Linda's cup

I've written about Linda, who died two years ago now from cancer in or around the liver--Linda the Buddhist, lit up from the inside. I'd show you--you could see it in photographs--but the day she died, when I went to look for photos of her, I discovered that every single one I had was gone. Gone, though I never erase photos, and would never have erased Linda. She was the kind of person you'd want to inhale and become.

Once I gave her a big mug for her tea, and I liked it so much that I bought the same one for myself. It reminded me of her: soft leafy patterns brushed on gently in subtle earthy tones. After she died I used only that mug, every day. But lately I've begun to notice that I avoid it: that I've developed a fear of catching her cancer by even thinking about her. The fear isn't unprecedented, for me: I've never really known where to draw the lines in the "thoughts are things" principle, and I tend toward superstition about illness. But I talk myself down with a decided fatalism: you go when you go, and going in itself isn't the worst thing in the world.

Last night I dreamed about her, and this morning I read Melly's beautiful post, here:
***
Unsettled
I have been unsettled since yesterday. Witnessed something that just won't leave me. I have been outgrowing my naivete about the world we live in, but the rawness of it still smacks me in the face now and then. I was sitting with Zizi, at the Women's Center in a local hospital. Most were there for routine tests. Some, not so routine. There was one woman in particular that was extremely anxious and with good reason. She had been called to return for a repeat mammogram. A spot they needed a better view. Repeated mammogram. Now she waited for an ultrasound. We struck up light conversation. I wanted to try to make her relax and eventually work into the conversation that sometimes they are just being very cautious. We talked. She gave me a very compressed summary of how rough her life has been lately. I listened. I tried to encourage her. I even tried to put into the conversation some of my "sick humor" as my girls call it...I just wanted the tension on her face to ease up before they called her back in. They did. She came out crying, really crying...sat down. Immediately they called my Zizi in, who of course reached for my hand and said, mommy come with me.. As I got up to follow Zizi, I had to stop, go to the woman's chair, squat and tell her as calmly and with all the belief my soul has...it's going to be alright! The thing that hurt me so deeply, is that in this room full of women, women dressed down to bathrobes, whose breasts are about to be diagnosed, not one, removed her nose from the magazines they held, or one from her knitting, to put those arms around this woman...this sister...I see pink ribbons everywhere. I see symbols. Just symbols. What good are symbols, if we can not use those that matter most? Our hearts and our arms?
***
They were afraid of catching it, I think--all those women, stripped down to their vulnerable sameness: bodies and bathrobes. And in that moment, no job, no savings, no standing or seniority or confidence means a hill of beans: you get it or you don't, and there's no explaining the outcome either way. And so we bargain, and grow superstitious. Or we don't.

Well done, Melly.