Beloved Friends, it’s been quiet here for a while for good reason, and here’s the update on what’s been happening in my life.
To begin with, my doghter Coco’s death in July last year affected me more deeply than I could’ve ever imagined possible. It took me months to get over just the acute grief—the pain, the loneliness, the loss of my finest friend, the loss of my routine and purpose. Nobody to snuggle with, to talk to, to play with, to sit on the sofa with. And she was the last physical link to Steve.
I faithfully went to immunotherapy infusions every month and finally in late November traveled home to Costa Rica. Having been away for 19 months, I was looking forward to the warmth, hanging out in paradise and seeing friends. Soothing my nerves after many months of cancer treatment and emotional upheavals. But this is not what awaited me!
There was an incredible amount of work to be done on the property. Painting inside and outside the buildings and retaining walls, pruning, cleaning, repairing, digging, resolving, sorting. I completely forgot that I was tired and exhausted and did everything like no cancer or immunotherapy existed in my life. I worked and worked and worked, also clearing out the bodegas and all the closets, sorting things, lightening the load.
There was the entire household of my life with Steve. Things from my life before and after Steve. Painful. So many tears. I gave away 18 large bags of belongings, but stayed attached to old photos from my childhood, teenage years, everything before the digital age. My journals from ages 12-21, Steve’s favorite Guatemalan T-shirt and his turquoise lotus silk shirt we bought in Hawaii when we had just met, Coco’s beloved owl toy and her collar. The wedding veil my mother had embroidered with pearls. All that will have to wait until I don’t know when, and I don’t care.
In the three months I was in Montezuma, I went to the beach a total of five times. It was almost unbearable to be there without Coco. On December 24th I managed to gather my strength and resolve, and released her ashes into the sea at Playa Grande where Steve melted into the waves 10 years earlier. I cried and howled. Coco’s physical absence was everywhere. In the house, in the car, the garden, underneath the shrubs, in the pool, by my side, in her bed next to me—nothing was the same without her. And Steve, always nearby, even though he has been gone for many years.
In early March I returned to Germany. I had committed to continue the immunotherapy, and still yearned for that deep rest, now even more so. The ease of being in my little rental apartment on the island of Sylt would be perfect! Or so I thought.
Two weeks after I got back, barely through jet lag, on March 25th I received devastating news: the cancer had returned, five metastatic tumors could be seen on the CT images, in lymph nodes near the aorta.
Oh, the despair and the shock!
On April 21st I underwent another surgery, spent a week in hospital, and started radiation a few weeks after that. To date I have completed 12 of 28 treatments. Side effects have been minimal so far, nothing but fatigue and the occasional digestive challenge. I’m optimistic that “third time lucky” applies, and the cancer will be gone for good.
Radiation is given five days a week, in a clinic about two hours away (each way) from the island where I live. Therefore, for those six treatment weeks I’m staying at a vacation apartment by the Baltic Sea near the Danish border, a short drive to the clinic. My sister and her family are nearby, friends are visiting from Sylt, and even from as far away as Australia and New Zealand. I feel blessed, grateful and so loved! And am finally getting a good rest.
Who knows where life will take me. All I can do now—and indeed ever—is accept, accept and again accept. Letting go, relaxing into what is. Making informed decisions, appreciating beauty and nature around me, the birdsong and trees, and more than anything giving and receiving love, sharing moments of this precious life with others.
I have been contemplating, and in fact preparing for, the certainty of death, my death. Who knows when it will come. The fact that I’ve had cancer not once, not twice, but three times doesn’t mean I’ll die before someone who isn’t sick. So I’m oddly relaxed and peaceful about it now. It will happen when it happens. There is no control, anyway.
Death is predictable and unpredictable at the same time.
All my ducks are in a row, as much as they can be. In the meantime, I am dancing, filled with joy, and feeling vibrantly alive.
“When you cry and weep, when you are miserable, you are alone. When you celebrate, the whole existence participates with you. In celebration do we meet the ultimate, the eternal. Only in celebration do we go beyond the circle of birth and death.”
~Osho, joyfully excerpted from I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here
