophy as an undergrad. He is also an extremely lovely soul who had recently lost a son. I have his permission to share.

From: Caitlin Elizabeth O’Hara
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2016 4:27 PM
Subject: Many things

So so nice to hear from you, and such a lovely note. My dad mentions you all the time — he loves you so much. He has always told me you are asking for me, which is very kind. I am so glad to hear from you myself.

Oh my god, that game! You must’ve been freaking out. I couldn’t believe it. The first 3 pointer was WOW enough, more like OH NO….then when Villanova got it on the buzzer, it was like a movie….. to good to be true, but it was true! I do love things like that. Maybe its silly, but they make me believe that unbelievable things can happen…in any part of life, whether its a basketball game…or my own precarious situation 🙂

Thank you for sharing that about Matthew’s gift of life. It is really wonderful to hear that at such an unimaginably difficult time you were able to foresee that someone else could benefit from your loss. It is selfless, heartwarming, and encouraging to hear.

It is a very complicated thing, to think and know that someone else has to die for me to get this opportunity. I have discussed it with some of my friends whom I know that have already had transplants….everybody has a complicated relationship with the idea. At least the people that I know, though, feel an incredible bond of gratitude to those who saved them, everyday. Every single thing that they do, they do with their donor in mind. Two friends of mine learn or participate in a new activity, a new goal, every year in honor of their donor….whether it’s skiing, or running a race. For one woman, even after 9 years it never stops being an emotional ride.

That is as it should be though…we can use all the love and open emotion we can get in the world.

I didn’t know that you were into Philosophy as an undergrad. So was I, and in my 20s I applied to two graduate programs in philosophy in Boston – at BU and at Tufts. I got in, but…ultimately didn’t go. I had also applied previously to art history MA programs, and then didn’t go. Nothing has ever felt like the right thing to spend 80 grand on.

I suppose a lot of my 20s were spent halfheartedly stuck…knowing in the back of my mind that transplant would come, and not feeling like I knew what I was supposed to really DO to start my life until I got through that. I still am not sure what I want to do, exactly, but I have a much more focused idea of what I don’t want. Perhaps more importantly, I don’t feel that paralysis anymore. I’m just ready to begin and enjoy the moment.

So maybe it will be law school. Whatever it is I plan on pursuing a degree when I am back in Boston. I don’t know when that will be. The Prouty Garden played a part in my thinking about it, but so have a few other things. My interest in health care, and also a more general understanding of what I am good at combined with what I find interesting….I think these things take most people a lot longer than college to figure out! At 20, a law degree or an MPH would have seemed like the complete opposite of anything I would ever do. At that point, I didn’t have a sense at all that there was a difference between, say, liking art, and literature, and actually being good at making and enjoying a career of it.

I think a lot of that had to do, too, with being female…being pegged as “artsy” before I could realize I wasn’t. Once I got involved in art..galleries..writing…I realized the career world of those interests is completely antithetical to my interest in directly working with humanity.

I also couldn’t imagine a job that didn’t change a lot, involve direct interaction and impact on people…and afford me some autonomy.

I am planning to wait until I am home and after transplant to apply to a program in MA or maybe Maine (where my boyfriend is from). I would love to hear more about your choice to go to law school. My dad mentioned that you didn’t go right out of school – not until you were in your 30s – so you’d have been like me. The amount of reading — I hear that it’s monumental. And writing. I haven’t really done that kind of reading and writing in my life yet….so I don’t know how I’ll find it. I’d be less intimidated by a PhD program in literature at Harvard than I would be by a JD program, because I am used to reading fiction and writing those kind of critiques.

There is so much I don’t know. I’m just hoping I can use this down time to prepare as best I can for a potential grad degree. I am actually taking a free online course (it’s very easy) on the basics of American Law. There are short lectures, supplemental readings, and terms to learn. It’s very simple but a good thing to get my brain started on thinking about it. Every week is a new area (so far I’ve done Tort law, Contract law, and Property law), and each one I actually really like and want to learn more about, in a nerdy way.

Oh – one other thing – my boyfriend — he originally was planning on going to law school when I met him, then deferred. Now he may not. So he actually put the seed in my brain. I bought him some prep books and then I started reading them a few years ago…..and it’s kind of been nagging at me since. He also loves basketball…by the way. Obsession level. 🙂

So much love, and thank you again for such a thoughtful note.

xx

Caitlin

March 17 – Être à Paris

To be in Paris for the first time since my last visit here with Caitlin.

