Cystic Fibrosis & Organ Donation Awareness – Page 5

MARCH 20–Checking In

So it’s three months today. December 20, a day that started with a doctor’s pronouncement: “She’s stable, but…”

I haven’t been moved to write lately. Thank you to those who have been concerned and checked in. Honestly, at this point, it’s not any easier. It’s harder. Every day I try to unpack at least one box, and every little thing is a reminder.

I’ve also started to go through all the cards. We are so grateful for them, and I have postcards I want to send to everyone. But it will likely take months.

An interesting and comforting thing: three of us have seen very well-regarded mediums and Caitlin has come through… with concrete, distinct details, many of which no one but me could possibly know about….

I am ruminating on all that and will probably write about it at some point.

I will say that in my session, Caitlin conveyed that she would like her writing to be heralded (her word.) So I’m going to continue to post her musings.

Here are some email snippets that she sent to a friend she never got to meet, a young woman who had a successful lung transplant a couple of years ago. Renu has given me permission to share them. I’ll just post a few for now.

7/24

ive done a lot of soul searching (cheesy term but true) the past year, and ive read a few things that have been helpful. one thing i re read was emerson’s self-reliance which i only remembered from college and high school, but its cathartic to just read the philosophies that are so aligned with what i feel like i know i can trust fully and have full faith in – that is – myself, my intuition. and also Gilead by marilynne robinson. i am always fascinated by people who are really intelligent and intellectual and yet still very christian – or return to religion after a lifetime of academia (that is not me, but it interests me how those two opposing sides manage to come together). also this book Tolstoy’s a Confession. its really small and he wrote it at the end of his life when he was practically suicidal because he was driven so insane by his inability to have faith, and his in vain attempts to arrive at it logically. i’ve re-read that many times over the years.. (it has a good conclusion)

and what you said about surrendering – i completely agree that the moments when i have felt most free, most OK with what is happening, and least anxious, have been those moments where i am able to let go and surrender. interestingly, those moments seem to work in tandem with my faith in myself. i know i can trust myself to get through something, to hold on, and ultimately i can just let go of the rest. so i guess since we have no idea where we come from, and where that strength comes from…that true belief in yourself and your intent to be a good person is sort of divine in itself, no more or less divine than believing in something someone else told you to believe in. i have always believed in goodness and i know a lot of people say that, but it does feel undeniably essential, and i don’t question it. as humans we somehow know that we should aim to be good, and where does that come from. ? if i can follow the fact that i can trust in the importance of goodness, then i can maybe trust that goodness will come of goodness…. if that makes sense. kind of like karma points. i have never felt like “why did this happen to me” as I am sure you haven’t either. it isn’t even because of some virtue that i feel that way, it just has never occurred to me to be “pissed off” about my lot in life, or to think that there was some unjust reasoning behind it. (instead i honestly feel lucky sometimes that i have gotten to feel and experience things that others have to struggle longer and harder to learn).

2/18

omg plato’s republic. if i was home i could rustle up my paper on those. i have a weird question for you – since it feels like i went to college SO long ago ….does everyone bring computers to class now? or still notebooks? i feel like a weird old fogey asking that…

haah ok, and btw, you totally echoed what i wish we could do too…go to a museum and wander around and have tea! do you ever get to the MFA? I like it, but I was just thinking about it yesterday because I was reading about the Met and how they redesigned their logo and everyone hates it. And that they are redesigning a lot of it to make it “more accessible to first time visitors”. They did that recently with the MFA, with all the changes, and while I can’t say the changes are bad…I have to say I miss the old MFA….and the article about the Met brought this up too…..that people who used to enjoy getting lost in the old one will miss the new organization. That’s exactly how I felt…I used to love certain areas of the MFA that were totally desolate and quiet….certain asian rooms, off the beaten path, that no one would go to unless they were specifically interested in or knew them. The buddha room, which is still beautiful, but now always so much more crowded because its so easy to find. Last time I went, I found that there were people in every room, there didnt seem to be anymore hidden spots anymore. It made me sad. I remember taking drawing classes there as a kid, and sitting in a quiet room somewhere in the corner…wayy off the main egypt rooms, sketching egyptian carvings on a carpeted floor. Now its bright and accessible. I don’t know that that’s a good thing? Maybe I’m a scrooge.

Anyway, I’d take any museum right now. !! Let’s do that sometime, when I am better.

2/12

Patience….its being hammered into me i guess. ha this was the best line — ” it feels like limbo with a stopped clock and you just want to scream and throw things but that might make you tired, so not worth it.” — hahah. i laugh when i see people talking about great outlets for stress – running! just yell! go for a brisk walk! punching bag! dance! im like, well i have no voice and no lungs to propel my body…im not someone who wants to smash anything and then just clean it up….so i’ll just sit here and keep in all inside! hahah. i don’t really feel that sorry for myself, but you know. i remember once when i was younger, maybe about 13, and upset about something (non health related) i took a dish outside and smashed it on the patio. it was like i knew people sometimes smashed dishes when they were mad and i wanted to do it. but it was like i was watching myself do it. i picked a dish i knew no one cared about. and then when i smashed it i remember the deflated feeling of just being like, well, i guess i’ll clean it up now. i guess im just not that angry of a person 🙂 more of a hysterical sobber.

