MARCH 22 — Retablos from Caitlin

I haven’t seen the new movie, “Five Feet Apart,” about two teenagers with CF, but I hear that it “gets it right” and I’m excited about that. A while ago, I’d said I would start posting more of Caitlin’s own words here. I got too busy writing my book to focus on it, but with CF “in the air,” now seems a good time.

1. Part of a draft for a talk she gave to Vertex Pharaceuticals employees in 2012, about what life was like for her, even when she looked “normal.”

By winter and spring of 2011 I had settled into a pattern of avoidance, which is the first real indicator that quality of life is suffering. I avoided any situation that would involve me walking any distances, especially with people other than my parents, 1 or 2 close friends, or my boyfriend. My boyfriend would carry me up stairs or hills when we would go places — he was really the only one I would “go for walks” with, which was still not very fun. I still drank alcohol and socialized, but only in situations where I could drive or take a cab directly to the place, and leave in the same way. I would dread being put in a situation where suddenly everyone I was with would want to change venues. I specifically would not choose plans where the venues of the evening were near each other, because that always meant that we would have to walk. I preferred if they were far away, so there would be an excuse to take a cab, or drive. Walking on the beach was awful last summer — just a slightly sloping path to the beach — because sand makes walking doubly difficult.

I remember one moment last March, in particular, that I have thought of often during these past 6 months. I had houseguests— two friends, a couple —staying with me. We were supposed to meet her friends at a bar and at the last minute those girls changed it to a place that is very literally right down the street from my apartment. You can see it from my window. My houseguests were from out of town and didn’t know how close it was. It was cold and snowy, so I used that plus the excuse, “It’s close but not THAT close” (it was), and the fact that I was wearing heels, to take a cab. I mean it was literally 2 blocks on flat terrain. My two friends couldn’t have been nicer, but even I couldn’t bear to flat-out admit the real reason. It always seemed like, well if i feel THAT sick, why am I even going out, socializing? Why am I not in the hospital, or sitting in Pittsburgh waiting for new lungs? It was sooo not that simple. And once I was somewhere, standing still and talking, I appeared to be completely normal. Even so, we took the cab 2 blocks, and it was absurd to everyone, how close it was. They couldn’t have been nicer, but I was embarrassed and so frustrated. Moments like this happened a lot, but this was the one that stood out. Whereas for years I might get short of breath from an exerting walk, but could just deal with it, I felt like there was no way in the world I could have walked those 2 blocks, even if my life depended on it.

She looks great here, but her lung function was 28%

2. She was a lover of art history who had a real affinity for Frida Kahlo. (I wish she could see the current exhibit in Brooklyn.) This is part of an essay she wrote for a site called Literary Traveler:

In Mexican villages there is a long religious tradition, stretching back to the 18th century, of small, naively painted oils, or “retablo” paintings. These works were often painted by amateurs, and offered up to God during times of grave, often medical, misfortune; during times of desperation. Retablo paintings, which were also called Ex-voto paintings (from the Latin ex voto suscepto, meaning “from the vow made”), were fervently prayed to several times a day. Their purpose was two-fold. These little symbolic works of art were meant not just as a symbolic offering, given up to the heavens in exchange for saintly aid, but also as a testimonial for future worshipers and sufferers. The depiction of the victim’s plight was not sugar coated–there was no hiding behind a glowing cherub, no reaching for the chiseled hand of God. In retablo, tiny figures went up in flames, or lay dying, stretched out on bare bed frames with their insides painted black and green. The message was clear and raw and poignantly human- ‘this is the terror we are living, so please, please PLEASE–help.’

One modern artist would, in her short life, come to know gritty physical suffering better than most — Frida Kahlo. Non-religious, highly emotional and unapologetically female, Kahlo was on a trolley at age 18, in the year 1925, when it veered off track, collided with a bus and nearly severed Kahlo in half. A handlebar from the trolley went straight through her torso; her pelvis was crushed. Her convalescence following the accident gave way to her first works, painted in bed, often with a mirror propped up next to her, examining the physical burden her young body had become. Suffering was a constant now, and would always would be. From this moment forward she would develop artistically and personally to revolutionize Mexican painting, and along her path bring the Christian retablo style straight out into the world it was perhaps always meant to live in — the secular world of the human condition.

3. On Music

Music – I love lots. I love, like any good Bostonian, good old classic rock, Led Zeppelin, CSNY etc., … Janis, anyone at Woodstock. But I also am a sucker for the folksy 70’s stuff, singer/songwriter stuff – Carole King, Judy Collins, Simon and Garfunkel, America, Fleetwood Mac (huge favorite) and my all time favorite (me and a zillion other girls..but it’s because she’s so great)…Joni Mitchell. A lot of times it’s a specific song here and there, and then some artists (like Joni) whom I love everything belonging to.

