THE ISOLATION JOURNALS - DAY 27 - PROMISES TO KEEP

Today’s prompt:

[From Jordan Kisner] The title of my book, Thin Places, comes from a notion in Celtic mythology that the distance between our world and the next is never more than three feet (i.e. just a little more than an arm's reach away). There are "thin places" where that distance shrinks and then vanishes, where you can glimpse some other world or way of being for a brief moment. Often, "thin places" are literal places, geographical locations that feel holy or otherworldly, but you could also imagine these kinds of thresholds popping up anywhere: in a hospital room, in a bar, in your apartment, in your relationship, in you. A thin place may also be a moment, a time when you were briefly suspended between a world/life that you knew and something totally new, different, awesome, frightening.

Describe a “thin place” or threshold you’ve encountered. It could be a location, an experience, a relationship, a period of time. Describe it in as much concrete detail as you can: what did you see, smell, feel with your hands? How did it make you feel? Who else was there? What led you there? What did you do? What happened afterward? Did anything change? It may feel hard to describe—that's ok! Ineffable experiences are the hardest to describe. Get weird!

Promises to Keep

I met her in a support group for young women with breast cancer. I was newly diagnosed, Stage 2, a babe in the cancer woods. I was also shy – some might say closed off – someone most comfortable blending into the background.

She was metastatic, which meant her cancer was incurable. She was a lesbian and artist and natural leader. She spoke truth to power and never apologized. She scared the shit out of me.

One day, she confided to the support group that she probably wouldn’t be able to come to any more meetings. Her cancer was progressing, and her doctors wanted her to stay close to home. She was afraid of being lonely, and she welcomed visitors.

Something about her plea touched my heart. I decided to push the boundaries of my comfort zone and visit her. I expected her to be pale and sickly, sitting alone in a ghostly parlor like Miss Havisham from Great Expectations but with a much cooler haircut.

Instead, I found her sitting on the sunny back porch of her Bernal Heights house, puffing on a pipe and surrounded by friends. One woman owned a popular local café. Another woman appeared regularly at trendy jazz clubs and on late-night TV. A few women were so strikingly beautiful it was hard to keep from staring.

“I just wanted to stop by and drop off these cookies,” I said, hearing that old Sesame Street song in my head: One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. “I’ll be going now.”

“Don’t leave,” she said. “Come and sit with me. Tell me what’s going on.”

She looked at me with her intense eyes – eyes made even more intense by her very cool architect eyeglasses. And I reluctantly stayed to talk. We talked for a long time.

I visited her regularly after that first time. Oftentimes, there were other friends and former lovers in the house. Sometimes, though, it was just the two of us.

On our last good day together, we were sitting on her sunny back porch, trading stories and soaking up the rays.

“You need to tell your story,” she said.

“I’m not an artist like you,” I replied.

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” she said. “You have a story. I have a story. All of us in the support group have stories. We just need to tell them.”

On our last day together, I sat in her darkened parlor next to her hospital bed, listening to her labored breathing. There was a neat row of Mexican prayer candles – veloradas religiosas – lined up on her mantle. I knew very well that she grew up Jewish.

I’d never been with a dying person before. I wasn’t sure whether she could hear me, whether there was anything I could do to provide comfort in these final moments.

I held her hand. I spoke to her. And finally, I whispered in her ear, “I’ll tell my story. I’ll make sure we all tell our stories. I promise you that.”

She died the following week.

Since then, my breast cancer support group has published three anthologies of personal essays and poems and has read at Lit Crawl (San Francisco’s premier literary pub crawl) and at fundraisers for Breast Cancer Action (the national’s premier kick-ass breast cancer advocacy group). The support group also holds frequent writing workshops to help members process their cancer experiences through writing.

My debut novel is coming out in July. And I just finished a draft of my next book.

Would these things have happened without my friend Lynnly? I’m really not sure.

Promises made.

Promises yet to keep.