1/6

ON TO OTHER THINGS. I hope I didn’t bore you with my novel about what’s been mentally going on in my head. Right and wrong and everything in between. I am reading Primo Levi’s Periodic Table right now, and every night its like a tonic – i only read one chapter – one element. Do you know it? I share a birthday with him, and maybe i know too much about astrology and am unfairly influenced, but i can’t help but feel an incredible kinship to and relation to his writing. I have read his other memoirs of being in auschwitz. they are hard to read yes, but more i feel like a window into a study of humanity that most of us will luckily never see…but should at least read about.

11/30/15

Hi! I’m so glad you wrote. I’ve been wanting to write all weekend but haven’t. And now I’m sitting in my room just hanging out. We are in DC actually. We came here for thanksgiving. Andrew and my mom and I drove from Pittsburgh on Thursday and my dad flew in from Boston. It’s fun! No real reason. We just like DC. I went to GW for two years so I know th city. And my moms new book is taking place here so there was some research she wanted to do. Anyway it’s been nice to do something different from just being relatively alone in Pittsburgh. Staying at the hotel is really relaxing. Room service etc. Today I took it easy enough that when we went out to dinner later I felt really “good” …for me, and we went to this great French bistro. I love classic French food. And I was so hungry for once and had a great time and just felt a few hours of like I was actually having fun and not just trying to be a participant for the sake of making an effort …

*Feeling good at the French bistro in DC, 2015*

May 23 2002 - Protest on the Mall.jpeg — *DC protest, circa 2001.* *Love that chubby Freshman 15 face!*

–Maryanne

FEBRUARY 23– Eleven

A powerful pulsing of love in the vein

We are in Arizona. We packed up Pittsburgh, sent all those boxes back to Massachusetts and came to another ‘bigger-than-we-are’ place to regroup.

Pittsburgh was tough. It was also comforting. We were able to see a few of the good friends we made there. Mary and Ralph, our wonderful neighbors in our equally wonderful building, hosted a gathering for us on Friday night. We included some new friends: Diane and Mallory Smith, who, like us, had to relocate to Pittsburgh to wait for a lung transplant for Mallory. They’ve only just arrived. They are from LA, a crazy long way from home. We introduced them to some of our Pittsburgh people.

People have asked, as did Mallory’s mom, Isn’t it hard to be with people who still have a chance? Or who have had successful transplants? Of course. But is it easy to be with them once you overlook your own pain and come to love them and realize that you want only good things for everyone? Yes.

Organ donor awareness must continue, please. For the brilliant and beautiful Mallory, and for everyone else.

Boarding a Greyhound in Pittsburgh…

On Monday the 20th, at 5:45am, we left in the dark. It was so hard to walk out of our home of the last two years, to take one last look and close the door.

We had arranged for our favorite driver, Jim Stanley, to pick us up. You feel safe with Jim. He is an ex-Marine and an all-around good guy. He drove Nick and all of our visitors back and forth from the airport the past two years.

Jim is also a very talented acoustic guitarist. As we merged onto the on-ramp, he said it was hard for him to talk about hard things, but that he wanted to tell us that our family had inspired him, that witnessing the support of all our friends and family had made a strong impression on him.

He said, ‘Your daughter was teaching herself guitar.’ And told us that after we flew in from Boston picked us up, he had been inspired to do something he’d planned to do for 20 years. His brother, he said, had battled cancer on and off for years, and had lost his struggle at age 41. The two used to play guitar together and Jim had always meant to record a favorite song of theirs.

Well, he’d finally done it. He said, ‘I’d like to play if for you and if you like it, I’ll send it to you.’

The Sound of Silence filled the dark car. A gorgeously complicated acoustic arrangement that was perfect, beautiful. Nick and I clutched hands, and he passed me a tissue, and as we sped along the highway, high in the sky was a waning crescent moon, inverse to the waxing crescent moon that had hung outside the medical jet when we flew to Pittsburgh, 3 years earlier, so full of hope for a speedy and successful transplant.

Our plane departed from gate 33. A few hours later, we landed in Phoenix.

Arizona

In July of last year, I wrote on this blog about coincidences, and about how Caitlin once had something called a soul reading done. The reader had asked Caitlin if anything had happened to her when she was 11?

Age 11 was the time she came very close to dying. After the year of surgeries and complications she endured (she would hate me using that word–she so disliked drama regarding her health), Arizona was our first family trip.