I also have a spot in my heart for 80’s music and certain albums that my Mom played — definitely a generation thing — Genesis and Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steely Dan, George Michael, Bruce, the Cars, Dire Straits, the Police.

and then the 90’s. I love R.E.M and Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and Counting Crows, and all kinds of songs that remind me of that part of my life. Radiohead, Chili Peppers.

and I love the Grateful Dead.

and I love soul and Motown, Al Green, jazz and Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.

and Pink Floyd of course.

and David Bowie.

and Queen. Freddie Mercury. My goodness, I love him.

the Velvet Underground

Sublime

Talking Heads

Despite my reservations sometimes about Bono (has maybe become a caricature of himself), I have to say that I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and Where the Streets Have No Name are 2 songs that I have never ever in all this time of them being overplayed, tired of.

And within all of these (and more) are certain songs specifically that just are everything for me. For example I could listen to Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street on a perfect day out driving and feel so great (corny but true).

I also really enjoy classical – piano mostly, Chopin. But I admittedly know less, and only have about 10-15 songs on my iphone. I have a hard time remembering the #’s -it goes into a different part of my brain than the brain that can remember every song lyric to every song I know.

I don’t know what I’d do without music!

Claire Wineland, another CF soul gone too soon

4. A late-night reaction, to me in an email, about some “law of attraction” people she’d read about.

Here is what I see. The issue here is not that they are ‘wrong’ – I think yes, there is something to the ‘law of attraction.’ Or whatever silly human name they tried to give it. It’s the same thing I feel when I get parking spots. But there is so much more to life than even this end result that these people are preaching.

What all of this stuff leaves out, laws of attraction and allowance and whatever other crap they are talking about, is the human stuff that is so great and painful and makes life exactly what it seems to be: one giant learning experience. I’m not sure there even is an end to the learning experience, how could there be when we are still human? I am not sure there is any kind of answer we can grasp. Being sure would negate the whole thing anyway. We are just here, and we don’t know why.

It reminds me of a funny nagging problem I’ve always had with Buddhism. Although I respect the peace that Buddhism teaches, and I like that there is a major religion out there that promotes what it does, I’ver always been weirdly conscious of this DILEMMA with reaching Nirvana…in some way escaping all of these things to reach this higher level of clarity where you exist above it all. Why escape what we are here to experience? I don’t know enough about Buddhism to really critique it, but I know some. And it’s funny because part of the entire way that I operate is based on placing myself outside of what is “important” in life, but somehow at the same time, it’s not in line with a Buddhist type of thought, because I am completely enmeshed and in love with the bolts of raw feeling and pain and emotion and hurt and silliness that this life gives you. I know that I don’t want Nirvana now, or heaven, or whatever other plane it is. I am happy to just know it’s there, and trust that I will like it, when it comes.

What bothers me is that this slight understanding that these wackos have stumbled upon (I think they got it at some point…and then their scary brains took over)….unfortunately their human brains have turned it into something that is the opposite of itself. It’s a teaching that now breeds the same stuff that they were trying to overcome: disagreement, misunderstanding….everything they probably think they are trying to avoid.

Just let it be. And there it is…the idea of letting it be….we don’t have control over what our life sums up to be.

They say life flashes before your eyes before you die…I think you can make life flash before your eyes, I think it happens everyday and people just don’t notice it enough.

When I think about my life I picture certain moments, moments that were not burned in my memory or made important because of anything I did. They exist in my memory for reasons I have no idea about. And I wouldn’t trade those for all the attraction and allowance and Nirvana in the entire world.

Daddy always talked about having goals and writing them down. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it was never my thing. I realized that something I did without trying was that I always looked back on each year and could pick out one thing I’d learned. And I can trace that back to Daddy too, and you. Being able to self-reflect and change yourself…what a cool quality. And so neat to see it actually happen, when you can feel yourself change based on what you, and only you, learned. Best thing I have learned this year is the power of just waiting, sitting back, and not saying anything, and holding your tongue and seeing—NOT only what kind of knowledge will change inside of you, but what you might make other people think about, if they are just given the chance to mull without being told what to think.

Anyway, on that note, I am going to wait until the morning to actually hit send.

love you xo.
—–

And then I tried to go to bed but couldn’t, and this is what I wrote in a notepad document. Life flashes before your eyes constantly, certain things make up your memory and you dont even realize it. —

POP UPS — Things I think about all the time and don’t even realize. Pop ups.

