I’ve never seen anything like it...

I’ve never seen anything like it.
Her body was melting away. Disintegrating. It was impossible to deny the edge to which her illness had brought her. The edge of her life.
I’ll never forget her face & the skin sliding away from her, that body, a container for a lifetime, literally falling away.
Structureless.
Dissolving.
Unstable.
Dying.
And I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone more alive.

In fact, I experienced her as SO alive, it would actually be more accurate to say that her spirit was exploding out of her body. Almost as if the dying body I thought I witnessed was more of a shedding, a vessel no longer capable of containing the ALIVENESS of that woman.

And while in her state there was no earthly way she could possibly stand up, she told me she wanted to DANCE. And she told it to me like it was an urgent precious message, etched on a scroll, passed on to me just in the nick of time, before it was too late.
And I received it.
And I’ll never forget her.

In my work with hospice & cancer patients, I’ve found with more & more clarity, the “dying” people I meet are so often more alive than most of the “living” people I meet.

Another middle-aged patient with terminal cancer told me, sitting up in her bed, cross-legged like an awestruck wonder-filled child, her glowing eyes like two portals made by up of all the elements of life: “I love it all, the good & the bad, because it’s mine.”

And still another patient I sat with creative writing together at the bedside, a woman with Crohn’s Disease & a new cancer diagnosis, after decades adventuring the world one thrilling international trek after another & now completely hospital dependent, told me: “My spirit is strong & alive.”

And to be clear, & I mean this according to what these patients tell me, being alive doesn’t have to mean LOL BE JOYFUL CUZ OMG YOU’RE ALIVE & WHAT A GIFT & YOU’RE ONLY ALLOWED TO BE HAPPY ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes. You’re alive.
So be alive.
And sometimes that means
with the glass half full
AND
half empty.
Being alive sometimes means letting yourself wholly & fully be...
Grief stricken.
Inspired.
Joyful.
Sick.
Sad.
Angry.
Ecstatic.
Unhappy.
Being alive means FEELING ALL THE THINGS THAT ALIVENESS IS FOR YOU & LIVING THROUGH THEM HERE, NOW, WHILE YOU’RE STILL ALIVE TO DO IT.

So yes...
YOU. ARE. ALIVE.
You’re not dead yet.
Be. Here. Now.
And you can dance if you want to.