I was struck, back then, by how calming this place was. It still is. We’ve been hiking the desert mountains every morning. It’s so quiet, so still. There are so many birds to remind us of Caitlin. We’ve shouted her name into the canyons and the echoes are pleasing.

Penny sightings

I had never heard of pennies from heaven until about a few years ago, and then only from my sister, the very practical Kate, an RN. But Kate is also rather intuitive, and when she says something in her no-nonsense voice, I tend to listen, even though this particular phenomenon seemed too far-fetched to make any sense.

But I’m just an earthling, a human. What do I know? And anyway, regardless of how coincidences happen, the way you read coincidences can be helpful with self-reflection. Here are some recent, striking penny stories:

We knew people could have ‘dry runs’–offers of lungs that didn’t work out, but we didn’t really expect it to happen more than once. At one point during the last week that we crisis-waited, I went into the hospital bathroom I used each morning and saw 4 pennies. She’d had 3 dry runs at that point. I hoped those pennies meant she would indeed get a transplant, get one more chance.

She did. She got her transplant on the 4th offer, on December 18th, one of the happiest days of the last three years. But it was all too late for her beat-up body.

On December 20th, as they turned off the ECMO machine, I saw that there was a penny on it.

On December 21, Nick and Andrew and I walked over to the Fairmont to get out of the apartment, to get a quiet lunch, to get out of our heads. The Fairmont is two blocks from our apartment, and to get to it, we had to walk through all the holiday goings-on–the ice rink and gingerbread house display signs, the European Holiday Market stalls in Market Square.

On our way back, as we were walking by the ice rink, an urge came out of nowhere. ‘Let’s go see the gingerbread houses,’ I said. I veered sharply to the right to lead the guys toward the building where they were on display. Near the entrance, I saw a bunch of pennies on the ground. I picked them up, counted them.

fullsizerender — *The day-after pennies*

There were 11.

I put them in my pocket and walked into the crowded atrium containing the giant displays of gingerbread houses. Standing right in front of me was Kwesi, a young man who had a lung transplant in 2014. I’d only met Kwesi twice before. I knew he lived miles from downtown. I couldn’t believe he was right there in front of my eyes and I almost couldn’t speak. But I did, and I stammered something about Caitlin.. and then we left.

Because I’d had no real interest in seeing the gingerbread houses. I’d seen what I was supposed to see. 11 pennies and a successful transplant recipient.

11. 11 has been knocking on our heads. Before coming to Pittsburgh to help us pack, my sister had 3 instances of mourning doves settling in the branches of a tree outside her window, not on the ground the way they normally visit.

Each time, the branches contained 11 mourning doves. Each time, she took a pic.

Back in the old AOL days, I sometimes lurked inside a chatroom full of astrologers. One of them struck me as bright and very good. Once, I emailed her a quick question about Caitlin. She ended up responding at length, gratis.

First, I need to tell you that the prime focus of Caitlin’s chart is her sixth house. For all intents and purposes she has 4 out of 5 of what I call the “god” planets there. The god planets are the planets that represent energy we think of as coming from God, as opposed to those energies we ordinarily think of as “human.” And 3 out of those 4 were, until recently called “malefic”….Pluto, Saturn, Uranus. That is way too much energy for one house, especially one having to do with health.

She then told me that Caitlin was lucky to have survived the year she was 11, that there had been great stress on her from several angles in her chart.

During her wait for transplant, Caitlin’s lung function hovered around 20 percent of normal. Last week, I found a pulmonary function report from the year she was 22, 11 years ago. Her lung function was averaging 35-40 (bad) then, and at one point was as low as 24. Those were the years when she really declined, when she started needing oxygen at night, and to fly, when she avoided stairs and much of regular life.

She lived with invisible struggles for a very long time.

screen-shot-2017-02-22-at-3-42-53-pm — *PFT report, age 22*

It’s crazy, but 30 percent can look like this:

Screen Shot 2017-02-22 at 3.46.46 PM.png — *One tough kitty.*

CF. It’s a demon and it’s mostly, until its cruel end, invisible.

So maybe 11 is a reminder that we got 22 ‘extra’ years. That Caitlin lived 33 years with a killer disease during this time of miracles and wonder that we live in.

It does provide some comfort.

PS to those in the know:

Across the Universe is playing in my hotel coffeeshop right now, as I get ready to publish this post.

FEBRUARY 11–Do you have kids?

The Surprises

I forgot that I had ordered, for Caitlin, these kitty slippers from LL Bean that were back-ordered for months and last night I got word they were shipped. To Pittsburgh.

Then I was rinsing dishes and realized that the candle from her last birthday cake was tucked into a little vase on the windowsill.

….💔….

Life is a minefield these days, but the biggest mine I’ve been waiting to step on has been ‘the question.’ For the past 7 weeks, I had been expecting it, but no one ever asked. Even while we were traveling and meeting strangers. Our last night in California, we were talking dogs with a woman–a real dog person–when I decided to bravely show a photo of Henry in Caitlin’s arms. Oh, is that your dog walker? she said.