Willy turning me upside down on the porch, the black thing next to our door.

9 east – specific flashes. Sharing room with anorexic girl. IV pole when I was younger, walking through the darker 9 west, 9 north halls.

The bookshelves in our living room.

Made-up image in my mind of you meeting Daddy, it’s very clear.

White metal chair in the yard. Small kid’s chair ?

Hospital, 9 east, walking in the garden with the chest tubes, hot air.

Walking muffin /dogs hot summer, Mashpee Commons. Afraid of tornados, sleeping in Mashpee, the smell of the house. VO5 shampoo and conditioner and bath beads. Smell of the comforters, pull out bed.

Being in 7/11 with Kenley and Jacqui, hot air.

Listening to Whiter Shade of Pale with Lindsay DiBiase in a room at Fay.

Drinking from the cold water bubbler upstairs by Scollay Square.

Walking into the dining hall at SM wearing tight black skirt and tight pink bebe tank top.

Coming home from Brooks game and so cold and eating pasta with meatballs and currants. I coughed up blood on the field at that Brooks game and I was scared.

Fighting with Mike P at a restaurant on Route 1 while women put up horrible Christmas decorations and we were the only ones there, sick feeling.

Listening to Touch of Grey over and over again while I walked to the gym freshman year in college, F street corner.

Walking home on a cold snowy morning, 6am, caring about nothing but the quiet and myself for a moment, turning corner onto F street.

Walking down the street in Venice with you looking for a drugstore, looking at a turnstyle of postcards of cats, hot air and headiness.

Turning the corner on 17th street by the Corcoran.

The feel of my feet against the old tile in the old shower in my bathroom, the dark tile.

I’ve felt alive, and sick, and miserable, and happy, and sure, and doubtful many times in my life that maybe I thought would be more meaningful than these simple, plain, silly moments. But these are the ones that stuck, and make my life.

Of the moments and people that mean something to you I think there is always a time beyond the obvious, beyond the “main event,” that meant more to you than anything else, and it’s usually simple and small and totally random, a snippet you have no control over.

So you tell me how on earth, (no pun intended) are we supposed to expect to attract and allow, and CONTROL what this life gives us? And why would we want to?

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APRIL 23–Coincidences (?)

There are so many, and they have happened pretty much every day, this past year. Here are a couple of crazy ones.

When I announced, in September, that I would be writing my story in a more contained form, the universe seemed to lead me to Dani Shapiro, the author of many moving pieces of memoir and fiction. In November, I made plans to attend one of her small, women-only writing retreats.

There would be six other women in the group. As I was reading the other writers’ pages, before I left home, I wondered why the name of one woman, Julie Himes, was so familiar. Then I realized she was the author of the book sitting right beside me—-my book club’s pick for December. I emailed her to say hello and to remark upon the coincidence.

She wrote back with some equal amazement. In my pages, I had mentioned Vertex Pharmaceutical’s Kalydeco, the gene-correcting cystic fibrosis drug that might have changed Caitlin’s life, if she’d had access to it before her lung damage occurred. In addition to being a writer, the multi-talented Julie is also a research physician and a medical director at Vertex.

On the last night of that November retreat, Julie and the others were talking with great enthusiasm about Sirenland, an annual writer’s conference that Dani, Dani’s husband Michael Maren, and Hannah Tinti have been running in Positano, Italy for the past dozen years.

Long story short: I ended up attending Sirenland last month.

At Sirenland there are three small workshops, with ten writers in each one. I was part of Dani’s memoir workshop. Before I left home, I received the bound pages containing my group’s ten manuscripts. They were in alphabetical order.

I began to read the manuscripts, one per day. A few days before the conference, I was in London when I reached the end of the manuscript. W. David Weill. The name seemed familiar. I began to read. And stopped. I started talking to myself. What?? What is this??? Are you kidding me???

I called up to my friend who was traveling with me. You are not going to believe this.

David is a pulmonologist and was the medical director of the lung transplant and adult cystic fibrosis programs at Stanford University for years. His manuscript consisted of the first pages of a memoir he is writing about his complicated relationship with organ transplant.

I also realized why I recognized his name. I emailed the mother of Mallory Smith, the young woman from LA who also had to be transplanted in Pittsburgh, and who passed so tragically last November. Nick and I had just had dinner with Diane and her husband at their California home. I wrote, Is David Weill the Stanford lung doc friend you mentioned?

Yes, why?

And I told her and she said, Oh my God, Mallory did an edit of his book.

So yes, there was that.