I am in a hotel, by myself, a stop on my way to an artist’s residency for the next couple of weeks. Arriving here, after an overnight flight and taxi ride with a terrifyingly bad driver, I found myself even more in awe of Caitlin and the way she hauled her oxygen concentrator and suitcase full of medicine all the way over here to live by herself for a few weeks, to have that experience, only a year before she would need to be listed for a transplant.

Today, the pain of missing her was terribly close to the surface as I walked to the Marais to meet a friend for lunch. Caitlin is with you, people always say. She is always with you. I know she is, but it’s not the same as laughing and being together in real time. It’s not like visiting museums and having lunch and going to the spa together, like the mother and daughter I found myself watching in my hotel.

As I made my way to the Marais, I took a detour along the Île Saint-Louis, where, during Caitlin’s college days, she and I once rented a little flat for two weeks to get a feel for what it was like to ‘live in Paris.’ (This was before VRBO and Airbnb, when renting an apartment for a short vacation took some effort.)

Today was rainy and the mood was melancholy but I was grateful for the private shelter of an umbrella. I took a left at the street Caitlin and I had jokingly pronounced “the roo of two ponts.” Then I took a right and there I was, on a street that is as it’s been for more years than you or I could know it. Stone residences that date from the 17th century.

Standing there, I remembered our little flat and its long golden drapes that swept away from the window and offered a close-up view of the green waters of the Seine. I remembered how perfect and beautiful our choice to stay there had felt. I felt alone and close to tears.

And then – I remembered the way the Bateaux-Mouches played over-the-top operatic music at that particular bend of the river and how the music was so ridiculously loud that we laughed out loud every single time.

Back then, I took a photo of Caitlin at our window.

Today, I took a photo of today.

There is a hotel in Miami – The Betsy – that is owned by the son of the writer Hyam Plutzik. The hotel’s logo is a line written by Mr. Plutzik, a line comes to me often:

Expect no more. This is happiness.

-Maryanne

December 20 -We have the power

Caitlin left this earthly plane seven years ago. Seven years is impossible, as was two, as will be twenty.

What endures: her wisdom, her words, the good she continues to inspire.

The Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic is saving lives. The Leo Project community programs are thriving, as is Jess – who just finished her first semester of her MPH program at Harvard, whilst also running the show in Kenya. 👏🏼 !

Nick is working on stone installations in her memory -hopefully to be shared with you in 2024.

I committed to returning to the novel I was writing during the transplant wait. I finished and plan to dedicate it to her memory. (She was its first reader, its best editor, and a fan. 🙂 )

During the years of that wait, when I often only had the time to write for 30 precious minutes a day, it was easy for writing to feel futile. Pointless. But one day I received a letter. It was from a reader of Cascade who, after finishing it, was moved to quit her job and commit to the painting career she’d dreamed of for years. Never underestimate the power of your art to change lives, she wrote. That letter kept me going during some dark times.

It’s easy to underestimate the positive influence each of us has on others, often without ever knowing about it. It’s a hard time on this planet right now but we can all do what feels good and right. I’ll leave us with Caitlin’s powerful last message:

“There is so much suffering in the world … so much. My belief though at least is – the world was not meant to always be fair or fun or easy. The world is teeming with life, and death, and pain, and Donald Trump even haha. We just have to keep living. Step back. We are just tiny beings. There are lobsters living at the bottom of the ocean for over a hundred years. They have just been sitting down there through all of our lives and wars and lives before us. We aren’t that much different from lobsters really if you pull back a little. All part of this teeming painful wonderful world where so much is just luck. But we can choose to be kind, and to keep trying — we have the power.”

Peace on earth, goodwill to all.

Maryanne ♥️

July 29 – 2 months overdue: Paris, Cats, Synchronicities

On the book shelf designated ‘special’ in our living room, I display a Mother’s Day card, one of the last I received from Caitlin. It is from the first year of her transplant wait, when we assumed that life would be back to normal within a year.

In the long note inside, she compared herself to the fat robin on the card’s cover. “This robin is me, sitting squished in its nest, and thank you mummy for helping me make this wait 110% easier. I love you so much, I can’t write it in a card. Next Mother’s Day – Paris. Just Paris for every holiday, how about that? Love, Kitten.”

I open and read it sometimes, when I can bear it.

In February, Caitlin’s cousin Sinéad, the Irish intuitive, decided to host a retreat in Malta. It would take place over my birthday weekend. Its theme would be abundance and I knew that it would be light-guided, with new-moon regenerative energy. Good for my mental health. Plus: Malta. An adventure. A random place I would not normally think to visit. Katie decided to come, too, from Spain. And Jess planned to, but then had to bow out last minute because she is just so busy preparing to open The Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic in Kenya.