😳 (Dog people apparently do think differently!)

The other day we drove up to Portland. Maine is important to us. We have a lot of family and close friends there, including Andrew. We fully expected that Caitlin would move there post-transplant. The week before she was listed in April 2014, our last ‘getaway’ was to Portland.

It felt painful but also good and right to be there.

We didn’t expect the blizzard. Most of our plans were altered by it, but our friend had made me an appointment with an aesthetician she had praised and surprisingly, the spa was open and a short walk from our hotel. I went.

I was lying on the table, eyes shut, face wet from the steam, when the question finally came.

I froze. Then I think I said the word ‘I’ a couple of times.

She said something kind and neutral. It can be painful is what I think she said. Giving me an out.

But I managed to tell her. I forget what she said, exactly, but she said all the right things and asked if I wanted to talk about it, and I did. We talked about Caitlin and the woman’s beloved father, also gone to the other side. And it was okay. But.

I still don’t know how to answer this question. I’ll always be Caitlin’s mother but a yes answer leads to followup questions, and it doesn’t feel wise to put myself in the position of losing control or making strangers feel uncomfortable.

I also can’t say no.

It’s a dilemma, one I know that others have faced, but I don’t want to research or google ideas. And I’m not asking for advice. I’m just writing about the experience.

Caitlin had recently written something to me: “I have always felt that when it comes to decisions the only true and right ones are the ones you make completely for yourself. Not meaning that you don’t listen to others. But it has to come from a deep place of certainty and knowledge with all the evidence known within you for it to feel really right.”

I guess I will figure it out, Caitlin.

JANUARY 28– The Answer, from Caitlin

When Caitlin was a small, small person and had frequent hospitalizations and weeks of home courses of IVs and then a long, serious surgery at age 11, my mother would always marvel at her. “She’s so stoic,” she would say.

But it wasn’t like Caitlin didn’t have fears or anxiety. It was just that she pretty much kept all of that to herself.

Once, when she was about 3, I heard her in her bed talking to herself. “Always have to cough, don’t know why.”

And one day I found this little drawing:

Like the frog in the slowly-boiling water, you get used to dealing with what you have to deal with, and it becomes the norm. I’ve been looking through old journals, and as I read through them, I kind of shudder. We always lived with held breath and a cracking heart. From the year she was 11 and spent months in the hospital, after surgery to remove part of her left lung:

I was just looking out the window and saw her clench her fists, then run up and down the yard. She’s trying to make herself better.

Last week, on Caitlin’s Boston bedside table, which was usually stuffed with toppling-over stacks of books, I was surprised to find only two items: one of Dr. Brian Weiss‘s soul/reincarnation books, and a little health journal she sporadically kept. In 2012, that year that I wrote was so great the other day, she had written:

Waiting on bloodwork and doctor’s call. Stressed. Scared. I don’t know if having another disease is something I can handle. So much time thinking about myself. Feel depleted. So much time just trying to care for myself that I have no energy left to really truly do something outside of me. Wish I could just forget about myself and throw myself into something meaningful but the mundane daily aspects of health keeps me tethered to my stupid problems.

Caitlin had cystic fibrosis, but by the end, she also had severe pulmonary hypertension, CFRD (diabetes), ocular migraines that put her at higher risk for stroke, blocked sinuses, and constant, painful total body aches that required round-the-clock doses of Tylenol. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but the point is, all of these conditions required care. At her service in December, Andrew pointed out that every single day, Caitlin climbed a mountain. Every day involved so much more effort than any regular person can truly imagine.

This past week has been, for me, the hardest yet, the finality of her absence more fully real. It didn’t help that on Monday, I reached out to an MGH therapist who was supposedly outstanding—knew CF, transplant, ECMO, etc., someone who would understand the trauma of Caitlin’s life and last weeks without a lot of explaining by me. I waited for a reply, for a lifeline. On Tuesday, I received this email:

Thank you for your phone message. Unfortunately, I don’t have availability to see people for weekly therapy in my cystic fibrosis clinic at MGH given the limited time that I am there. Do you need to stay within your insurance network? If so, I can ask around in our department to see whether someone with experience dealing with illness and grief may have time.

We happened to be in Caitlin’s apartment when I received that email and I was livid and hysterical and couldn’t stop sobbing all night long. All night I thought: in the morning I am going post this callous person’s name on my blog then march down to MGH and accost her, in person!

I obviously needed to unleash some anger.

I sent a restrained reply instead:

I left you a voice mail explaining that my daughter died after being on ECMO.

I am stunned by the lack of empathy in your response.

Then I let it go. I have to let a lot of things go. Caitlin would be the first to say so.