Sirenland was an exceptional experience. And David is an exceptional person and I hope that his memoir will find many fascinated readers. He is now consulting, and working to address, as he puts it on his website, an important deficiency in transplant care: the lack of comprehensive quality information about transplant program performance. From his site: In the United States, there are hundreds of transplant programs performing thousands of solid organ transplants per year. Based on my own experiencing directing programs and evaluating them for public and private entities, I have seen that the quality of the programs varies considerably. This variability is usually not apparent to patients. The mission: Develop a scientifically reliable way to evaluate transplant program quality by using a variety of metrics that will be proposed and tested by experts in each of the four solid organ transplants (heart, liver, kidney, and lung). In order to achieve this mission, I have set up a non-profit entity called the Coalition for Transplant Program Evaluation (CTPE).

LRG_DSC00524 — Our magical workshop space at Le Sirenuse, Positano

The insanely beautiful view from my room at Le Sirenuse.

∞

As I neared the end of my week in Italy, I thought of all the trips that Caitlin and I had planned for “after transplant.” The last overseas trip she took was to Ireland for her 30th birthday. She traveled with Andrew and they visited her beloved family in Wexford–her grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins. It was a complicated trip, as that was the summer she began to catch one virus after another. By Christmas, she was on oxygen full-time and would never travel again.

I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was already “across the pond.” I had a ticket home from London but was able to change my departure date. I asked Nick to join me in England, to see, in honor of Caitlin, some places she longed to visit: Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, Bath. He came and we saw those magnificent sites and he was also able to visit with old, close friends and also some Welsh cousins he had not seen for thirty (!) years.

We ended our week in London at the hotel where I twice stayed with Caitlin, most recently in 2012. I showed Nick around the enchanting public spaces and pointed out areas that held particularly vivid memories, like how one afternoon, in the lobby, I realized that the man sitting beside me on the sofa was Cuba Gooding, Jr and he was really sweet and funny and offered me a cake from his tiered tray, then basically shouted BOO! when I reached for one.

I showed him where Caitlin got into the taxi with her big suitcase full of oxygen and medical equipment that took her to the Chunnel train that brought her to Paris and the apartment where she so bravely spent a few long-dreamed-of weeks alone.

After we unpacked, we went down to the hotel’s spa. Nick went to the men’s changing area and I went to the women’s. We arranged to meet on the thermal floor.

Once inside the women’s area, the sights and spa smells were so immediately familiar. How could six years have passed? Caitlin was almost there, a shimmering memory in robe and slippers. I allowed myself a moment, thinking, The last time I was here, Caitlin was alive and my book was about to come out, and Cuba Gooding, Jr gave me a piece of cake. Life was pretty good.

Then I went down to the thermal floor to look for Nick. It’s kind of dark there and I couldn’t see him, but suddenly he came out of a door, followed by a man. Look who I found! he said, and it was Cuba, wrapping me in a big hug, saying he was so sorry for the loss of Caitlin, and then he was gone, and my head was spinning a bit. Still is.

–Maryanne

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DECEMBER 20 — Impossibly, a Year

DECEMBER 18 — “God was in the room”

So it’s been a year since Caitlin’s transplant. A fact that’s as hard to believe as her absence.

This post from that day, if the lungs had come a month earlier, before the weeks on ECMO…. … too painful to think about, really.

So.

I’m going to let Caitlin’s words take over, with thanks to Kate S, an old friend of hers who has most recently, graciously, shared her correspondence. The “Caitlin book” that I’m writing has a lot to do with this search for faith.

Emails with Kate

can i ask you something personal? If you don’t want to answer I understand. I have never been that religious but i have always had faith. i hope that makes sense to you. as i get older i struggle more and more with the reality side of my brain and the side that wants to hope and pray for the best, and have faith. i am always so interested in how people like you — really smart people that is — stay so solid in their beliefs and faith. i don’t know, i guess i am just curious about it. then sometimes things happen that make me feel like i am more connected, and that it is possible. i’ve been trying this thing where i “dialogue” with my illness. it was recommended by an astrologer who did my chart, and it is something i kind of do a lot anyway but in a different way. its like visualizing sessions of going through your body and imagining healing. but this takes it a step further with actual talking to your disease. anyway i was lying in bed this morning doing that for like half an hour. andrew was there, he was like half awake, we were just laying around. anyway i never said i was doing that. then when he got up and was walking into the living room he just said casually “i feel like god was in the room this morning.” It was so odd, that is not a normal thing for him to say (obviously). It was just kind of cool.