Just before departure, I realized that my double-leg flight to the island would have me arrive in the Paris airport on Mother’s Day. As I was packing, I let myself imagine the reality of Caitlin alive and going on the retreat, too. It would have been a much longer trip that -of course- would have included time in Paris. I imagined it so well that it hurt. I even took the card from the shelf and let myself read all the words. Then I left for the airport.

People ask me, all the time, “Do you still get signs?” I laugh, because yes I do get them. ALL THE TIME. Every day. Some signs:

* Our flight’s estimated arrival was 7:33 am and landed on time.

As we taxied into CDG, I looked out and the first thing I saw was a sign with the letters CAT.

* Our Delta flight parked right next to a Kenya Air plane.

* In Malta, I had arranged for a driver to pick me up. As he was leading the way in the parking lot, I saw a car with a license plate that was Caitlin’s birthday. I thought to myself, ‘I must take a photo of that and show Nick. ‘

And then the driver stopped. It was his car.

Sinéad had given me a head’s up that the energy on Malta was off the charts. And it was true. We were 12 women – most from Ireland – and it was a new experience for me to be part of such a group, exploring ways to balance one’s human yin and yang energies, to contemplate the shadows and the light that make up the psyche. We had overwhelming, positive experiences. Synchronicities that were so wild. One women mentioned a beloved nephew who died, aged 33 too, a few years back. She said that a little bridge in Ireland was dedicated to him. I asked, was the bridge possibly near the Sally Gap in Wicklow?

It was.

Nick and I crossed it on a wander last September, and stopped to pay our respects.

During our ceremonies, which were outdoors, a cat meowed rather incessantly, but was only seen and heard during the ceremonies.

In the city gardens next door, a FANCY FOWL & PIGEON show was on display. (iykyk)

I share all this to remind you of the comfort and magic of synchronicities and to acknowledge the archetype of the great mother. On my birthday, Katie found peonies for me. Caitlin had always gifted them to me on my birthday. “These are from me and Sinead and Jess. All your daughters.”

Grateful.

OCTOBER 16 – A little sign ✨

That last autumn, Caitlin binged on a cooking show she’d discovered. She usually watched while I cooked dinner, and since the kitchen overlooked the living area of our Pittsburgh condo, I became vaguely aware of a big tent inside of which a bunch of regular-looking people turned out regular-looking pies and biscuits. One day I took a closer look as Caitlin applauded the winner. The winning cake looked so….ordinary.

“I don’t get it?” I said.

The show was WONDERFUL, Caitlin explained. It was cozy, it was comforting. The contestants were all supportive of each other, and she loved how the camera would sometimes pan outside the tent to take in the bucolic setting, how the lens would pause upon some calming thing: a bird, a flower, rain dripping from leaves.

July 31 — A bomb in Paris triggered superstition, then acceptance of her situation. Words from Caitlin on her birthday 🌟

We are on Martha’s Vineyard, and today is Caitlin’s birthday. I’m reminded of another birthday of hers spent here, the year she turned 12. It was the terrible year of lung surgeries and months-long inpatient recoveries. But that summer, we received a two-week respite from the hospital, and the respite was spent here. Those weeks return to me in images that feel other-worldly, suspended in time, magical. Riding the Flying Horses carousel in Oak Bluffs, spending hours on State Beach reading The Stone Diaries, a book that would later become a lifelong favorite of Caitlin’s, buying boxes of Murdick’s Fudge. Hearing news of a bombing in Paris that shocked us and caused us to wonder whether life really did unfold for a reason.

Caitlin wrote about that year and its Paris connection in an essay when she was a college sophomore. I’ll let her take over:

July 19 – Look back and pick out one thing

Jess and I were looking through old writings to find one of Caitlin’s wise nuggets for a quote on a wall mural she’s creating in Kenya. I found this in an old email she wrote to me. It’s a good practice, and thought I’d share: “I always look back on each year and pick out one thing I learned. Being able to self-reflect and change yourself…what a cool quality.”

Encouraging self-reflection is a big part of the talks that I give. Recently, I’ve had the chance to do some speaking in person, as opposed to Zoom events where I cannot see or sense the audience. The experience of seeing real people, and interacting with them, has been incredibly meaningful. Powerful. Virtual is handy, though, and I will be doing one more Zoom event this summer – tomorrow, Wednesday, July 20 at 7pm ET.

–-> Click here to register <–

May 20 – Ruminations on yesterday’s birthday (bionic text)

The other day, somebody ( I want to say Dani Shapiro ) posted a quote by Renata Adler:

“Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.”