She was such wise counsel to so many of us. After my inward rant, in that little black health record, I also found this:

___________________

September 12, 2012

Feel desperately hopeful now that Obama will win. Biden’s speech tonight about his grandmother and courage.

Courage. That word means it all to me.

When I feel myself flailing, grasping, panicking with pain or hurt, I get a notion in my head, always, and remember that there is courage. Courage is the answer. Because courage doesn’t negate the problem, it exists within the problem. And when you realize the answer lies in taking in the problem and living in spite of it, with full awareness of it, you feel a new option and a new sense of hope and life.

JANUARY 24–The Price We Pay

We are home. We decided to fly out of San Francisco on Saturday. It was time; we need to get things done here. I was sorry to miss the marches, but as my good friend Ellen pointed out:

I wasn’t sure I could go into the Boston apartment, never mind sleep there, but we did, and it was actually somewhat comforting. Also, by chance, my sister and brother-in-law were staying in Boston that night, and it was also comforting to spend time with them.

Random Thought: Barbecued Oysters

I really appreciated the notes from all of you who were grateful for the trip reports. It was easier to grieve out there, close to that spectacular coastline and those ancient trees. Caitlin felt with us. Now, home, she feels very much absent again. We will work on that.

Our last day, Jess took us up to Point Reyes where we sat at picnic tables in the freezing cold and ate the most delicious barbecued oysters. If you’ve never had barbecued oysters, you’ve got something to look forward to.

Screen Shot 2017-01-24 at 12.38.40 PM.png — *Hog Island Oysters at Point Reyes*

Screen Shot 2017-01-24 at 1.02.33 PM.png — *Beautiful Jess*

Random Thought: 2012

Five years ago it was 2012, and 2012 turns out to have been one of the most wonderful years of our lives. Viking was publishing Cascade. Nick and Caitlin and I took a relaxing winter trip that turned out to be one of our best. And that summer, after living alone in Paris for a little bit (a longtime dream), Caitlin met Andrew.

Screen Shot 2017-01-24 at 12.35.51 PM.png — *Caitlin in Coral Gables, 2012*

Yesterday, I found an old email I sent to my sister:

Caitlin really clicked with that boy. She said they talked instantly and forever, of ‘things’ and that he was very smart and kind. As she was telling me about him, she said “it’s like he was the male version of me,” and then her face went a bit white, and she said, ‘oh my god, that’s what the psychic told me. i would be the female version of this person i was going to meet.’

He felt the same. How lucky they both were.

Also, in 2012, Caitlin had been on a kind of wonder drug for a year. Kalydeco, invented by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, targets the specific genetic CF mutation that Caitlin had. Within hours of taking it for the first time in 2011, she felt better. She gained weight and had fewer lung infections. If Kalydeco had existed before her lung damage happened, it would have been as good as a cure. Although it ultimately came too late for her, she did enjoy a couple of relatively healthy, hospital-free years because of it, and enjoyed talking about her experience to a few groups, including Vertex and the Boston Business Journal. Drugs like this came about because of all the support for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and we all thank you for that support.

*Caitlin interviewed by Boston Business Journal*

Random Thought: Hereafter

Yesterday was the first day I spent alone in the house. Nick went back to work and kept himself busy. I managed to take a shower, but mainly I cried all morning. The news was all horrible and the day was gray and reminders of Caitlin were everywhere. There is a mountain of cards here and we are so incredibly grateful for them. I tried to read one or two but couldn’t manage any more, yet.

I finally decided to watch a movie that I love, “Hereafter.”

Hereafter came out in 2010 but didn’t do well, mainly I think because people went to it expecting a disaster movie–it opens with incredible special effects that depict the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But it’s not about special effects! It’s an intelligent, engrossing, and very well-written movie that ruminates on whether there is an afterlife.

Matt Damon plays the part of a reluctant medium very very well.

After watching it again yesterday, I realized that it was written by Peter Morgan, writer of The Queen and The Crown. No wonder it’s so good, I thought.

In Pittsburgh, Caitlin and I loved to watch series-type shows after dinner. Our last show was The Crown, and we finished it right before she went into the hospital in November.

At the time, I looked up some of the actual events that took place in the show, including the Queen’s friendship with “Porchie,” and came upon this statement she made after his death:

She was, in turn, quoting from Dr Colin Murray Parkes, a hospice pioneer:

“The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our own lives and unprepared to help others cope with losses in theirs.”

With this quote in mind, I want to point out that we are always going to want to talk about Caitlin, even if our voices crack and our eyes fill up. The pain of our grief was definitely worth the price of our love, and we’ll be paying for the rest of our lives. That’s okay.

With much love for all of you as well,

Maryanne

JANUARY 19–Words from Jess

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Jess wrote a post on her own blog today. It’s beautiful and here it is:

Castro avoided over 600 assassination attempts throughout his life, but even he couldn’t hide from 2016.