i am pretty open about everything, but religion is one thing where I am both curious and less knowledgeable. There is so much craziness around religion, that I am always compelled by the smart and grounded ones who find their faith in it, like you. And there have certainly been times when I have reached for it (and it is christianity, because that’s what I was raised with, however weakly). When I was 11 I was very sick for a long time, and I had a hospital physical therapist who would come in and do chest pt (a treatment for CF). She would talk about God and Jesus, almost in an awkwardly preachy way…she was southern. But I was so sick and so detached from anything normal that an 11 year old kid thinks about, that I just fell into it. And she encouraged me to pray and so I did, and I prayed a lot all through my teenage years. And I can still remember her talking to me as I stared out the window and I can’t believe that was an 11 year old kid. It was like I stopped being a kid that year.

When I got older I got interested in reincarnation. Stories of children remembering details of lives that they couldn’t possibly have known, the idea that we are here to learn lessons in this life. Figure out what those lessons are, be good people, and evolve our souls. The idea of souls. It was fun to read about, yes, but mostly the ideas of reincarnation resonated with me. I was interested in the fact that most of the religions embraced the idea very early on in their inception (or so I have read), and even though now it is considered maybe “new age-y” it was in fact very “old age-y.”

When I was very sick that time, my mother had an experience of lying on the couch in our living room sobbing, just crying really hard. Thinking, how will this ever be ok. She said she heard a voice say clear as a bell “have faith.” She has told me this story lots of times since then. She says it was so clear she sat up immediately and stopped crying. Yesterday she bought me a card. She picked it based on the quote on the cover by Frances Hodgson Burnett (author of the Secret Garden) “Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.” She came home and opened it to give it to me and inside it said “Have Faith.” She didn’t even know that, …how odd?! And wonderful.

Anyway — things like this, and the moment with andrew, are just examples of many validating moments I have had during whatever my spiritual journey is. They have made me believe that there is something there. Sometimes I am more connected to it, and sometimes I am not. Perhaps that is the drawback of not having a solid religion to keep you connected, to draw from when you feel like you are losing faith. I don’t know. This might all sound insane to you. I don’t want to think of myself as one of those people that everyone seems to be nowadays which is just “i’m spiritual but not religious,” because I think it is more than that. It is more than just liking the idea of something. I think you have to believe in the GOOD of something, solidly, in order to stay the course.

Email to Nick

So what I always loved about Early Christian art was that it was so …early. Really the beginnings of Christianity , and thinking about what that meant is neat for me. This was years before even the crusades, the first really violent time in the name of “Christ” (well except for Christ himself obviously ). So there was violence of course … In Rome and in the Byzantine empire. But Christianity hadn’t even reached a point yet where people were “fighting in the name of the Catholic Church” etc and things were still more modest.

You can see the change in how Christ is portrayed in the art in these small churches. He’s still a shepherd but he’s wearing roman robes and looks more regal. So it’s the beginnings of it…. But it’s unlikely that these religious people then were implementing awful atrocities on people

I think the area seems beautiful and peaceful. But also something I can’t really place, and don’t necessarily need to figure out. I just would like to go.

There is always going to be bad in the world. I think that is what makes being good so important.

NOVEMBER 16–& the Anniversaries Begin

I know all the dates.

Yesterday a year ago was the last night Caitlin would ever sleep in her own bed. That night, she was so weak she did not have the strength to sit in the bathtub and let me wash her hair. I was so alarmed I emailed her doctor at 10pm.

On the 16th she was admitted to the hospital for the last time.

I wonder now, how many times in her life was she admitted to a hospital? I don’t know that I could even guess.

After I went home for the night, she texted me

Caitlin: Had to get an echo. Feel sick. And tired and can’t breathe. Love you. Hope you get rest.

Text message: 11/17/16 9:14am

Caitlin: My score is 70

Maryanne: Oh my God. Oh wow. What happened?

Caitlin: Dr hayanga came in. Because of my oxygen

Maryanne: What did hayanga say

Caitlin: He was optimistic. Very. He was Iike, we expect to get offers.

Caitlin: Andrew says we HAVE to be hopeful

Maryanne: We ARE hopeful. This is going to happen.

I drove to the hospital that morning with a light, happy heart. It was finally going to happen. The head surgeon came in and said he had been up all night fielding offers for her. None of them were a match, but with so many offers coming in, and with her score so high, a match seemed imminent.

She was on a lot of oxygen but she was stable, and felt much better than she had at home. Finally, finally, finally, after 2 1/2 years, it was going to happen.

