How to be with life

A story on loving what cannot be kept

Last night started like any other Saturday night while Eli was out of town.

The snow was still coming down quietly.

And I had just woken up from a nap in the sauna. Dangerous? Perhaps. But accidental. And the warmth felt too good on my skin.

I threw the ball down the hallway no less than a hundred times as my boy panted and chased it with the same unfiltered joy every single time.

I caught myself beaming. Pausing. Taking it in.

Looking at his sweet little face. Wondering what he thinks when he stares back at me.

I think he loves me very much.

I need slowness to feel the world around me.

And yet, I withhold it from myself more than almost anything else.

I’ve been this way since I was a little girl. Sprinting with all my might, then crashing. Hard.

I’m 36 and still haven’t broken this pattern.

It’s annoyingly honest.

But last night, after a few days alone in the house, I felt my core again.

The woman who is steadfast.
The center column that remains, even when everything else moves.

Wags sat at my feet while I made dinner for the two of us.

Burger bowls with rice and arugula.

Mushrooms and onions sautéed just right.

The first bite delighted me.

In the quiet, I could actually taste my food.

I noticed my boy’s eyes widen, tracking my fork, hoping for just one morsel to fall.

Music poured through the speakers, cottagecore and warmth, but inside me, everything was still.

After dinner and a quick pee in the snow, we curled up under blankets, safe inside, away from the mountain lions I always imagine.

I flipped through the TV, savoring the rare pleasure of choosing something just for me. No fiancé to veto my picks tonight.

I almost rented Wicked.
Perfect. Girly. But twenty dollars.

Passed.

Funny, coming from someone who will happily spend ten dollars on a latte.

Values are strange that way, I suppose.

Instead, I stumbled across a documentary I’d meant to watch, and then life intervened.

Come See Me in the Good Light.

The story of poet Andrea Gibson and their terminal cancer diagnosis.

I’ve loved creation for as long as I can remember. Add a love story to it, and my luteal heart was doomed.

And just as I imagined it would, it destroyed me.

I cried without fully understanding why.

Of course, there were the obvious reasons.
A woman facing death.
Two women unable to imagine life without each other.

But there was something else.

Andrea didn’t just meet death.

They stayed with life.

Every three weeks, Andrea and their wife opened their bloodwork together, choosing to live in three-week cycles.

And during one especially hard stretch, Andrea said:

“When I accept that this is what’s happening, then I get to be with life.”

They joked with doctors.
Made lists of their smallest, biggest dreams.
Showed up for one final performance, fully aware it might be their last.

Not resisting or numbing.
Just being with it.

So on a quiet Saturday night, I cried.

For Andrea and their life cut short.
For their wife, Meg, losing the love of her life.
For every woman carrying a dream she aches to bring into the world.

I cried for the times I couldn’t feel my own life.

And for the times death had to be my teacher.

Like the night I held my soul dog’s paw while he crossed over. A pain unlike anything I had ever known.

Or the time I called my ex-husband hyperventilating after accidentally running over a bunny.

“That’s the circle of life, baby,” he said.

It sure didn’t fucking feel like it.

As my wedding to Eli approaches, we’ve had hard, honest conversations about death and divorce.

What an odd thing, to walk toward one of the most magical days of your life while imagining its opposite.

I remember one of the first times I knew I really loved Eli.

It was the first time I imagined him dying.

The thought sent me into a spiral I couldn’t climb out of.

When I finally told him why I couldn’t stop crying, he laughed gently. He understood.

His Scorpionic nature gets it.

I do the same with Wags.

In life’s most blissful moments, an intruder arrives.
Images of him darting into traffic, or being taken by a mountain lion.

Love makes me aware of how little time is promised.

Eli and I talk about opening a funeral home one day. About reimagining what it means to honor a life well lived.

But last night, around 11 p.m., wrapped in blankets with snow falling outside, I didn’t need to imagine the end.

Because I was reminded again of the quiet, devastating preciousness of our unknown timeline.

And how being with life, being with all of it, might just be the bravest, and best thing we ever do.

xo,

B