2017 is the year of the Rooster and the year that a person who has never held public office is slated to become the 45th President of the United States of America. It was supposed to be the year that I traveled to Red Square with Caitlin. The year of Harry Potter lungs and silicone implants. The year that we emerged with our matching clamshell scars. But it’s not and it won’t be.

This is my first time writing in months. Usually it helps to express and manifest the inexpressible but, in this case, it wasn’t helping. I have tried to make sense of what happened, to play each and every scenario over in my head. Also, everything that I ever wrote, I always sent to Caitlin with the flagrant subject line “DRAFT” – and she would quickly respond with candid feedback. She was my editor.

When I returned from India in the middle of December – from the cacophony of Jaipur and the undulating hills of Udaipur – I immediately flew to Pittsburgh. Caitlin had been on life support for a few days while she waited for lungs. I arrived in the city of bridges, home of the Steelers and quickly enmeshed myself into the daily routine. We – Maryanne, Nick, Andrew, & I – took shifts, ensuring that one of us was always by her side in the CTICU. We held her hands, we massaged her feet, and we read Mary Oliver passages aloud – a small act which seemed to perk up her waning blood pressure.

Last week, I had this terrible moment where a dear friend that I met while living in Kenya texted me after returning from several weeks in Cuba. She wrote, “Did Caitlin get her transplant?” I froze. I slowly typed,“Yes, she did” and then added “but she died” after that. So awful. Little things like that keep happening. I don’t want time to move on because I am so afraid of forgetting. The only image in my head is of Caitlin in the ICU and I am having such a hard time remembering anything before then. There is a dichotomy – as Caitlin’s situation has made me less afraid of dying because I know that she is there (wherever there is) paired with this unyielding desire to live, to really live – for her.

I left Pittsburgh on the morning of December 20th. I had to fly back to San Francisco for chemo but I planned to be in California for just a day or so. I left UPMC – the hospital – and texted the other three, “I’m en route to the airport with Jim but I will see you all in a few days for five little pig Christmas. I’m just a phone call away if you need anything at all. Don’t let leather jacket man steal my chair-bed, keep writing in the chapel book, and keep the sails up…”

Later that afternoon, Caitlin died. She was supposed to live. She should have lived. She should have had the chance to use her new, perfect lungs; to see her oxygen saturation at 100%. But she had to wait too long for her transplant, and her body had been through far more than any should endure.

Below are the promises that I made to her when I spoke at her memorial service:

I promise to do something extraordinary. I promise to make you proud and I promise to keep your light and your spirit alive.

I promise to do all that I can to fix the organ donation system

I promise to plant a garden that will mean for many what Prouty meant for you

I promise to smile at sad looking strangers and to address little pups in your Henry voice

I promise to always be kind

I promise to learn more about astrology and its intricacies

I promise to trust my intuition; to listen to my own voice and to be in a state of non-resistance

I promise to take care of your Mom and Dad and Andrew

I promise to order Watermelon Sherbet in July

I promise to always say Rabbit Rabbit

I promise to do something – once a day – in your honor

I promise to advocate for those who are unable to advocate for themselves; to always be aware of the plights of others.

I promise to listen to Joni Mitchell and to text you when Losing My Religion just happens to play on the radio

I promise to finally see a movie by myself. A good movie. None of that junk.

I promise to keep wearing giant pearls and continue adding to our tribal wrist collection

I promise to find the magic; the unsung beauty.

I promise to attempt to write a Modern Love that tells the story of our friendship; our matching clam shell scars.

I promise to have a day where the only words that I speak are “can I have a water and a muffin?”

I promise to live; to really live; to stay away from the surface and to go deep; deep where the lobsters go.

I promise to keep having faith. Faith that there is beauty in this sometimes tragic life.

I promise to never take my lungs for granted. I promise to cherish each and every breath.

And so, 2017 will be the year of Caitlin O’Hara. My ruby slipper, my person, my heart.

–Jess

JANUARY 17–In the Redwood Forest

Below is a screenshot of Caitlin’s Instagram from our trip home in September, 2015, when she got to visit the Prouty Garden one last time. As I’ve mentioned, the current Children’s Hospital administration made their decision to cut down/kill the Prouty Garden’s 65 foot Dawn Redwood tree this past December, the same day Caitlin went on ECMO.

*The dawn redwood is in the middle rear of this pic*

Today, in Caitlin’s honor, Nick and I visited the Muir redwood forest here in California.

The last movie that Caitlin saw was at the Carnegie Science Center a few months ago, the recent “National Parks Adventure” at the Omnimax. From CNN’s review of the film:

Two of the most integral figures in national park history are also honored in the film — conservationist John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt, who convened in 1903 at Yosemite National Park. Their famous three-day camping summit under the stars in a giant grove of Sequoia trees is re-enacted by a pair of dedicated tribute actors.

“That meeting [between Roosevelt and Muir] is often regarded as the most important three days in conservation history, so we knew we had to include it,” says MacGillivray.