Yesterday, another CF tragedy occurred. Mallory Smith of California, who, like Caitlin, could only be transplanted at UPMC and moved to Pittsburgh to wait, received her transplant in September. Her recovery was hard but she was recovering. She was on the other side. Just a few weeks ago, she celebrated her 25th birthday. Soon after, when the docs removed her last chest tubes, she said, “Today is the happiest day of my life.”

Then a pneumonia took hold in her chest. Without an immune system to help her body fight the infection, she became sicker and sicker. The cepacia bacteria that had damaged her native lungs began to destroy the new lungs as well.

We were all hoping for a miracle of science for Mallory, but she slipped these surly bonds yesterday afternoon, her most beloved people by her side.

She was brilliant and kind and everything wonderful. A few years ago she wrote an essay that contains these words:

My life is a miracle because I should be dead. Your life, even if you’re healthy, is a miracle, because your existence is the result of stars exploding, solar systems forming, our Earth having an environment hospitable to life, and then, finally, millions of highly improbable events accumulating over millions of years to bring you, a capable and conscious bag of stardust, to the here and now.

Acknowledge that miracle. Existing is a rare gift, a privilege. It isn’t a right. Think of all those atoms that never ended up inside a human body.

So pick something, do something, to respect that miracle. Step up to the challenge of making your own meaning out of mere matter. Let the whole, the human, be altruistic, be greater than the sum of the parts, the selfish genes of our genome.

Set an intention and get after it feverishly, frenetically. Give back what we’ve taken by paying it forward, save a life, smile at a stranger, climb a mountain leaving nothing but footprints, inspire a child, take care of your body, bring happiness through laughter, plant a tree, and sometimes, just breathe and exhale a little bit of calming energy to your environment.

Give back in whatever small way you can, any time you can, because we are not small. No one of us can do everything, but all of us can do anything. Do it because we have survived, and that is a miracle. Do it because why wouldn’t you? Do it to justify your life.

I hope Caitlin found you, Mallory.

Full text:

And we are big (spoken word unspoken), by Mallory Smith

View at Medium.com

JUNE 20–Solstice to Solstice

I am not the first person to compare time to a river, but from my desk here, the comparison is ever-present, the imagery apt. Drop something into the river and off it goes. It’s never coming back.

It’s six months today. And a Tuesday, just as it was then. Another solstice.

And the great world spins.

Inspirations–4 of Them

1st-CAITLIN

When Caitlin was born, she weighed 9.4 lbs and measured 21 inches long. For the first year of her life, until she started developing one pneumonia after another and ‘failed to thrive,’ she was in the 95th percentile for height & weight. And when she was little, I mean really little–1st-2nd grade little– she loved to run. She could run as easily as anyone else and always won the races.

Years later, we would all do 23andMe and see that she and her naturally-athletic father shared a special genetic variant.

I always wondered what if.

As a college freshman in DC, her up-and-down health was at a ‘good’ level and she rediscovered running–doing miles at a time, big loops between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capital. Even after she transferred to Boston College because of declining health, she liked to run when she felt well enough. But by 2004 or so, she needed oxygen to sleep and to fly, and to do pretty much anything that raised her heart rate. (Blood oxygen levels drop with these activities.)

By 2011, she had to move to an apartment with parking and an elevator. She needed to plan trips around what kind of walking or climbing would be involved. But she and Andrew discovered that she could still ‘hike.’ Andrew would carry her up a trail and then she could walk down.

Screen Shot 2017-06-20 at 7.33.20 AM.png — *Carried to the view by Andrew*

Eventually, she bought one of these things: an adult carry pack. It made her weight easier for Andrew to carry.

Screen Shot 2017-06-20 at 8.18.07 AM.png — *I would like to donate hers. I hear they’re good for autistic kids?*

The last couple of years, with hope for new lungs a reality, she cautiously let herself hope that she would really run again. And just last fall, she bought herself this book, and had a plan for recovering, post-transplant, by climbing all the featured stairways.

2nd-JANET

By chance, two of Caitlin’s cousins challenged themselves physically and mentally this past weekend, in honor of Caitlin. In Australia, Janet Jordan faced her lifelong fear of heights and climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge to raise funds for the pediatric Cystic Fibrosis Unit at the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, NSW.

On her page, Janet talks about a dream she had in which Caitlin challenged her to climb the bridge. As the day of the climb approached, nerves set in. On Saturday, she wrote, “Today’s the day I face my fears, and keep my promise.”

Her next update: “I did it!! What started at 4.30 with an hour long safety induction ended at 7.50pm with the greatest feeling in the world. Photos to come.”

