Glimpse In A Mirror

Learning From Life

Several years ago, I realized that my job in life is to be student. By watching the world around me, I realized that I could learn many lessons through observation, things in my own life as well as in other people's lives. Often, when things are going on in my own life, my emotions distract me from seeing the important things, like things that happen at the same time, and events that are part of a pattern. Keeping a journal does help me to be more observant and more objective about my own life, but it is still difficult. It's much easier to see things in other people's lives. The challenge, however, is to look without judging, to simply observe events as they unfold, and pay attention to the patterns.

Several years ago, I met a woman through an unusual set of circumstances. She was in town to work with a sort of personal growth facilitator, someone I had worked with. He asked me if I would be willing to put her up at my home for a few days. She had planned to begin her drive back to Seattle immediately, but he felt it would be best for her to spend a few days, to have some down time so she could regroup before expending the energy to drive back. Without hesitation, I agreed. It was the start of a wonderful friendship.

Linda was a banking attorney who had quit her stressful job just before her bank was aborbed by another bank in the merger frenzy that went on in the mid-90s. She was a couple of years older than me, and like me, was exploring the spiritual aspect of her life. Her explorations lead her to the same facilitator I had found. Linda's dream was to write a book about her experience, and so she fastidiously kept a journal of her journey, another link between us. She wanted to write a book that would help all of the "normal" people out there who suddenly discovered the mystical side of their life, like she had. She had always been skeptical of things religious and anything outside of normal events of life. The fact that she was working with a shaman in the desert was incongruous with her past, but part of the natural progression of steps she had taken in response to her life experiences. Like me, Linda was beginning to trust her own experiences more than her ideas.

Perhaps because we came from professional worlds, perhaps because we were similar in age, perhaps because we had found the same facilitator... whatever the reason, Linda and I connected. During her time with me, she was open and we shared meaningful conversation, in spite of her recent work and her naturally reserved nature. When she left, she promised to keep in touch, and invited me to spend time with her in Seattle. I took her up on both counts. I spent 5 days in Seattle with her a year later, exploring the town that she loved, visiting the galleries full of northwest Native tribal art. She took me to see the salmon jumping up the locks. We wanted to explore Whidby Island, but ran out of time and good weather. I scheduled a return trip a year later, but a sudden illness caused me to cancel it on the day I was supposed to leave. When I was better, my work schedule was hectic, and so we postponed rescheduling the trip.

Our friendship thrived over the phone, with conversations that ran longer than either of us expected, often longer than the deadlines we had set for financial reasons. Later, we supplemented the calls with lengthy emails. We shared a core outlook on life, and a similar set of experiences, that allowed us to see things in complimentary ways. We had similar challenges in our lifes, and we were able to see things in the other's life, and point them out with great tenderness and honesty. Linda and I shared the best kind of friendship I have had the pleasure of knowing. We had the kind of intimacy that happens when people open their hearts and their souls touch. Linda was one of my soul sisters in this life.

When I met Linda, her breast cancer was in remission. One of the great focuses of her life and personal growth work was to get to the heart of that experience, something she shared with her mother who had contracted the cancer when she was Linda's age. The similarities were overwhelming to Linda. She faced herself and her future with a steely determination, and didn't flinch when the path became littered with metaphysical significance and extra sensory events. Linda set out to explore the invisible world of her own life, and sought to understand its connections to the intimate physical world of her own body.

When Linda told me that her cancer had returned, I was shocked and panicked. She was the first person in my world to have cancer, and the first friend that I had facing death. Vicariously, this challenged me to look at my own death in a more real way, with the sting of her situation flowing over into mine. I purchased a small semi-precious stone carved into a heart, and engraved with the word "courage" for her. I also made her a medicine basket necklace, selecting colors and materials intiutively that I trusted would support her in this phase of her journey. That was four years ago.

In many ways, and in spite of my immediate shock, I was not surprised about Linda's condition. I knew that she struggled with the similarities between her life and her mother's life, and I knew that she believed there was a significance, an importance, to the echo of the illness in her own life. We talked directly about the possibility that focusing on it with that mindset could became a causative agent in its appearance in her own life. I always felt that Linda believed that she would die from the same disease as her mother, at the same age her mother had been. Even after Linda outlived her mother, I felt that Linda thought she was on borrowed time.