“They believed that nature was of spiritual value, and that you could get more out of it by not changing it. It was a unique point of view then — and one that people might take more for granted now.”

Like anything so natural and overwhelming to puny beings like us, photographs cannot do justice to how it feels to walk there among our earth’s tallest living things. But if you’ve never been, try to go in this lifetime. The forest is like a cathedral–hushed, and filled with shade and light.

Screen Shot 2017-01-17 at 6.01.36 PM.png — *Nick and a redwood*

At one point, Nick opened his knapsack and took out the photo of Caitlin that he’s been carrying on this trip.

This is quite a large photograph but looks like a 3×5 against this tree.

He also brought the religious gifts various people had given to Caitlin while she was sick and which hung on her IV poles in the hospital and during her surgeries.

It’s 4 weeks today, exactly, and as I write that, it hits me all over again that it is true.

But Jess is here, and we love her. And we saw Kenley, too, last night. And read aloud a wonderful note we received from the kids’ former headmaster at Fay. And basically went on living, as impossible as that seems to be to do.

–M&N

JANUARY 16–Ropes Course for Souls

Big Sur. I had it in my head that we needed to get here.

Screen Shot 2017-01-16 at 8.49.13 AM.png — *Fairy Ring of Coastal Redwoods*

The glorious, big days are somewhat easy here. Night is still night, and nights are hard. At 2am the night before last, after getting a dozen messages from people telling me of signs they were sure they received from Caitlin’s soul, I thought, okay, I’m going to ask for a hard sign. I want a monarch butterfly to fly around me in a complete circle. Tomorrow.

And yesterday we went to Esalen for massages and to experience their famous hot sulphur springs.

Time has been a strange thing. Sitting in the hot water with the sea crashing below, all I could think was, Exactly four weeks ago today, Caitlin was in surgery and we were so relieved and happy. And now I am at Esalen, a place that seemed like Neverland.

Nick loved the energy at Esalen and afterward, went to look at the big farm garden there. I sat in an Adirondack chair overlooking the Pacific and I thought about the end of Mad Men and how I wanted Caitlin to see that I was there and a couple of monarch butterflies began flying all around… not right around my face, the way I’d envisioned, but in big swooping circles that took in much more than me.

A few people have said they enjoy reading Caitlin’s thoughts so here’s something relevant, as we all face the coming week.

From: Caitlin O’Hara <caitlin.ohara@gmail.com>
Date: October 2, 2016 at 10:31:46 PM EDT
To: andrew
Subject: Wow read this

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/finally-someone-who-thinks-like-me/2016/10/01/c9b6f334-7f68-11e6-9070-5c4905bf40dc_story.html

With my big book, Sarum – that I’ve been reading that traces England from beginning of man to now — to this new book I’m reading – which does a similar thing with the slave trade and is already so so so good and opening up news ways of looking at slavery (for me) I just feel like plus alongside this election, which is challenging everything I took for granted ..::it’s an interesting and weird time to be alive and experiencing. I can’t help but imagine these times in the past that I read about, and then think how the time we live in now will just be something that happened to someone else, in the future….It will be this weird blip in history that is a forgone conclusion because it’s over, it’s sorted out. We learn about bad things that happened and somehow they don’t seem quite as unbelievable because the people in the future have figured out why it happens, and we know the ending. I hope it doesn’t happen soon, but at some point the US will no longer be around, or it will be much different than it is now. And it won’t seem weird to people reading about it in history books. We will just seem like the dumb idiots of history who elected trump. Like the sheep in Germany who followed hitler. A question on a test somewhere. We parse the decades out and they all seem so different

– when I read Sarum I have a tendency to do a double take when things are different from say 1650 to 1690—when the area in the book has undergone a huge change. But of course in our modern history entire revolutions and wars happen in shorter times. Countries fall. We are all the same and we all have a collective fallibility and vulnerability. It can happen to any country and any place … but we also are all the same in that we never seem to really learn from history or believe WE are the ones making mistakes.

It’s part of why the idea of souls makes sense to me. This place is just like a ropes course for souls. A learning center. It never changes and the collective body of humans can never sustain their progress too too much or else there is not enough to challenge the souls. Imagine all the people living life in peace ✌️ John Lennon – well that wouldn’t really work if you believe we need to be challenged to grow. At least in the human form.

** The slave trade book was Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

Sarum is by Edward Rutherfurd

JANUARY 13–Glowing in the Dark with Mary

We have been here a week—feels like much, much longer. The rains kept us from going straight to Big Sur as we had planned, but that turned out to be a good thing. We were made to live inside the moments we found ourselves in. We did things we hadn’t planned to do: see Malibu and Beverly Hills and Santa Barbara and Miles-and-Jack country.