3rd-MELISSA

Back in western Massachusetts, Caitlin’s cousin Melissa Bavaro Klevans and her husband Sam challenged themselves to a 26-Mile, 1-Day EXTREME Hike.

⬆️ One of those peaks is called Misery Mountain.

The hike started pre-dawn and took them 13 hours to complete. It was tough and toward the end, Melissa’s feet were in such pain she didn’t think she would be able to finish. But she looked at Caitlin’s photograph, took off her boots, and hiked to the end in her socks. She shared her thoughts with me:

“After the hike I was able to process everything that I had gone through on the mountains and it came down to this one little thought. It’s NOTHING compared to what my sweet and beautiful cousin had to go through. Nothing.”

Screen Shot 2017-06-19 at 2.14.10 PM.png — *Melissa, with Caitlin’s headscarf around her neck.*

About the breakfast the morning after the hike, she said, “We were able to speak if we wanted to. I hate public speaking, but I needed to say something. I talked about organ donation. I expressed the importance of going online and signing up and that the license sticker was not enough. The great thing about me moving past my fear was that I got through to people. I had at least four people come up to me after and thank me for my speech. They had no idea, as most people don’t. That was powerful.”

4th-BARRY

While I was in Pittsburgh, I met some incredible people. One of them was Barry Lavery, who went into the hospital for routine surgery three years ago and discovered he had ALS.

Like Caitlin, Barry has faced his fate with grace and humor and tenacity. He and Caitlin had lots more in common: a love of philosophy, a love of birds. Wise, witty senses of humor. But they never got to meet.

He’s now on hospice care and he tells me that when he “hops his perch,” he’s going to seek out Caitlin. “We will drink good Haitian rum, grow wings and feathers and soar…”

Last week Nick and I were out on the river at dusk, and the air was full of the sounds of birds and waterfowl. I sent Barry a little video, to share the moment. He texted a response that ended, “Let the river heal you. Remember the quote from a River runs through it.”

💫

–Maryanne

APRIL 24–Three years ago today.

Caitlin was actively listed for a lung transplant on April 24, 2014. We were ready, expectant, full of hope.

She kept herself strong and she kept herself busy.

She was grateful.

She had plans.

We never, ever expected that she would have to wait 2 1/2 years. But when she went into the hospital for the last time, with her high score, she was told that offers were coming in. We figured it would happen any moment. We were excited and lighthearted, and on the night of November 20, she asked me to push her chair through the hospital as fast as I could, to music.

In a just world, she would still be with us.

ORGAN DONATIONS ARE DESPERATELY NEEDED

Spread the word, far and wide.

MARCH 27–I Keep Thinking..

I’ve never been one to say “life’s not fair,” or to be angry about Caitlin’s CF, or about her (not-inevitable) decline and need for a lung transplant. I’ve always tried to be philosophical and optimistic and I truly do believe that tough experiences ‘grow your soul’ and make you a more compassionate human being.

But.

Nick and I are in Florida, at a hotel with an atmosphere that feels more like our beloved Virgin Islands than “Florida.” The hotel plays soft reggae in the background. There are palm trees and thatched buildings and the water here is a Caribbean blue.

Screen Shot 2017-03-27 at 9.29.43 AM.png — *Norman Island, BVIs*

Being an only child, Caitlin tagged along on pretty much every trip we ever took–either by herself, or with Katie, or her boyfriend.

So I keep imagining her here–ambling in her slow way across the pool deck. I see her big sunglasses, her long hair, and I keep thinking I was a fool to have had one hundred percent faith that the transplant would happen, and that she would prevail.

I want to go back and cherish every minute even more than I did.

I keep thinking of her first days on ECMO and how the surgeon said, “We’re going to get you transplanted, Caitlin.” And, “I have a good feeling about this weekend.”

He was trying to be positive, and I’m sure he truly believed his own words.

I keep thinking of my own words, written in Cascade, where I describe a feeling that has always haunted me and which haunts me now:

There had been other such days—the long-ago morning her mother took sick, the afternoon the telegram spelled out the fact of her father’s first heart attack. At the ends of those days, Dez had looked back through the blur of hours to the innocent mornings, which started so normally. An egg, a piece of buttered toast, plans for this or that. And if those days had stayed normal, if the flu had passed through her mother’s body, through her brother’s, if her father’s heart had not seized, there would be no marveling at the day’s normalcy, no reeling from being blindsided.

No, normalcy is taken for granted until it’s gone.

–Maryanne

DECEMBER 26–Boston Globe Tribute to Caitlin

Deep thanks to Bryan Marquard and The Boston Globe for writing this beautiful tribute to Caitlin, and publishing it on the front page today: Caitlin O’Hara, who brought compassion to others while she sought a transplant, dies at 33

Caitlin’s death was ultimately caused by her too-long wait. The surgery itself was technically easier than the surgeons had anticipated. That part had gone very well. Her problems were all caused by having been on life support for too long. If she had received those perfect lungs earlier, there would only have been a happy story to tell.

One of the most important lessons that can come out of this tragedy is how vital is the need for organ donor awareness. In lieu of any flowers or gifts to us, please register today to be an organ, tissue, and cornea donor. (The DMV “organ donor” sticker is not enough.) And please help to dispel the wrongheaded myths about donation. Organ allocation is one of the most tightly-regulated and ethical institutions in the country. Register as an organ donor

DECEMBER 24–All is Bright

*“Like the Madonna,” her Irish great-gran would most definitely have said.*

It’s Christmas Eve, a night for faith and hope, no matter what your faith, no matter what you hope for.

Last night, a visiting friend said he was angry, said, “That’s where I struggle with faith. How could any God allow that to happen?”

“No, no, no!” I said. “Please don’t think that. I need to remind people not to think that.”

Caitlin would not have changed the fact of her cystic fibrosis.

Let me underscore that: Caitlin would not have changed the fact of her cystic fibrosis.

Caitlin believed, as do I, that earthly struggles make you a better, stronger, and more loving and compassionate person.

I’m no super-strong saint. I’m missing her terribly. Horribly. Unbearably. I fall down on the floor. I curl up and cry. I walk down to the river and pace the lawn and wonder how I’m going to live the rest of my life. Today was the hardest day of all—denial and shock setting in, remembering that just one week ago we were filled with relief and happiness, knowing she had one more chance at transplant. But at the same time, I know certain things to be true: pain and struggle are terrible but all of the mess contributes to the growth of your soul.

When Caitlin was little, she required that I sing “Silent Night,” no matter the season, to put her to sleep. Even though, to me, it was supposed to be a special, once-a-year Christmas Eve song. My entire life, I’d loved Christmas Eve more than Christmas. I loved it to be silent and quiet and sacred—-dark but with a sky full of stars. Caitlin made me realize, from her earliest years, that all evenings could be sacred.

It was raining today and it’s still cloudy tonight. There are no stars to see, but I know they are there. And although I know Caitlin is there, somewhere, in the form of bright, loving energy, I will just miss her so much. Her face, her voice, her charming, lovely human presence. But I want to remind everyone of her own words, just one month before her passing, on November 20, on this blog:

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.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. ” Leonard Cohen

—Caitlin, November 20, 2016

And her very last words, texted to me to post on December 3, right before she crashed:

I love my mummy for everything she does – there are no words. Nor for andrew and my dad. They are all so caring. focused their lives directly on me. it is hard to reconcile how that can possibly be ok. But I guess it’s what we do as humans.

Heart and humor, and humility he said will lighten up your heavy load. Joni Mitchell refuge of the roads.

So much outpouring of love and attention makes humility a challenge, but I am so grateful for it. Heart and humor are easier. They feel like the only directions to go right now. Joni Mitchell’s words feel like permission to let go.

I do realize that not everyone who reads this blog is experiencing a big emotional moment in their lives …that sometimes life skates around on top where things are delightful and easy. And I’ve been there and hope to be back, even though I love to cry (with happiness!).
I couldn’t be further from the road right now in Joni’s song with its literal talk about the refuge of anonymity, cold water restrooms and and a photograph of the earth in a highway service station. I am consumed with myself and it’s boring and uncomfortable and embarrassing to have so much attention. And I LIKE attention. At the same time I can’t stop – in order to keep going I have to focus on myself. Self self self. It feels so anti human. It is. I rely on others completely and ultimately, finally will rely on another person to keep me alive.

My thoughts these days aren’t the skate on top kind of normal life thoughts. They’re up and down and trippy and depressive – and we have a lot of laughs. And lots of crying. And weird creative urges. I just want to say thank you for listening to what sometimes must be very emotionally over the top sounding writing. And to reassure you I don’t take myself too seriously. I do take life seriously though, I’ll be honest …. because it’s a seriously wild business.

Thank you for the support – I know I wouldn’t survive at all without it. It’s such an easy thing to say. But truly, i’d be dead by now! I am so very grateful even if I am a bit off the grid lately and I’ve faltered shamefully in my thank you notes – I don’t think I’ll ever get to some of them. But – I’m here, and thank you. And I love everyone very much and love hearing from people even if I am not able to write back.

–Caitlin