But the most amazing thing I observed in Linda's life was something that I only know from having lived in her home. Linda had purchased a small bungalow style home in the Seattle suburb of Ballard. The house had a single story with a basement, and set up on a hill. You had to climb steps to reach the front door, and her driveway had a steep slope with high retaining walls near the sidewalk. Linda had recently redecorated her home to reflect the changes in her life, and to more fully express her personality. Her style was a conservative modern, with traditional elements and clean lined upholsetered pieces. There was a sense of family history around her. Linda loved Pegasus and unicorns, and had a pair of crystal sculptures of them on her mantle, a tribute to the spiritual fire that was lit in her own heart.

One day, while Linda was out taking her daily walk, she asked me to carry some boxes to her basement. She had one of those old staircases like my Grandma had. Her basement was partly finished, with rooms and walls, but it wasn't available for living space. Instead, Linda had filled each of the rooms with boxes. They lined the walls to about waist height, and spilled into the center of the rooms. Even the hallway was lined with boxes. I was shocked to see this, and immediately had an image: A neat and tidy upstairs for public view, while underneath it is a swarming mess of personal baggage. The metaphor was so powerful it stunned me. I remember walking around in disbelief in her basement, unable to get past the image in my own mind. I knew that this basement held a secret about Linda's life, that there were shadows and things left unexplored inside of her. Like so many of us, Linda had skeletons in her closet, a whole basement full of them. Later, I would see the boxes and dust of her basement become cancer cells as it metastasized throughout her lungs, internal organs, and brain.

During her chemo treatments, Linda's basement flooded, leaving a garden of molds growing in her basement. It amazes me to this day that even after her illness had taken its toll, Linda was being given another chance to sort through her issues and set her basement in order. She hired a company to come in, and I know that many things were thrown away. In our conversations, Linda told me later that the mold was resolved. I always wondered how much of the sorting she was able to do, and I trusted that in some way, Linda was starting to put her life in order.

For several years, Linda published a rather perky newsletter to her friends, updating us on her illness and her battle. She was no longer up to having company, so my trip was never rescheduled. We still spoke frequently. About a year ago, I asked Linda if she was interested in writing a column for my journal writing website, or even one article, about her experiences with her own journal as she converted it to a book, or her newsletter which became a public journal of her health and wellness. At first she resisted the idea because she felt she had nothing to say. After a bit of talking, she realized that she did have a lot of say, and promised me to think about it. We talked about it often, but Linda never wanted to invest the time in such a project. I felt gratified that my job in making the offer had been successful--to help her to see her contributions to world were significant, and to feel that she had things to say that others would benefit from hearing. I wish today that my world had received even one of her articles, as it would be a piece of Linda that I could hold in my hand today. It is enough that we talked about the idea of it.

Althought she considered several things, Linda never returned to work. She didn't have the heart for the corporate world any longer, and other legal occupations didn't capture her imagination as a place where she could express the things that mattered most to her. I don't know how she supported herself through these years. I always hoped that her family was well off and that they were helping her. She had hoped to finish her book in the first year, and then in the second year, and thought that would provide an income for her. Her book only made it to rough draft form.

A week ago, I had a growing awareness that I hadn't heard from Linda, along with a knowing that Linda was in the last days of her battle. I don't know how I knew this, but I knew it as surely as I can touch the desk before me. I also felt that it was not a good time for me to call her, even though that impulse ran through me several times. Instead, when I felt that urge, I would send a message of love to her telepathically. I felt connected to her, and even though I never sensed a message coming back, I knew my heart was heard. Last Sunday, I received an email that my friend, my soul sister, was no longer fighting her cancer. I've cried a few times. I've tried to write this several times, but the words and emotions were all mixed up. I thought about creating a memorial in my possessions for Linda, only to realize with pain that I don't have a picture of her, and the image of her face is leaving me. I have so many memories of Linda, conversations with her while sitting on my couch, while sitting on her dining room floor, while driving around Seattle. I feel such a connection to the courage heart and the necklace... gifts that came from my heart to hers, strings that connect our hearts even today. I know you are watching me write this, Linda, and that you see my tears. And I see in your eyes that you know I'm not sad for you, that I am happy for you, happy to have known you, and happy to have been allowed to learn so much by observing your life at close range. Bless you, Linda. I'll see you soon, I know.