Screen Shot 2017-01-13 at 7.27.50 AM.png — *..and just a flutter of, like a nutty Edam cheese*

Screen Shot 2017-01-13 at 7.28.10 AM.png — *Spirit Bear for Caitlin and for Gary Richardson*

Strange, small-world, meaningful fact: our wonderful neighbors from Pittsburgh, Mary and Ralph, actually own a place just down the beach from where we stayed in Santa Monica. All this time, when they would go to CA, I thought they were somewhere else. (Never having been here, I didn’t have much of a map in my head.)

So we got to visit with them a bit. And that was surreal and healing and very, very good. They are kind friends who will always be in our lives.

Another Pittsburgh–now life–friend, the wonderful writer and soul, Jane McCafferty, has been so supportive with her words and thoughts and the other day wrote, “If you have a favorite saint, or a connection to Jesus, try calling on that now— in my experience this can be real medicine.”

I liked that advice and realized I’d already taken, like Caitlin, the stoic Mary as my own. At the last minute, I had packed the tiny glow-in-the-dark Vierge Marie that I purchased at Chartres when I visited there with Caitlin in 2004. After another 2am bad dream last night, I’ve decided I’m going to keep her glowing figure on my bedside table from now on.

I have a feeling that the real Mary would not have taken herself too seriously, and thus wouldn’t mind this version of herself.

Light inside darkness is always a good thing.

Screen Shot 2017-01-12 at 4.56.36 PM.png — *La Vierge Marie*

As soon as we arrived here last week, I realized I had to buy a stronger chain for Caitlin’s bird ring. I didn’t trust the one I had, but I did trust that I would find the right thing at some point, and as Nick and I were walking up the main street in Santa Barbara the other day, I glimpsed a store that looked to be full of necklace chains. Nick walked in and bee-lined straight to the perfect one. The right length, the right color. “Look up,” he said.

I began to see her everywhere, of course. Even in the most unlikely places.

And also in very likely, lovely places, like this stunning stucco church in Santa Barbara called Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Screen Shot 2017-01-12 at 4.51.39 PM.png — *St Francis and his birds and Mary*

Screen Shot 2017-01-12 at 4.52.15 PM.png — *Mary and 65 Roses*

She is everywhere, once you know to look.

–M

PS:

Beautiful song sent by Jane.

JANUARY 11–Zooming Out w/Caitlin, post-Obama

Here in California, I’ve been waking up way too early—4:30 or so, and now that Nick and I are finally together again, I try to be quiet for his sake. But the sun doesn’t rise till 7, and those dark hours can be terrible. This morning I tried signing onto Facebook, but all the bleak posts about last night’s farewell speech made the day (life) ahead feel particularly despairing.

I was thinking about the fact that Caitlin had had so much meaningful correspondence with others over the past two years. Recorded correspondence. I have little of that, obviously. Our conversations of the past three years–her most contemplative time–were all in real time.

In the dark it’s easy to panic, and that’s what I did. I was seized by this urgent need to scour through her Gmail and find all of her writings until I realized: I can’t just read through her private stuff.

Then, literally then, I got an email from Andrew, a forward of an email from Caitlin this past July where she had linked to an article she admired and talked about her own perspective. With his permission, here it is:

From: Caitlin O’Hara <caitlin.ohara@gmail.com>
Date: July 25, 2016 at 10:20:47 PM EDT
Subject: Zoomed out

This sums up everything I think about the state of the world and life and how I think – only this guy articulately wrote it and has all the facts at his fingertips to back it up. I am only an amateur historian. With all I know cobbled together from years of art history combined with an obsession with organizing time in my head – decades, centuries, eras. The entire thing has always been a visual structure in my head. Some day I will draw it for you. When I picture us now in 2016, I pull back. I always pull back and picture myself in time and in space geographically. It makes me removed enough (like this guy) to ultimately not feel that there is much I can do to change the shifts of the world, but also inspired enough to think – what is my role in this lifetime (whether it’s my only lifetime or one of many, doesn’t matter) to survive this time?

I am fascinated by this kind of thing. By the ebbs and flows of history. By patterns and by people and all of the stuff he talks about. I guess it’s harder for many people to think in that zoomed out way. For me – it was a mechanism I cultivated as a way to deal with being sick … I’d zoom out, see my own smallness, realize it’s all been done before and will be done again, and I could relax, and enjoy my life now. Like why I like graveyards. And reading about the holocaust. I like reading and thinking about the ebbs and flows of human suffering, living, dying, living again…

History Tells Us What May Happen Next

I don’t think it matters if this guy is “right” about brexit or whatever the defining moment will prove to be…or even if this time really will end up being a catastrophic time (ahead of us). I kind of feel it might be. But I think his way of thinking is a good one that I relate to a lot. And wish more people did. But then, we wouldn’t have the same world ….

Love my Andy.

I’m going to renew my Irish passport. In case we have to skip out of here. ❤️✌🏼️

Sent from my iPhone

And here are some random things we sent to each other: