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<\/a>Tonight I will fill in the last blank space for Year Two in my line-a-day-five-year memory book<\/a> that my friend Mary gave me soon after I was diagnosed with cancer. Tomorrow I will begin Year Three.<\/p>\nI like to look at what was happening in the previous year\u2019s entry (now it will be years\u2019 entries!) Mostly they\u2019re pretty mundane: \u201cHiked Baldy and went to work.\u201d \u201c Skyped with the kids.\u201d \u00a0\u201cSaw Gone Girl<\/em> [disappointing].\u201d “Saw Kill the Messenger<\/em> [two thumbs up].\u201d \u00a0 \u201cSlept poorly.\u201d \u201c On track with my eating.\u201d \u00a0\u201cNot on track with my eating.\u201d \u00a0\u201cWrote.\u201d \u201cAvoided writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes, though, when I read the previous year\u2019s entry, I\u2019m jolted by the poignancy of all the mundane moments that make a life, and how they do not last forever. Three\u00a0days ago, for instance, I read that last year on the same date, I had lunch with a colleague. We met to share our experiences about what it was like to be therapists who were working while undergoing chemotherapy for an article I was writing, \u201cThe Myth of the Intact Healer.\u201d Seven months out of treatment and with an excellent prognosis, I had just come out of my wig. My colleague admired my curls, then told me about her collection of wigs\u2014the ones she would never come out of because she was never going to be done with cancer until it had finished her off. \u00a0She was as beautiful and full of life as all the times I\u2019d seen her throughout the years. \u00a0I remembered our lunch as I read last year\u2019s entry for October 25: \u201cHad lunch with S.\u201d That was the last time I saw my colleague\u2014she died last month.<\/p>\n It brings me up short, this turning of the pages, remembering, filling in the blanks, wondering how many more blanks I\u2019ll get to fill in, whether I will complete one or two or ten line-a-day-five-year memory books.<\/p>\n And now, on this day of the calendar\u2019s cusp, as I move from Year Two to Year Three, I\u2019ve opened an email from a woman I haven\u2019t yet met named Marcy. Marcy lives in Portland, and has been living with Stage 4 ovarian cancer for the last four years. (She blogs about it at livinglydyingly.com<\/a>) A long-time organizer and activist, Marcy believes in the power of community, building it\u00a0through ever-expanding connections. I haven\u2019t yet been able to take Marcy to the airport when she\u2019s needed me to, and she hasn\u2019t yet needed our extra bed. But we have struck up a lovely email correspondence. In the one I opened today, Marcy included a\u00a0link <\/a>to something she\u2019s written for Yes! Magazine<\/a>. <\/em>It\u2019s called \u201cWhat I\u2019ve Learned About Living from Dying of Cancer.\u201d You should read it yourself, because as you can see from my confession in earlier paragraphs, my summary certainly won\u2019t do it justice. But here is one of my favorite parts:<\/p>\n I sought out other women living with a pink slip from life and discovered how hard it is for us to find each other. Medical privacy laws don\u2019t help. Advocacy groups are often Web- or hospital-based, but not everyone flourishes in those settings. Eventually I created my own support circle of other women with terminal cancer. The group is called \u201cIt\u2019s a Dying Shame,\u201d and the outreach flyer states, \u201cOur goal is to explore the rich and peculiar territory of facing our own deaths. Together we can mine the humor, strangeness, and beauty of a life turned upside down. Join us for tea down the rabbit hole.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My cancer scare notwithstanding, I do not pretend to have the vaguest idea of what it is like to have gotten a pink slip from life,\u00a0and I am glad for the ignorance, glad that I have the luxury of skirting that rabbit hole for now.<\/p>\n Still, when I turn the page on another year tonight, I will think of my colleague, of Marcy, of the many good and bad movies I have seen and hope to see more of. I will try to honor each day\u2019s moments, and how precious and mundane and fleeting they are, whether they stop before they can be recorded in the next entry, or go on and on and on.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tonight I will fill in the last blank space for Year Two in my line-a-day-five-year memory book that my friend Mary gave me soon after I was diagnosed with cancer. Tomorrow I will begin Year Three. I like to look … Continue reading ![\"concentric](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/r9f.352.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/concentric-circles-in-rippling-water.jpg?resize=234%2C176\")
<\/a> I came to know her through being on one of the farther concentric circles that ripple out from her center. Marcy\u2019s request for help with transportation and housing to pursue cutting edge treatment around the country traveled through many networks to reach my friend\u2019s activist daughter, who forwarded it to her mother, who forwarded it to me.<\/p>\n