March 15 – only Now ֎

Recently, I had the uncanny experience of sending a friend of Caitlin’s a rare gift – a baby present that Caitlin had purchased in Bruges in 2011, in the event that this friend ever had a little boy. Mieke recently gave birth to a son and what a pleasure, to send that tiny Dutch knitted hat.

I’ve also found a few letters Caitlin addressed but never mailed, and to stamp and send them was like watching my hand reach through the veil.

DECEMBER 6 – ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on

and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’

Two years of COVID. Five years since I last saw Caitlin’s beautiful face. Life has wings and time is a dream.

Little Matches has been out since late April and I’ve been working hard to get people to know it exists, to plant the seeds that will keep this evergreen book alive. 🌲

In honor of Caitlin and this unbelievable, upcoming fifth anniversary of her absence from our world, I’m asking people to holiday-gift a copy of Little Matches to someone who might be in need of healing or inspiration. That “someone” could be a friend, a family member, or, maybe even better: a complete stranger. 📖

It’s been incredibly healing for me to hear how Caitlin’s story affects people. The pre-med student who posts: “Little Matches is the most important reading that I have read in all of college to prepare me for medical school, and to help me fully realize why I want to be a physician. I do not think this was Maryanne’s intention to train future physicians in this way, but she was still able to have this effect on me.” The reader who reaches out through social media: “I was transfixed by Little Matches, and grateful to know of the possibilities that fill our world. Thank you so much for this gift. What I learned has changed me…I just finished the book, and cannot explain all of my thoughts and feelings.” The high school student who messages: “i have never been much of a reader. i actually used to say i hated reading. your book has changed that. it has also allowed me the ability to find the light in such horrific pain.” ❤️

If you’d like to honor Caitlin’s memory and donate a copy of LITTLE MATCHES to a grief support center, I’ve compiled a list of some around the country. Knowing that strangers will be helped by Caitlin’s story helps ease the pain of this anniversary season for all of us who grieve her so much. ✨✨✨

Common Ground Grief Center – 67 Taylor Ave. Manasquan, NJ 08736
Kara Grief Support – 457 Kingsley Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94301
EveryStep Grief and Loss Services – 1821 Grand Avenue, West Des Moines, IA 50265
Tristesse Grief Center – 2502 E. 71st Street Suite A, Tulsa, OK 74136
Wendt Center for Loss and Healing – P.O. Box 45924, Baltimore, MD 21297-5924
Agrace Grief Support Center – 2906 Marketplace Drive, Fitchburg, WI 53719
Good Grief Program at Boston Medical Center – 801 Albany St 1st Floor, Suite 1026, Roxbury, MA 02119
GracePoint Grief Center – 650 Ten Rod Rd, North Kingstown, RI 02852
Lost and Found Grief Center – 1555 S. Glenstone Ave., Springfield, MO 65804
Dougy Grief Center – PO Box 86852, Portland, OR 97286
Mettle Health Online Holistic Care – 51 E Blithedale Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941
Our House Grief Support Center – 21860 Burbank Blvd., North Building, Suite 195, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Halifax Health Grief Center – 1500 S. Daytona Ave., Flagler Beach, FL 32136
Halifax Health Grief Center – 655 North Clyde Morris Boulevard, Daytona Beach, Florida 32114
Halifax Health Grief Center – 5210 S. Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL 32809
Bo’s Place – 10050 Buffalo Speedway, Houston, TX 77054
New Life Hospice – “Living Through Grief” – Lorain County VA Outpatient Clinic, 5255 North Abbe Rd. Sheffield Village, OH 44035

“This is a book about life, including death. For showing us how to hold both, we owe Maryanne and Caitlin a magnificent debt of gratitude. Here is love in ink, and you will feel it. That’s not to say that their story is easy to behold—you will cry—but that’s key to the book’s great achievement: within a connection like theirs, everything has a home. Despair, hope, fear, beauty, decay, out of this world, in this world. It turns out that death poses no threat to love. Read this book to help you know that in your bones.”

—B. J. Miller, M.D., author of A Beginner’s Guide to the End

Thank you!

KENYA

I am about to head over to Kenya to see, firsthand, The Leo Project and the Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic. I’ll be sharing photos of Jess Danforth’s incredible accomplishments in honor of Kitten, as well as photos of beautiful Africa, on my Instagram account (follow @maryanneohara) and in forthcoming blog posts.

I am wishing every one of you much peace and good health this holiday season. I also want to send out the most heartfelt thank you for the support. Promoting a book during a pandemic, on Zoom, has been lonely. I miss the personal connection — talking to people, sharing experiences. I cannot wait until we can connect during in-person events.